It’s cold comfort, but it isn’t only in the United States that academic standards are under attack. The same dumbing down and obsessive concern over keeping students happy that we see here is also undermining higher education in other countries.
In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Steven Schwartz bemoans that trend in his country, Australia. He writes, “No school student is held back a year, summer-school repeats are rare, and “A” is becoming the most typical university grade. What happens when these students move out of education, where success is the norm, to a world in which failure is ubiquitous? Never having had to deal with setbacks, never having failed at anything, will they have the capacity to cope? Down here in Australia, where I live and teach, we will soon find out.”
Schwartz explains that in Australia, they’ve had the same trend as here, with government support luring more and more students into college, scraping the bottom of the academic barrel. Many of them face severe academic struggles and are at risk of failure. Horrors! What to do?
Here’s what: “The Australian government is mandating that university students who score less than 50 percent in their exams will be entitled to a slew of educational life-savers. University-funded tutoring, counselling, examination do-overs, special exams, and extended deadlines are all on the table.”
So college is turning into a costly entitlement with lots of incompetent students graduating. That’s a predictable consequence of government meddling.
Read the whole thing.