Joanne notes that in the UK, the A-levels have become inflated and thus aren't as useful in college admissions, whereas in the US, a high school diploma is becoming less useful in gauging who's ready for college:
Only about half of this year's high school graduates have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, and even fewer are prepared for college-level science and math courses, according to a yearly report from ACT, which produces one of the nation's leading college admissions tests.The report, based on scores of the 2005 high school graduates who took the exam, some 1.2 million students in all, also found that fewer than one in four met the college-readiness benchmarks in all four subjects tested: reading comprehension, English, math and science.
"It is very likely that hundreds of thousands of students will have a disconnect between their plans for college and the cold reality of their readiness for college," Richard L. Ferguson, chief executive of ACT, said in an online news conference yesterday.
Indeed. And don't miss the NYSun's review of the undercover professor and her experience as a freshman at "AnyU":
Although AnyU isn't a recognized top-tier school, the author seems to be genuinely surprised at the lack of intellectual interest and ambition displayed by the students. In a passage in the book about overheard dormitory conversations, she writes: "Although my time sample is very limited, I never once overheard what I would term a political or philosophical discussion."Posted by kswygert at August 23, 2005 08:56 AMThe most popular class by far was a course on sexuality, taught by a "rock star" professor who laced his lectures with "taboo words." The author describes how students were assigned to interview each other in off-campus locations about their sex lives. (Those discussions provoked one of the three instances in which the author voluntarily disclosed her identity to her classmates.)
For the students, the biggest draw to the ivory towers, she found, was "college culture," which encompasses fun, friendships, partying, life experiences, and late-night talks. It's not exactly the message a university administration wants to send out...
...[But] despite "the rhetoric of student culture," she writes, students are not only studying less, they are also spending less time socializing than students a generation ago. The reason why, she offers, is that they're too busy holding wage-paying jobs...