The recent report from the University of California at San Diego as reported in Sunday's WaPo was a shocker. Incredibly, in 2024 the school had to redesign its remedial math program to create a class that focused entirely on remediating elementary school and middle school math. In 2025, more than 8 percent of entering students needed that class. That is, more than 1 in 12 college students needing remedial math. That is ridiculous.
As Megan McCardle also notes ('The Signs Of Educational Decline Are Now Impossible To Ignore', Washington Post:
"Most astonishingly, in 2024, the majority of kids who needed a refresher on the most basic skills had taken at least one higher-level high school math course, such as calculus or statistics, and had an average grade point average in their math classes of 3.65. More than one-quarter of them had straight A’s in a subject they demonstrably didn’t understand. And this problem is not limited to UC San Diego or California. I’ve heard professors at many institutions, including Harvard.:
Harvard too? What gives?
In fact, this issue is not novel by any means. When I taught Space Physics at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in 1985-86 I found most of the students (even at the sophomore level), didn't belong in a college setting. They arrived at university unprepared from top to bottom, lacking basic skills in numeracy as well as literacy. It was a wonder they scored enough on the SAT to even be accepted. No surprise these students were also more likely to be given low grades and to take their grievances out using the student evaluations.
By "numeracy" I don't even mean facility with calculus. I mean skills such as:
- Obtaining fractions from decimals and vice versa, i.e. 0.33 = 1/3 and 1/4 = 0.25
- Using ratios and proportions, i.e.
If x/y = a/ b and b = 3a/4 then x/y = 4/3
- Adding and dividing fractions, i.e.
1/3 + 3/4 = (4 + 9)/ 12 = 13/12
5/6 divided by 2/3 = 5/6 x 3/2 = 15/ 12 = 5/ 4
I realized how far below basic competence some of these purported "college" students were during one Space Physics lab I conducted at Univ. of Alaska- Fairbanks when during an experiment on Snell's law- to do with refraction and a sketch layout, e.g.
Student after student in my Space Physics lab asked: How could one obtain the ratio of the angles when investigating Snell's law for two media? (e.g. air and water) say to obtain the ratio of the angles: Θ2 / Θ1
And thence: n1/ n2
The ratio of the refractive indices.
I realized then I had to set up side remedial math classes just to ensure the students would be able to make their way through the remaining labs!
I suspected, though I couldn't be absolutely sure, that other physics instructors experienced similar problems. And also that these problems could have caused poor student performance in classes as well as lower teacher evaluations as a kind of blowback.
Here is where the conundrum McCardle mentions comes to the fore, i.e. how is it supposedly A students in a given math subject didn't understand the course work? One basic reason is grade inflation. If grades are inflated incommensurate with student's actual performance, then of course a mismatch will occur which likely won't be revealed until they take a standardized test like the SAT or GRE.
One of the more astounding revelations on this subject is found in the book AfterThe Fact by Nathan Bomey, on page 154:
"In an analysis of data from the Collegiate Learning Assessment Exam (CLA+), administered to college students to gauge their critical thinking, problem solving and writing abilities, The Wall Street Journal found that the average graduate at some of the most prestigious flagship universities' displayed little or no improvement in critical thinking in 4 years'."
This test (similar to the GRE before 2001) requires students to assess information by combing through spreadsheets, research papers, news articles and various documents to make a 'cohesive argument' or to 'evaluate an assertion'.
But it was found that "at least a third of seniors at more than half of the schools failed at the task."
A powerful and relevant conclusion from Bomey(ibid.) merits attention:
"Higher institutions are essentially selling grades and degrees in exchange for nominal performance."
Thus:
"Instead of assessing college students based on their abilities and genuine achievements, educators are rewarding students based on whether they put in minimal effort."
The evidence, according to Bomey, is in the rampant grade inflation. He cites the research of Duke University professor of geophysics Stuart Rojstaczter, who's been tracking college students' performance for years. His research has found that "the average grade point average at four year American colleges increased by 0.1 points on a 4 point scale every decade since the early 1980s." That would represent at minimum a 0.4 increase to the present - a difference perhaps between a C plus and a B. By contrast:
"In the early 1960s, fewer than two in ten grades were As. Today it's well over four in ten. An A, in fact, is the most common grade today, despite scant evidence students have improved academically".
As I've written before, universities - even the likes of Harvard and Yale- are awarding these inflated grades so students refrain from delivering lousy teacher evaluations, which in turn would rebound negatively on the schools. More to the point, both students and their parents expect to see high grades for the high tuition money they're shelling out. Never mind the kid may not have earned those high grades.
Voila! The conundrum of a kid getting an 'A' in statistics but not being able to do basic math is solved.
Rojstaczter's related observation is equally cogent:
"What appears to be driving higher grades over the last thirty -five years is rising tuition. As students pay more and more for a degree they expect more for that degree. And that includes a high GPA on graduation."
Something I also noted in my book, The Elements of the Corporatocracy, p. 125:
"According to observations of one liberal arts professor - who has seen manifestations of the 'consumer self' in his own university (and talked to colleagues who indicate the same exists where they are). In his words - referring to students and teacher evaluations (Edmundson, M.: Harpers, Sept., 1997, p. 39):
They're pitched into high writing gear....stoked on a procedure they have now supremely mastered. They're playing the informed consumer, letting the provider know where he's come through and where he's not up to snuff."
We brought this farce onto our educational system directly, by first creating a misbegotten system for teacher evaluation by immature kids - then conferring gravitas on it by elevating them to "customers". Finally, not truly testing their competence but instead resorting to blind promotions. We got exactly what we put into our system.
See Also:
Excerpt:
Remember when the University of California kicked off a
trend by eliminating the SAT test as an admissions requirement five years ago?
Now arrives the dispiriting result: Many freshmen at one of its top public
universities can’t do middle-school math.
The University of California, San Diego, is widely considered one of the
nation’s top public universities, ranking sixth in U.S. News & World
Report. So a new analysis by its joint faculty-administration committee of its
student preparation may reflect a broader decline in academic rigor and
standards.
And:
And:
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