It is the game. Since most people don't really care what you learn but that you have a credential that says Ivy or Ivy adjacent than this is what will be the situation going forward.
2nd and 3rd tier private schools will continue to close up shop if they have a sticker price equivalent to Ivy because their credential isnt worth it. I actually look forward to this madness of paying through the nose for degrees from places nobody cares for in this day and age.
Essentially correct. I've long held that Ivy League schools are way overrated academically. The only thing you can learn at an Ivy, that you can't learn elsewhere, is the secret handshake.
Ivy league schools are all about prestige (deserved or not) and networks. I was reading about some kid named Leopold Aschenbrenner yesterday. Apparently he vaporized $30 billion in assets in a couple of weeks in his "Hedge" fund. His only qualification seems to be a degree from Columbia. But in today's World that is enough to get you a pass on having no actual qualifications.
To be fair, the fact that Little Leopold vanished $30 billion, says as much about his investors as it does about him. He wasn't operating in a vacuum. It is ultimately the responsibility of the investor to perform due diligence, of course the investors themselves were probably similarly "educated & qualified".
I watched the shift towards rewarding cheaters in nursing school. The new department head at my “large public university” mandated homework via a new online platform that she had “negotiated” to bring to the program. The sheer volume of work was numbing and I kept finding wrongly scored answers. I was getting low grades on my assignments because of this and brought the specifics to her. She dismissed my concerns, without denying that my correct answers were being scored wrong. Additionally, she was uninterested in my point that the students who were consistently getting perfect scores were likely cheating. My reward for academic integrity: a “B” in her class and a shitty clinical assignment. When I walked the stage at graduation and had to shake her hand, I looked her in the eye and whispered: “You lack integrity.” So, the cheater was valedictorian and the department head probably got a nice vacation somewhere. Rot is definitely the right word.
Thank you for trying. My nursing school experience was a certificate program. I was the only one to pass the math test on the first try. I observed fellow students consulting their cell phones during the retesting while the instructor sat, glued to her computer at the front of the room. I reported this to the school president. The next class we were all chewed out about someone violating the chain of command. Respecting the chain of command is Vital in nursing!!! But her behavior during testing and the cheating were never addressed. As a class we kept retaking that test until Everyone passed.
Wow. Those are nurses who are now calculating deadly IV med rates. There is a reason that this nursing math test has historically been “make or break”, requiring a perfect score to continue to graduation. An error can mean death for a patient.
I just dropped my second child off for their freshman year. My consistent refrain for both kids is master what you are learning before you use any AI tool. If you use AI, you are cheating yourself of understanding and mastery. I believe, for the most part, my kids have adhered to this, but oh is it sometimes frustrating when they are now competing against kids who have faked their mastery. I consistently have told my kids that I have learned more when I had to struggle. So I hope that both my kids have a successful year where they are challenged by their classes and where they master the material. My goal is for them to do their best honestly, which may not mean the highest mark. I went to a top twenty private school, but I am so thankful that my kids had the option of-and chose-our state's highly ranked public school. It would have been really hard for me to convince myself of the value of one of those private schools, especially since I question where the current system is truly helping students develop critical thinking skills. Higher education is in for a reckoning on many levels, but, as this professor alludes, the issues start long before kids reach college, and some of the foundational issues need to be addressed at home.
A friend of mine has a sister who is a college professor and whose pet peeve is cheating. (Math/computer science.) Her first quiz is on school ethics to eliminate the 'but I didn't know' excuse. She has a lot of engineering students and if they don't get the basics, she does not want them building buildings. Completely reasonable. But she was still fighting an uphill battle. I told my friend she should start doing oral exams (harder to cheat). Apparently she has implemented that into her curriculum and it gives her not only a better sense of what the students know, but if everyone is not passing a particular topic/question, where she needs to revisit/revise her own work. I would like to see more.
Thank you for this. My children, all college graduates, grew up before AI. I have perhaps a naive question, but if AI is so essential and wonderful, why can't professors feed students' papers into the system and ask if they are genuine or fakes?
