Saturday, April 27, 2019

Average College Freshman Reads At 7th Grade Level






By Professor Doom



     In the old days, getting into college was a big deal—you had to be a good student, have some solid extracurricular activities and generally pass an entrance exam as well as demonstrate you can write a decent “Why I Want To Go To College” essay.

      When the Federal government decided to back student loans, giving them to every degree seeking student, it was hailed as a good thing, but a big mistake was made: the loans were for “tuition,” not for a set amount, so colleges could charge whatever they want. Eager to make ever more money, our leaders in higher ed raised tuition to whatever felt right, and “moar” always felt right.

     It didn’t take long before our leaders realized that restricting admission was a problem: it was cutting into the loan money. Turning away even one student means a loss of $25,000 or more (today), and that’s basically a free car for the Dean. Turning away 16 such students because of poor grades, a poor essay, or any reason, really, and now you can’t get even hire a $400,000 a year diversity officer.

     Now, old accreditation mandated entrance requirements, but such rules were cutting into the student loan loot, which as the gentle reader can see piles up fast. So they got rid of entrance requirements. What has that done to the quality of the average college student?




   While this is old news, it’s queer how nobody has done the math here. A student coming into college at the 7th grade level, will, assuming he theoretically graduates in 4 years, will be at the 11th level…still not a (theoretical) high school graduate.

     “We are spending billions of dollars trying to send students to college and maintain them there when, on average, they read at about the grade 6 or 7 level, according to Renaissance Learning’s latest report on what American students in grades 9-12 read, whether assigned or chosen,” said education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky.



     Even though it’s old news, I bring it up to mention just how deep the fraud is in higher education. Our college textbooks are not written at the 7th grade level…but our students read at the 7th grade level? How is nobody seeing the problem here? The conclusion is quite straightforward: the average student has essentially no chance of getting a legitimate college degree, at least in 4 years. He’ll need a few years to catch up (5?), and then he can handle the writing in the books.

    We’ve known this for years, but nothing’s changed.

The study also found that most high school graduates don’t do much with mathematics past eighth grade…



     This is an unusual study. Most studies of this sort of thing find mathematics to lag behind more qualitative skills—usually because our students have little choice but to practice English regularly just in their daily communication (it’s not like they’ll learn it in school…). But here we have math at the 8th grade, and reading at the 7th. I guess you can quibble, but this is dismal.

     Of course, the question still remains: how are these students making it in college?

     There are two parts to the answer. The first part of the answer is “most don’t…” We talk quite a bit about how expensive a college degree is, but students are charged the same tuition whether they get a degree or not. Only about half of college students get a degree in 5 years…you can bet it’s the half that reads at better than the 7th grade level. We never seem to talk about all the dropouts, even though they represent a large percent of our citizens with unpayable debt.

    The second part of the answer is “…and many get bogus degrees.” This is the part that we read about, all the students getting their utterly worthless degrees in Gender, Sexuality, Diversity, and a host of other fields that, bottom line, won’t generate revenue enough to pay off the student debt. We read about this often in the news, but do realize for every “college graduate with worthless degree and student loan debt” horror story, there’s another “college dropout with nothing and a massive student loan debt” who never makes the news.

       While the endless personal health horrors sap my will to write, do keep in mind how trivial it is to see immense fraud in our higher education system, fraud that has been going on for years.

     Fraud paid for by the student loan scam. End it.





19 comments:

  1. The average is 7th grade. What about the lower half? What about the lower quartile?!

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    1. Good observation. Since, presumably some freshman are at the 12th grade level, that would mean it's quite possible as many are at the 2nd grade level. Scary thought, right? As my army recruiter friend says...the recruits that are too stupid for the army, often tell him they'll just go to college instead.

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    1. My coworkers, who are college grads from the 1990's and later: think Africa's a country, have never read a book all the way through, have no shame in admitting that they cheated on tests and bought or plagiarized every term paper they ever turned in and they speak like ignorant middle schoolers. Pathetic.

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    2. The Idiocracy has come early. You can also see it in our political leadership.

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  3. But the 7th grade level has nothing to do with the institutions of higher learning, it has to do with a failure at the grade school level of education. Don't complain about college admissions, complain about the dismal education in primary schools!

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    1. But that failure is a result of the system at the college level that guarantees that only the worst of college students go into primary and secondary school teaching.

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  4. I had taught College Reading and Study Improvement for several years at a community college. Most of the students in the college needed to take remedial classes but didn't. They wanted to get on with their "book learnin'" instead of dealing with stuff they didn't get in primary and secondary schools. One of the first things I did in the class was to do timed readings. Many were lucky to read at 150 words per minute and don't even talk about their comprehension. They were lucky to get to 20%. If they stayed in the class, many didn't because they were required to actually do some work they learned something. Their reading and study improvement was vastly improved once they finished the class. One main reason is that I didn't use the assigned book. I had acquired techniques that could bring even the slow reader up to speeds well beyond the 250 WPM of most college students. I saw grades go up from Ds and Fs to As and Bs. Needless to say, later the department told me I had to use the assigned text. That did not help their learning and comprehension.

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  5. This is hardly surprising to me. I worked for LAUSD in the IT construction department and would have to go to various schools. I perused the 'essays' that the honor students were writing and realized that if I had written that poorly in 5th grade that my parents would have killed me.

    Yes, the worst of the worst were in the 'ghetto' schools where no doubt the few who can write well don't for fear of acting like 'whitey'. We're not doing these future inmates and welfare mothers any favors by giving them worthless pieces of paper. Though I guess the world does need more people to major in Modern African American Dance Therapy.

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  6. 7th grade level? Have you recently talked to a 12 year old? More like 3rd grade level.

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  7. They read that well? Regressive dis-education is negligent in doing its part to ready in time the masses of the once peak developed nations for world state slavery! After that comes no problem predicting who faces Stalinist show trials & purges early. Some times one just can not be bad enough.

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  8. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/washburn-university-football-player-killed-giants-draftee-injured-shooting-n999311
    Washburn U football hero signed up for NY Giants this weekend upon graduation and was murdered at his party celebrating all this junk.

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  9. I knew of a community college that gave three college readiness tests--reading, writing, and mathematics. If you scored at a certain level or below you took remedial English or remedial math. But no one was ever required to take remedial reading. I asked why and was told that many students tested into remedial in all three categories but that they couldn't get financial aid unless they were enrolled in one college level class. Therefore, no reading level requirement for any class. Imagine teaching psychology or history to someone not reading at a college level. Imagine teaching "word problems" in a math class to someone reading at a 7th grade level.

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    1. This is why I keep pointing out how the fraud on many of our campuses is obvious. They can't *possibly* be taking college level material, the schools document it. But they're getting student loan money for college work, somehow.

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  10. When I attended college in the prehistoric 1960's about 2% had to take "dumbbell english" and that was considered unacceptably high. College admissions complained that the public schools were sending them an inferior product and look where it is now.

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  11. Another fairly mainstream media article on axing the student loan. This one even explicitly mentions this :

    "Today’s problems are less about radical professors and idiot students than administrative careerists who have given colleges and universities a new spiritual mission in the form of social justice activism."

    https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/29/dont-bail-colleges-student-loan-mess-theyve-made/

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    1. I don't know if The Federalist is quite so "mainstream," but I'll be writing on comparable soon. Thanks!

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  12. "I never let my schooling interfere with my education."

    "Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold."

    "All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge."

    Mark Twain

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