Below is my column in The Hill on universities reporting soaring grade inflation and failing academic standards. Some of us have been writing about this trend for years, but there is little sign of commitment from departments that they are willing to take action to restore academic standards. Any solution will require a national compact of willing schools, a critical mass of institutions willing to adopt a standard curve and basic admission reforms.
Here is the column:
This week, a faculty report at the University of California San Diego found that one in eight of its students requires remedial math classes due to plummeting admissions standards at the school. This follows a similar disclosure at Harvard, where students are also being given remedial math training.
It is only the latest example of the dumbing down of education in America. The implications of this trend are dire for the nation as we march toward an economy with unprecedented challenges for the coming generation.
If we are to save higher education in the U.S., we will need a radical reboot. We need a national education compact to change admissions and grading in our schools.
For more than a decade, some of us have been writing about the decline of academic standards in higher education, from lowering admissions standards to increasing grading curves. Faculties have shown no willingness to address grade inflation or declining standards. That will not change. Most faculties have been purged of dissenting voices and most conservatives. The outrage being voiced outside of schools like Harvard is not being heard within this academic echo chamber.
Years ago, advocates for greater diversity in admission began to rail against the concept of meritocracy itself as racist. Others denounced the use of standardized testing as racist and a barrier to entry for many minorities in top schools. At the same time, the Supreme Court appeared to be moving closer to declaring the use of race in admissions to be unconstitutional — which it ultimately did in 2023.
I wrote about this effort in the California university system in 2021, when then-University of California President Janet Napolitano announced that the ten schools in the system would no longer base admissions on standardized tests. What was most striking about this announcement is that Napolitano went forward with the plan, even though the findings of her hand-picked study group did not support the change.
The final report concluded that at the University of California, “test scores are currently better predictors of first-year GPA than high school grade point average, and about as good at predicting first-year retention, [University] GPA, and graduation.” To make matters worse for Napolitano, the panel also found that standardized scores were also better predictors of outcomes for non-white students within any given school.
Napolitano thanked them and proceeded to kill standardized testing anyway. Now, the system is dealing with a 30-fold spike in freshmen who can’t do remedial math.
Other schools have faced similar concerns after discontinuing standardized testing and have recently returned to using the tests. However, there remain objections that schools are circumventing the 2023 Supreme Court decision and finding less obvious ways to use race as a criterion for admissions.
A recent report in San Diego of the Senate-Administration Working Group on Admissions said precisely what some of us said years ago: “Admitting large numbers of underprepared students risks harming those students and straining limited instructional resources.”
One way to address the lowering of admissions standards is to inflate grades to erase differences in performance. And yes, that is happening.
Harvard is the most ridiculous example of this trend. Recently, then-Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana gave his annual report to the faculty and noted that the average GPA at the school is now 3.8. Upon his announcement that Harvard now gives A’s to virtually everyone, Khurana and the faculty members reportedly broke out laughing at how they have made a premier institution into a bad joke.
When a recent report at Harvard noted that it is impossible to maintain academic integrity and excellence with such grade inflation, students reportedly rebelled. Most faculty are perfectly willing to keep the joke going. After all, giving mostly A’s makes grading easier, guarantees great student reviews, and avoids objections from any aggrieved students.
But in the long run, the joke is on the students. These degrees are becoming meaningless as employers have little basis to judge the comparative ability of these students.
In San Diego, the faculty study also found that grade inflation had contributed to the collapse of standards at the school.
Last week, I addressed a class at Harvard Law School, noting that the Trump Administration was correct about the lack of intellectual diversity at the school. For many of these students, the closest they get to a libertarian or conservative professor is through such guest lectures or occasional speakers.
But despite agreeing with the Trump administration, I disagree with some of its actions toward Harvard in seeking to dictate diversity. We do not want the government to play such a large role in higher education.
Instead, what we need is a voluntary National Education Compact. Donors, students, and others should encourage colleges and universities to join a national agreement between schools to implement some basic changes to restore excellence in higher education. First, schools should agree not only to utilize standardized testing but also to guarantee that the scores will be weighted at a minimum level. For example, the compact could specify that scores would represent at least forty percent of the points that go toward admission (and that the combination of those scores and their grade point averages (GPA) will be given a minimum of sixty-five percent of such points).
The specific percentage can be addressed, but participating schools would ideally assure students and employers that admissions will be driven in significant part by objective rankings while allowing, in the remaining points, for significant variables in other forms of achievement or distinction. Among broad bands of combined scoring, the difference can still be individual distinctions beyond mere tests and grades.
Second, a standard curve should be published with a B as the fixed mean. Individual department faculties often set the mean and inevitably inflate it as students complain that they are at a competitive disadvantage to more generous schools. It is an irresistible temptation just to repeatedly increase the mean to appease students. This can become a variation of the prisoner’s dilemma between schools, in which they come to the worst outcome as they anticipate what other schools will be doing to help their students.
