Learns a lot about Stanford

DESPITE all the reports of, and encounters with, barely literate college graduates, parents and employers seem wont to believe that top-tier colleges are immune. Send Johnny to Yale, and he will still return a thoroughly educated man of letters, right? Maybe not. Based on the dismal results of a recent “cultural literacy” poll taken among upperclassmen at Stanford University, even the so-called cream of the crop bears the stamp of higher education’s decision to embrace malignant academic fads.

For example, a full two-thirds of those surveyed found themselves at a loss when asked to name the author of The Wealth of Nations. Several came close, by naming Pocahontas’s companion, John Smith-perhaps frustrating Disney’s pedagogical aspirations. One student declared that the seminal free-market text was written by Friedrich Engels, Marx’s comrade.

JG

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Jeffrey R. Giesea

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DESPITE all the reports of, and encounters with, barely literate college graduates, parents and employers seem wont to believe that top-tier colleges are immune. Send Johnny to Yale, and he will still return a thoroughly educated man of letters, right? Maybe not. Based on the dismal results of a recent “cultural literacy” poll taken among upperclassmen at Stanford University, even the so-called cream of the crop bears the stamp of higher education’s decision to embrace malignant academic fads.

For example, a full two-thirds of those surveyed found themselves at a loss when asked to name the author of The Wealth of Nations. Several came close, by naming Pocahontas’s companion, John Smith-perhaps frustrating Disney’s pedagogical aspirations. One student declared that the seminal free-market text was written by Friedrich Engels, Marx’s comrade.