Yes, I do know.
I'm not going to get into a debate here on a Friday afternoon - especially with classes starting Monday - about teaching and learning, grades, or what happened in higher education during COVID. But I will say that I personally haven't noticed a meaningful decline in the abilities of my students over the past several years. The one obvious change I've seen is that they seem to have very little tolerance for traditional lecture-style teaching - which is perfectly fine with me, since I don't particularly enjoy it either.
Based on 30+ years of experience in higher education, as well as countless conversations with colleagues, I feel pretty confident saying that the current state of higher education in this country is nowhere near as dire as it's often portrayed. Are there problems that need to be addressed? Absolutely. But I don't believe a pass/fail policy for first-year students is going to have any appreciable effect - positive or negative - on the abilities or long-term success of college students (in many disciplines).
Everyone's "lived experience" (Isn't that one of the most dangerous of all the made up buzzwords of the last decade?) is unique of course. So I can only assume that your's are what they are.
But they are certainly not of much similarity to the nationwide actual facts.
"
Shocking percentage of college freshman can’t do remedial math, ‘disturbing’ new report finds
“The report, done by the school’s Senate Administration Workgroup on Admissions, said Math 2 was created as a high school remedial class. But they found that ‘most students had knowledge gaps that went back much further, to middle and even elementary school,’” Fox News reported. “It also revealed that in 2024, 25% of students placed in Math 2 had a 4.0 average in high school math. This meant many students’ GPAs did not match their actual proficiency in the subject.”
Allen argues that the COVID-19 pandemic may have had a significant impact on children’s education, but it isn’t solely at fault for this situation.
“A lot of the report that we just saw talks about concerns of the pandemic, which, yes, we haven’t caught up,” she said. “But it’s been worse for a 20-year trend. Again, it’s a generational issue.”
In any event, whether here at PSU, or at many institutions around the nation, it doesn't take a lot of work to even simply look at the number of classes/credit hours being expended on remedial level courses each semester (folks should take a stroll through the PSU Registrar's course selection website each semester
I won't even get into the results - the differential results - on things like graduation rates for kids who come in needing remedial high-school level courses, vs those who do not.
That data is all out there.
But the data you don't hear much about is how these remedial level courses are ATM machines for universities - cheap to run, and bring in the same amount of tuition $ of an advanced course with high cost.
There is a reason that most universities don't really care. And that is a big one.
And this phenomenon - listed in the report above wrt High Schools (read it again if you didn't the first time):
“It also revealed that in 2024, 25% of students placed in Math 2 had a 4.0 average in high school math. This meant many students’ GPAs did not match their actual proficiency in the subject"
Is now the same song-and-dance (give them a good grade and pass them along) is taking place not onlyu in K-12, but to varying degrees at UNIVERSITIES (all the way up to graduation.... what used to be referred to as "diploma mills", but now is called "revenue and enrollment management" )- something which should logically surprise no one. And there is no incentive - in fact there is DIS-incentive for Higher Education Inc. to care.
There are still, certainly, many many bright young kids growing and advancing their intellectual capabilities at universities across the country. No doubt. And not every "pocket" of higher education (or K-12 education) is the same. But it is a huge, strong, and (now) very long-lived trend in the wrong direction.
Turning that around will take informed, honest, and reasoned actions from many different players - too long a list, with too many responsibilities, to outline here.
Right now, there is not a whole lot of reason for optimism that is going to happen soon - and, of course, the self-preservation, self-interest, and financial interests of so many are NOT congruent with actually solving the problem. And, in fact - as pointed out above - there remains significant self-interests in maintaining the status quo (which kind of shows just how F-ed the system is at present).