By creating a standard curve among schools and establishing a standard testing mandate, we can establish an objective baseline for comparison. Schools will be listed as either joining the compact or being in non-compliance. Employers can then give greater weight to those schools committed to academic excellence and transparency. Likewise, donors can refuse to contribute to schools with administrators and faculty who refuse to take basic steps to maintain the standards at their school.
The compact still will not address the hiring practices of these schools or the loss of traditional courses. Schools will no doubt continue to offer courses in subjects such as “social advocacy.” However, those courses will no longer be able to give every social justice warrior an A. Students will be expected, as in real life, to distinguish themselves through merit and their work to secure higher grades.
This is admittedly going to be controversial. But what is clear is that we cannot continue on the current path. The dumbing down of higher education is now a national crisis. It is time for a National Education Compact.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the bestselling book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
As always, I admire the Professor’s decency and sense – but he seems to be missing the point that the dumbing down, profit, and indeed – indoctrination – are the point. It will require a termite level fumigation of the radicals and grifters to even begin to think about meaningful reform, and that goes for the lower grades, too.
Achievement is futile.
Your statement is an oxymoron. You’re welcome.
I earned a ” C” in Macro Economics from a very conservative prof. But it was most likely the course in which I learned the most.
Same with me when I took English lit. Wrote a book no less. And no I will not reveal its title. It was a personal achievement. And no I will not reveal its title. Never even got to Amazon. Jeff Bezos didn’t like me.
Amazon sells anything anyone wants to order.
Apparently higher education is an oxymoron. Why a “B” as the mean grade?
If you took English, you would understand what a true oxymoron is, you jumbo shrimp…
Now was that nice? Seems you think you’re smarter but the use of insults clearly disprove that.
That’s not an insult, it’s an example of an oxymoron and I am by far smarter.
“. . . GPA at the school is now 3.8. [. . .] the faculty members reportedly broke out laughing . . .” (JT)
Faculty know that grade inflation is a con game. Administrators know it. Students know it. Employers know it’s a con game.
It’s as if they’re all participating in Madoff’s pyramid scheme, while declaring: Ok, this is wrong. But please don’t stop it until after I get my ill-gotten gains.
How to fix the con game? One prominent dean at one top-tier university, with the courage to declare publicly: The Emperor has no clothes.
“How to fix the con game? One prominent dean at one top-tier university, with the courage to declare publicly: The Emperor has no clothes.”
The day after that declaration, that ex-dean will be completely marginalized and his comments will have been disappeared from most media outlets. It will take a lot more than that, I fear…
“. . . that ex-dean . . .”
And if so, a price worth paying for those who “prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”
“Well, who is going to set and enforce standards? The education industry? ”
Government is solely responsible for the very existence of the “education industry” (as opposed to an education marketplace as demanded by parents and, later, students) and for the preeminence of monsters like Weingarten.
“We do not want the government to play such a large role in higher education.” The government should not be playing any role in education.
Regarding colleges, the decline in the quality of faculties, administrators and student bodies has corresponded to the increase of federal funding of higher education in the late 1950s. The government made a decision to expand college education. But the natural intellectual quality of the students did not increase. The result is the inevitable lowering of intellectual standards in colleges. Quantity and quality are always in conflict.
You say, “the government should not be playing any role in education”.
Well, who is going to set and enforce standards? The education industry? Or Randi Weingarten her union cabalist? Look where we are today.
National standards mandated by laws? I have no answer to this malaise, but sure as heck the education industry is responsible and DC made it worse.
Thankfully the Ed. Dept is destroyed (I really hope so), then it up to industry politicians to fix the problem. Can they be trusted? I fear not.
End Federal Aid and outlaw public unions….standards will soar
The fact that 30% need remedial math says more about K to 12 schools than about college admissions.
So during the pinnacle of higher education successes does one consider the demographic breakdown of the alumni of these crown jewel Universities? One could draw a parallel between the demographic changes that have occurred over the past 50 years or so in our Nation and the effects and impacts on the sample of students. I would imagine that things like DEI, Affirmative Action and No Child left behind as well as an influx of foreign students that it would have had a serious impact on the overall curriculum adopted. Remember that these schools must have a strong educational success rate to receive their federal funding. I am not saying that all people captured in a sample of that sort are less or incapable, I am saying that there are more people in that sample that would potentially drag the average down.
The other big impact is lack of parenting in a child’s formative years, Sponge Bob and Patrick do not a Parent make.
No Child Left Behind was a Conservative pushed program.
