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.”