During my freshman year at Cornell in 1991, I had two professors state that the quality of students currently attending was mediocre. We were apathetic generation that had not interest in learning. Are we doing the same thing here?

The one issue I have seen with my child's cohort is that some are too reliant on their parents. There is a lack of independence as parents seem to intervene at a drop of a hat. We tried to avoid intervening unless absolutely necessary. Our child had to fight most of her own battles. I think she is stronger for it but whether it benefits her academically in college is unknown.

Anonymous wrote:Cell phone addiction means that 98% of people have the attention span of a gnat and the writing skillz that allow them to construct sentences like this: "bruh - hmu when u hav a sec. Ima hit da gym"

For the record, I don't know what a gnat's attention span is, but I believe it's not great.

A gnat has an attention span of approximately 4 seconds.

Anonymous wrote:When grades became the teachers responsibility rather than the students, the kids started learning less. All in the name of teacher accountability.

Kids were better off with the red C at the top of the paper.

So agree, such inflated sense of abilities and then of course they are “bad test takers.” They need real feedback.

I remember getting my first C in college, at a top SLAC. However, I had gotten some less-than-perfect grades in high school and had had some setbacks (not making a team, not getting an award) then so it wasn’t a big crisis. Now college admissions leaves no room for error so many kids are entering top colleges without having experienced the consequences of imperfection or not being the best, en route to that top college.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok can someone please square the circle

Schools are harder to get into than ever before yet we are hearing from faculty that there is a crisis of basic competence in the student body.

What is going on?

IT's simple---those applying to T25 schools are not the same ones who are "in a crisis of basic competence"

A kid can get into Harvard, despite the fact 40% of their HS class will not graduate/barely graduate and 60% won't even go to college. One has nothing to do with the other

No, I mean specifically faculty at t20s who say that there is a crisis of competence with their undergrads these days

Not the general unwashed population

The type of kids who go to Ivies are cramming academics. They are not babysitting, working at fast food restaurants, mingling with the hoipolloi, trying sketchy substances and making mistakes, dating, fixing cars, hunting, fishing, balancing checkbooks, helping single parents, etc. They don't have responsibilities and so crumble at life.

This is offensive and very untrue. I don’t think people would be okay if Ivy kids made sweeping generalizations like this. Respect works both ways.

Anonymous wrote:I’m a community college instructor, so I don’t usually see the sorts of students who are applying to top 20 colleges, but my colleagues & I have seen a distinct decline in students starting about 10-12 years ago.

We suspect the reasons are things like:

Obsession with mobile phones

Playing on computers in class while pretending to be listening & taking notes

Reliance on AI

High school teachers relying on multiple choice exams

High school teachers who: (1) don’t count whichever exam a student took that had lowest score, (2) allow students to re-take exams if they don’t like the grade they got, or (3) allow students to submit B.S. extra credit assignments to make up for bad exam scores. These are all safety nets that give students the idea that they don’t REALLY need to study for exams.

High school teachers who provide “study guides” for exams. These give students the wrong signal regarding paying attention to lectures, taking notes, studying, & learning.

How self-defeating. Creating my own study guide is always what helped me study for the test. In fact, I retained more from classes where we were allowed to make and use cheat sheets for some tests.

When grades became the teachers responsibility rather than the students, the kids started learning less. All in the name of teacher accountability.

Kids were better off with the red C at the top of the paper.

Anonymous wrote:Ok can someone please square the circle

Schools are harder to get into than ever before yet we are hearing from faculty that there is a crisis of basic competence in the student body.

What is going on?

It is mainly the bottom group that has competence problems, at elites. The average student is much smarter and more prepared than 30 yrs ago. Speaking of elite university, as a professor who has taught at various levels including regional publics up to t10. Currently at a top school: TO was not a good idea, led to more academic problems, but that is a small group compared to the whole. Many peer institutions came to the same conclusion as ours. Regional publics get a sizable proportion that would not have attended college 30 yrs ago and many of them drop out after failing classes. Those colleges have such a wide range of student competence as to make it impossible to teach to the level the top 1/4 need. Professors burn out is real with pressure from administration to pass more students by making the courses easier and easier. These schools need to fill seats but many who fill them are not cut out for basic college classes.
That is not the problem at top schools. The problem is though they are almost all quite smart, most could be top researchers or professors if they wanted, but they cannot all get As and they all want them to the point of mental distress, never having made less than an A in the past, it terrifies them

Anonymous wrote:Fewer kids regularly read or write for pleasure, and I'd imagine that explains some of it. Independent reading lends itself to a greater range of general knowledge, better critical thinking skills, a larger vocabulary, and better language and communication skills.