The issue goes far beyond papers. AI can do your math/chemistry/economics problem which gets you through the semester without mastery. If you have a take-home exam, AI can do that for you also. Google for the story about the Brown economics professor and the difference in grades between the take-home midterm and the in-person on paper (no computer) final exam.
It is a more masterful explanation of my comments from yesterday. This system is purely transactional and it has been made that way because the stakes in terms of price and future are massive
I would also mention that had the universities not gone insane with their price increases along with obama taking over the loan business, the transactional nature may not be as in your face and glaring today.
Oh, by the way, have you heard that scumbag Platner in Maine is going to headline some Labor Day event? This guy is such a pathetic, despicable diseased stench hole, and he continues to get press.
I don’t know anybody in this country who has even half a brain can put up with anything the Democrat party says, does, and requests/ demands. These people are beyond evil, they hate everything, they hate pregnancy, they hate children, they hate people who are religious, they hate people who support America, they hate white people, they hate anyone who doesn’t suck their pelvis with glee. These people are beyond hope, they need to be driven from this land, and every day every hour every minute they continue to exist among us, they’re gonna F up your lives, and you’re all going to eventually realize that every moment you give them the chance, you deserve to be F’ed.
When my kids were preschool and early elementary age 20+ years ago, we moved into a Blue Ribbon school district that was one of the top ranked schools in our state.
I was shocked to discover that the school did not teach grammar because it was not tested on the state tests. My elementary aged kids were never assigned a complete novel to read - they were assigned short reading passages with ridiculously easy multiple choice questions.
I was appalled at the amount of time that was devoted to practicing for these state tests.
At the end of the school year, we pulled our kids out and homeschooled them until they were old enough to graduate high school and go off to college.
I have been working as a tutor for more than a decade. The vast majority of the kids I tutor are great kids, but it seems like the vast majority have been given a label, either by their parents or the school system. I frequently hear comments like, "my brain gets tired and I can't pay attention", "my brain was never able to memorize math facts", etc. These kids believe that they have no control over their outcomes and are not responsible due to the label they have been given.
The decline in our educational standards is directly reflected in the evolution of the SAT: the SAT has devolved into a joke of a test. Instead of multiple page reading passages followed by multiple questions, there now are short three sentence blurbs followed with one question. Instead of requiring the students to answer the math questions without the use of a calculator, the SAT has now embedded DESMOS, an online graphing calculator, into the test that the students use. Students don't even need to know how to manually solve many of the problems now - they simply type the question into DESMOS and the answer is given to them. I have had more than one student tell me that it "feels like cheating when I use DESMOS".
I don't know how society can dig itself out of this. I fear we are on an educational path where the movie Idiocracy will be viewed as a documentary.
While I agree with many of your statements, I want to urge caution on blanket statements about students with IEP/504s. Some kids (including smart kids) have very legitimate issues that warrant specialized instruction or 504s. The challenge for parents is to not let the challenge become a crutch or an excuse. My kid did have an IEP through fifth grade and a 504 through 12th grade. He is also one of the hardest working kids I know with incredible problem-solving skills. Since the beginning, we were clear that his challenges are not an excuse to coast, his accommodations are not to be abused but rather just to level the playing field. He just told me, when we were discussing his college accommodation plan and what was omitted as compared to high school, that he wanted to use them as little as possible because the real world will not be as accommodating. Please do not let all the testing scandals override the fact that there are kids who should have accommodation or specialized instruction to help them learn to overcome real challenges. My husband is also a public school teacher, and he sees both kids who should have support that may not and kids who have too much support and are able to use a crutch. So, I am not saying that the system is working perfectly, but, rather, there is a reason the system is in place, though I will fully concede that some of the system issues could be solved in a different manner that would help ALL kids and not just those who need support.
