The Pandemic Generation Goes to College. It Has Not Been Easy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/us/covid-college-students.html
Students missed a lot of high school instruction. Now many are behind, especially in math, and getting that degree could be harder.
Students missed a lot of high school instruction. Now many are behind, especially in math, and getting that degree could be harder.
Colleges Should Bring Back Testing Requirements by Michael Bloomberg
Plummeting student performance shows the consequences of abandoning standards.
Falling ACT Scores and the Dumbing Down of America
Math Scores Fell in Nearly Every State, and Reading Dipped on National Exam
After the pandemic disrupted their high school educations, students are arriving at college unprepared
https://hechingerreport.org/after-the-pandemic-disrupted-their-high-school-educations-students-are-arriving-at-college-unprepared/
https://hechingerreport.org/after-the-pandemic-disrupted-their-high-school-educations-students-are-arriving-at-college-unprepared/
"Now, after two years of cobbled-together pandemic learning, many college students not only are less prepared than they should be, they’ve forgotten how to be students…
Uri Treisman, is nationally known for his techniques and philosophies for teaching calculus. He said the fall 2021 semester of first-year calculus was the most difficult he’s had in his 50-year career.
His students were making basic errors in algebra and trigonometry from the beginning. Despite Treisman doing all he could to help them succeed, about 25 percent of his students failed in the fall — compared to 5 percent in an ordinary year. …
And during the 2020-21 academic year, UT adopted a policy allowing students to designate up to three of their courses to be graded as pass/fail, rather than with letter grades, Patterson said. The standard policy, pre-pandemic, wouldn’t allow students to take advantage of pass/fail grading until they had completed at least 30 credits, which typically excludes first-year students. The emergency policy allowed students to “pass” these classes with a grade as low as a D minus, so students who earned a D grade in a prerequisite course could move on without necessarily having mastered the material".
Uri Treisman, is nationally known for his techniques and philosophies for teaching calculus. He said the fall 2021 semester of first-year calculus was the most difficult he’s had in his 50-year career.
His students were making basic errors in algebra and trigonometry from the beginning. Despite Treisman doing all he could to help them succeed, about 25 percent of his students failed in the fall — compared to 5 percent in an ordinary year. …
And during the 2020-21 academic year, UT adopted a policy allowing students to designate up to three of their courses to be graded as pass/fail, rather than with letter grades, Patterson said. The standard policy, pre-pandemic, wouldn’t allow students to take advantage of pass/fail grading until they had completed at least 30 credits, which typically excludes first-year students. The emergency policy allowed students to “pass” these classes with a grade as low as a D minus, so students who earned a D grade in a prerequisite course could move on without necessarily having mastered the material".
Should failing students really graduate as doctors?
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/should-failing-students-really-graduate-as-doctors/
Lionel Shriver notes:
When our Gen Z students can’t do the work, what do we do? Dumb the classes down? If course requirements are relaxed too radically so that more students do well, professors will fail to convey the body of knowledge the classes are designed to deliver. Everyone gets an A, but still knows diddly-squat about organic chemistry. Education becomes theatre.
But then, education at elite American colleges is already in danger of becoming theatre, an empty going through the motions, at the end of which graduates know little more than they did to begin with. For one ingredient in this story is money.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/should-failing-students-really-graduate-as-doctors/
Lionel Shriver notes:
When our Gen Z students can’t do the work, what do we do? Dumb the classes down? If course requirements are relaxed too radically so that more students do well, professors will fail to convey the body of knowledge the classes are designed to deliver. Everyone gets an A, but still knows diddly-squat about organic chemistry. Education becomes theatre.
But then, education at elite American colleges is already in danger of becoming theatre, an empty going through the motions, at the end of which graduates know little more than they did to begin with. For one ingredient in this story is money.