College presidents apparently think today’s freshmen are less prepared now than they were 10 years ago. According to an article by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post:
A majority of more than 1,000 college and university presidents surveyed in a new poll said that public high school students are arriving at college less well prepared than students were a decade ago, and only 19 percent said that the U.S. system of higher education is the best in the world today.
Fifty-eight percent of the college presidents said that high school students are coming to college less prepared than kids were 10 years ago, and 52 percent said college students don’t study today as much as their counterparts did a decade ago.
This information comes from the Pew Research Center report on American higher education, which also looked at college cost and people’s perception of the “value” of college.
Several things are odd about this particular survey. First of all, college presidents don’t generally teach students at all, much less freshmen; how would they know prepared they are?
Furthermore, colleges are also dramatically more selective now than they were a decade ago. Why are admissions officers letting in so many unprepared students?