As it turns out, Conservatives prefer to shift direction than fix problems.
https://time.com/4129109/no-child-left-behind-republicans/
The remedial math is mainly for the advanced placement math courses they had in high school – Calculus, differential equations, statistical analysis; normally first or second year math classes at most other colleges.
Congratulations to Randi Weingarten and the rest of the unionistas. They might have destroyed education in America, but at least they managed to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to Democrat candidates and institutions, and get thousands of leftwing extremists hired. Never forget that for the far left, educations doesn’t matter but indoctrination does.
She is too busy boycotting Starbucks to care about grades.
And what exactly does that have to do with the above comment?
Exhibition (A) to the column.
Looks like your education just failed here. Try some clarification on Mr. Education.
You lost me at “voluntary.” They’re not going to do it, ok? Mostly because “higher education” seems to be mostly focused on selling loans at this point.
Meanwhile my property taxes continue to go up because everybody is afraid to vote against schools but schools are not educating the kids, for a variety of reasons, one of which is mainstreaming.
Even at the college level, I had maybe one or two kids who had no business being anywhere near a college and they dragged the whole class down to their level.
How do you educate students when you have to spend your whole time explaining to one or two students that water is wet, every day, and they never get it?
I think this guy i son to something: US kids are just plain dummer than the rest of the world. Most likely genetics.
None the less, our moto in the good ole USA, everyone has a right to an education. But they don’t have the brains to comprehend an education.
I MHO the problem goes deeper and reflects into the technological advances made. From calculators to laptops, Students no longer have to learn the basic math fundamentals, a calculator does it for them. The ability to train the brain to understand abstract theories and develop complex logical thought analyses is falling by the wayside. I would have to believe this is but one of the factors playing a large role in the educational decline.
Right now we, citizens and taxpayers, subsidize higher education to an enormous extent. We allow universities to operate tax emempt, give donors tax emeptions for donations, provide grants and scholarships, and much more. In return for this largess these schools, in the main, are working to miseducate our children and undermine democracy.
I say stop it all. Harvard, Princeton and Yale, and many, many others, are not working for the benefit of our country so why are we funding them.
They are being funded because they are doing the medical and technology fundamental research that industry no longer wants to pay for. Or were, until Trump kicked hundreds of thousands of sufferers of cancer off medical trials that were, in fact, helping them. Worse, since these programs are farther advanced, it means that all the expense has been performed on getting results, but there will be no one to write up and publish those results. It means a 100% cost of do-over to get access to those breakthroughs.
Dear Professor, you recommend setting the grade of B as the average. Perhaps you mean that as an interim step. During the antediluvian years in which I went to K-12, college, graduate, and law school, the C, numerically scaled as a score of 80, was the average. Aside from this nit, I agree with you. The misspellings and grammatical mistakes I see written by commentators to this and other blogs appall me. Correct use of apostrophes is almost unknown. How do you endure reading execrably-written essays in law school exam blue books? I’m sure the “average” 1L at GWU is no better equipped to write an appellate brief without such errors that a sixth grader from the McGuffey’s era would be ashamed of.
C was 70, B was 80 and A was 90. I also don’t expect a 1L to be writing appellate briefs as their first assignment.
Your points are well taken, but I think you need to get over yourself before you continue attacking everyone else that comments on what is a legal blog for lawyers AND OTHERS and not a Writ of Certiorari.
I’ll best you never saw anything better than a F grade in your education. At least you can write. Can’t imagine you got past 8th grade.
It seems to us all, you hate it when someone can write a smarter comment than you. So you resort to insults.
College and Law School for me…how about you?
Heck of a whopper there ole timer. Strangely, your comments reek of stupidity and ignorance. I’ll bet you’re lying.
But, I’m opened minded, when and where… documented proof required for believability. Post it here.
This is not news. In the category of “books started but not finished until now”, I’m in the last chapter of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom. His thesis is that this “dumbing down” has occurred since the 60’s and was escalating.
He was remarkably prescient. While American universities have lost their way by de-emphasizing core elements of their purpose, the real fault, IMO, lies with the K-12 system and with parents. Colleges/universities can decide not to accept students who fail to meet a much lowered admission bar, but that still leaves us with persons who are, for all intents and purposes, functionally illiterate. Not ideal for a constitutional republic.
If you haven’t read the book, it might be something you wish to consider. Also, his translation of Plato’s The Republic is excellent.
The key word here is: thesis is a hypothetical proposition. An argument. An original point of view …. nothing more. The result is that you either accept it or you don’t.
In any case, unis can decide who not to take, but it now seems in their desperation to stay alive they take all comers.
Not everyone one in America has the intellectual means to survive college. Money yes, the federal gov sees to that. Over $1 trillion on the books.
Bonus points for the review of The Republic. Thanks!
The Republic? Who can’t even spell it.
The underlying problem is that the incoming students and, indeed, much of the broader population is poorly eeducated.