This is so true. I see it in myself and in my 9yo daughter. We are both big readers and have a lot of GK and are also interested in thinking things through rather than making silly surface observations.

I don’t think it’s fair to label all Ivy kids as ones who are “cramming academics”. I didn’t attend an Ivy but my friends who did had regular high school lives with low profile parents, sports, regular school clubs, some volunteer work, summer jobs, etc. Of course that was early 90’s but I’m sure even today, there are plenty of kids like that at the Ivies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok can someone please square the circle

Schools are harder to get into than ever before yet we are hearing from faculty that there is a crisis of basic competence in the student body.

What is going on?

IT's simple---those applying to T25 schools are not the same ones who are "in a crisis of basic competence"

A kid can get into Harvard, despite the fact 40% of their HS class will not graduate/barely graduate and 60% won't even go to college. One has nothing to do with the other

No, I mean specifically faculty at t20s who say that there is a crisis of competence with their undergrads these days

Not the general unwashed population

The type of kids who go to Ivies are cramming academics. They are not babysitting, working at fast food restaurants, mingling with the hoipolloi, trying sketchy substances and making mistakes, dating, fixing cars, hunting, fishing, balancing checkbooks, helping single parents, etc. They don't have responsibilities and so crumble at life.

Really?? Nope. My kid played a sport year-round and worked summer jobs. He is very normal-also very smart which was noted early on by teachers. His college roommate is similar.

I’m a community college instructor, so I don’t usually see the sorts of students who are applying to top 20 colleges, but my colleagues & I have seen a distinct decline in students starting about 10-12 years ago.

We suspect the reasons are things like:

Obsession with mobile phones

Playing on computers in class while pretending to be listening & taking notes

Reliance on AI

High school teachers relying on multiple choice exams

High school teachers who: (1) don’t count whichever exam a student took that had lowest score, (2) allow students to re-take exams if they don’t like the grade they got, or (3) allow students to submit B.S. extra credit assignments to make up for bad exam scores. These are all safety nets that give students the idea that they don’t REALLY need to study for exams.

High school teachers who provide “study guides” for exams. These give students the wrong signal regarding paying attention to lectures, taking notes, studying, & learning.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids from my DS’s (affluent) high school who are getting into T25 schools are so extraordinarily well-prepared it’s not even funny. Once there, they encounter students from other parts of the country who are on financial aid and ill-prepared.

Fixed it for you

We can quibble over word choice, but it answers the question. Colleges are choosing kids BECAUSE they come from disadvantaged backgrounds. So it should come as no surprise that there is a basic competence problem. A friend’s son at HYP is blown away by how incapable his DEIFGLI peers are. Truly struggling.

+1 These AOs prefer the poor or well connected over truly smart kids. We have seen the brilliant passed over for someone who checks an ethnic box. Sorry those kids struggle in college and finding jobs. It’s a joke who they are admitting for all the wrong reasons.

The text just above emphatically was NOT true for my E School classmate from a poor coal mining county in SW VA.

Entire high school qualified for free lunch. He got all As in the county's one high school. He did not have the chance to take any AP classes - none offered. He dis not have the chance to take any Calculus - not offered. No money for labs in Bio/Chem/Physics, so the school taught all 3 courses without any lab work. He did the best one could do with the very limited options available to him.

He worked hard from day 1, even though his starting point was academically way behind most other students. He got his engineering degree on time and got out.

He and those like him are why I think it entirely fair to handle economically poor students from poor cities/counties differently. This is quite different from an ethnic/racial bias in admissions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok can someone please square the circle

Schools are harder to get into than ever before yet we are hearing from faculty that there is a crisis of basic competence in the student body.

What is going on?

IT's simple---those applying to T25 schools are not the same ones who are "in a crisis of basic competence"

A kid can get into Harvard, despite the fact 40% of their HS class will not graduate/barely graduate and 60% won't even go to college. One has nothing to do with the other

HARVARD is offering remedial math and reading classes. Only about 25% of the freshmen class is acceon the basis of merit. Harvard has seen better days.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids from my DS’s (affluent) high school who are getting into T25 schools are so extraordinarily well-prepared it’s not even funny. Once there, they encounter students from other parts of the country who are on financial aid and ill-prepared.

Fixed it for you

We can quibble over word choice, but it answers the question. Colleges are choosing kids BECAUSE they come from disadvantaged backgrounds. So it should come as no surprise that there is a basic competence problem. A friend’s son at HYP is blown away by how incapable his DEIFGLI peers are. Truly struggling.

+1 These AOs prefer the poor or well connected over truly smart kids. We have seen the brilliant passed over for someone who checks an ethnic box. Sorry those kids struggle in college and finding jobs. It’s a joke who they are admitting for all the wrong reasons.