[AmericanThinker] ...Charles Murray is a prolific author and writer on education. He notes:
For 40 years, American leaders have been unwilling to discuss the underlying differences in academic ability that children bring to the classroom. Over the same period, federal policy, backed by billions of taxpayer dollars in loans and grants, has aggressively encouraged more and more students to try to obtain a college education. As a result, about half of all high-school graduates now enroll in four-year colleges, despite the ample evidence that just a small minority of American students — about 10-15% — have the academic ability to do well in college. But they're real good at having pro-Hamas demonstrations
...The problem is when Barack Obama federalized the student loan industry, colleges were incentivized to admit everyone with a loan, which led to remedial high schools on campus, tuition inflation, grade inflation, and the devaluation of a college degree. One would think our Ivy League schools would not fall into this academic death spiral. One would think "surely they’d maintain academic standards!" One would think wrong. Even Harvard, our first university, founded in 1636 to teach ministers, has succumbed:
The Harvard Math Department will pilot a new introductory course aimed at rectifying a lack of foundational algebra skills among students, according to Harvard’s Director of Introductory Math Brendan A. Kelly.
The course, titled Math MA5, will run alongside two established math courses — Math MA and MB — with an expanded five-day schedule. Kelly said that students in MA5 will meet with "one of two instructors all five days" with "a variety of different activities" on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
And whatever happened to kindly telling people they’re just not qualified, that there are specific performance standards and everyone must meet them if they want to enroll at America’s most prestigious center of higher education?
Sadly, the answers are obvious, aren’t they? |