We must fix K-12 education. The rest is just a band aid.
The predictions of Dr. Bloom have come to fruition.
A prediction is nothing more than a guess. The title Dr. doesn’t make him any more clairvoyant than you.
Try reading the book and then comment.
Have you read it? So, quick, give us a synopsis of chapter 7. You have 1 hour to post about it … I’m counting….
Time is almost up hull bobby… tick… tick.. tick …
And remember the entrance to Graduate schools is at issue. Students want a high GPA, so they take the classes from professors that grade more leniently. Under graduate schools have a better reputation, and higher enrollment, if admission to graduate schools is more likely. This is a self perpetuating problem.
Been to university myself, never encountered or heard of a professor who graded leniently. If they exist, how does a freshman or sophomore etc. find out who is a lenient professor?
The indoctrination process from the left has taken over the universities and colleges. You would have to replace most if not all of those professors. I hear many testimonies from parents stating how sending their child to college has destroyed their child’s values and morals and self worth. Therein lies the destruction of true education. How do you fix that without replacing the instructors.
indoctrination process from the left… you say. I’m curious, does the right have an indoctrination process?
Pray tell, what is true education?
Answer: True education is something that has eluded you.
So that means you know what a “true education” is. So, right now, define it. Go on…
Ummm…. no answer. I wonder why?
It must take most of the classroom time to do this “indoctrination” that leaves this enormously effective teaching method no time at all to use the same techniques to indoctrinate in mathematics, reading, writing, history, science, and so on.
Do they do it like they did in Clockwork Orange with those eyelid props so the children cannot look away? Are there psychoactive drugs being administered by men in lab coats and face masks to hide their identities? It can’t be roofies as then the children could not recall the indoctrination.
How do the children conceal this indoctrination from their parents? Children are rarely that clever about that sort of thing unless parents have promise to beat them for disobeying their iron fist control.
Is this indoctrination in the room with you now?
All of what you say is correct. Faculty do try to give rigorous courses. That’s not the problem. However, there are another couple of truly important factors.
A. When a college’s top priority is retention, it begs the faculty to pass students through. This became the policy about 20 years ago all over. It keeps up enrollment and drives standards down.
B. When a college can make tuition money by offering remedial courses, they will. This gives birth to a community college living within a four year college. All remedial courses should be farmed out to local community colleges.
Faculty do try to give rigorous courses.. Question please. Are you a college or university educator? Ever run a one? At least been on an advisory board at any level? Or at the least been a kindergarten teacher? I didn’t think so. Yet you have the answers to solve the trillion dollar educations industries’ latest problem.
I was a professor of mathematics for 40 years at a Research 1 university.
I hope that satisfies Anon
Are you so easily satisfied. You asked no questions of the gdonaldallen. You take everything at face value?
“I hope that satisfies Anon”
Never.
It lives for kicking over sand castles built by others.
The sandcastle metaphor is a widely used analogy across philosophy, psychology, spirituality, and organizational strategy to illustrate the impermanence of life and human endeavors. It emphasizes that while all creations—whether personal, social, or spiritual—are temporary and subject to destruction, the act of building and engaging in meaningful work still holds intrinsic value.
Guilty as accused!
Naaaa. just exercising my writing skills. I’m really a nice person.
And sadly you spend your last days on earth condescending to a mob of idiots and fools.
Would be better spent if you helped improve the chances of some people to improve themselves by teaching kids etc.. I digress.
Research 1 uni? Tell us who it is. I might believe you. But I smell BS.
This might improve your sense of smell:
https://artsci.tamu.edu/mathematics/contact/profiles/g-donald-allen.html
or
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/G-Allen-3
Feel free to do you own research next tie you have the urge to denigrate someone you don’t know.
-g
“This might improve your sense of smell:”
It won’t. Like Pigpen, that creature is chronically surrounded by a cloud of stench.
Even the collage I went to (UCSD) many of the new students can’t do basic math.
Scary.
So sez the socialist from WA.
Even the collage I went to (UCSD) many of the new students can’t do basic math. Nor can COLLAGE students spell correctly.
Maybe you would like to retract or revise your statement… COLLAGE huh?
Good one dustoff.
Spell check can get the best of us
And you can’t even do that right. Do you really believe you’re intelligent? Just asking for a friend.
And you can’t do BASIC ENGLISH.
Of course that all makes sense, but i’m afraid it’s just naive. The Professor does not recognize that the enemy in our country is winning. And they do not want the same things he does.
the enemy in our country … who are the enemy please?
The Left.
ok. Who are the left? Please be specific. Try applying some of that ole timey jurisprudence in your answer.
Gotta say, for an old lawyer, you sure don’t sound like one here.
Saw that too. He’s monosyllabic.
Not the Right, how bout dat…