I agree that there are legitimate learning differences with some students where interventions and extra services are required. My point is that there now seems to be a label for things that a generation ago were simply personality traits. Back in my day, some kids were shy and parents worked with the child to help them come out of their shells. There doesn’t seem to be any shy kids anymore; instead they are labeled with social anxiety and many are treated with medication. I don’t think parents are doing their children any favors by making kids feel that they have no control over their outcomes due to the labels. (I am not saying every parent does this, but I have seen it many times)
Agree 100% that some of the necessary solutions start at home and our society embracing personal responsibility and autonomy. Our choices have consequences, good and bad, and sometimes the choices we make are the choice of inaction or the belief that we are not capable so we do not try, which, again, is a choice with a consequence. Labels, whatever they might be, are not the end of the story; the effort and character of the person can make all the difference, but character development starts at home, where parents need to empower their kids to make good choices.
Parents with means are able to pay for the private testing that identifies their kids. Many kids in the system without strong parent advocates who can privately identify do not get the support they need. I am one of those parents who had my child privately tested at six because what the school system was telling me did not make any sense. My child has dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD. He learned to read because we bought years of private tutors (what was provided in the public school system was not sufficient) and other therapies. He will always have those challenges, but he has learned to succeed despite them. Every kid like him should have a similar chance at success, and it is shameful that kids with means with similar diagnoses are more likely to get the support they need because they have parents with the means to get the info (private diagnosis) that warrants support. I share our story to the rooftop because I want every child to get what they need to succeed in school. We cannot achieve equality of opportunity if much of our population is illiterate. Much of our population is illiterate because they have unaddressed learning needs and a school system that does not utilize the best techniques to teach reading. Jumping off my soapbox and yes I volunteer in this space.
The big change? Sixty years ago only smart kids went to college. Smart kids would figure out a way to success. Now, anyone and everyone goes to college. Dumb kids are not going to find the way to “ success.”
Lots of smart kids didn't go to college and instead learned a trade. There are so many different kinds of "smarts," and this world desperately needs all of them to be nurtured, honed, and utilized. Just imagine building a house without an architect. But also without an electrician, carpenter, or plumber. All are essential.
Unfortunately, starting with the post WWII era, college was sold as the only path to success.
As a Gen Xer who waited to have children, I am raising my kids (a few years in public, most years in a small private school), alongside older Millennials . I have been surprised at times how different their perception of the teacher/parent relationship is. If a teacher has to call home or mention an undesired behavior of one of my children in passing at a school event, I make a beeline to my child with angry eyebrows and a consequence. Not so with many parents. They think their child isn’t capable of being a twit on occasion. They will complain to the principal and spread their dissatisfaction among the parents if there has been a consequence for their child associated with the undesired behavior. It’s not serving their children, and I wonder where this adversarial tendency toward teachers who have traditional classroom norms stems from.
Families, parents and kids, offloading tensions to those outside the family. Fifty years ago all the self-help stuff introduced ways for people to make relationships better, and it has on many occasions turned into blaming the person who will least upset the system. In the school environment that's the teacher.
An excellent and, I believe, extremely important argument. We are creating/have created a culture where substantive contributions will be (are already becoming) more rare. Real learning, real experience (with its challenges, failures and successes) are what creates growth in the individual, inventions that transform our lives (for better or worse) and a rich culture….all of that will disappear if parents, teachers, officials of all kind…accept that “fake” is fine. Forget new cures for major diseases, forget resisting totalitarianism of all kinds, forget substance. Ai cheat and “influencers” who look great but are totally ignorant are today’s heroes. I’m an old lady. But, I remember my failures more than my successes…not in a negative way…what I learned from them helped me be more successful in all aspects of my life. We’re destroying that route to a meaningful life.
So true. We may have bowed low to materialism in the 50s and 60s, but we are now scraping the ground with our bowing to the everyman celebrity of social media and our acceptance of the undifferentiated success offered by the current educational system.
Money. This is all about making money. When the Govt began writing and backing student loans schools became transactional. Tuition grows faster than inflation by a large number each year. DEI was added to keep the money flowing.
Public equation which includes high school and elementary school has been ruined by the teachers unions. Again, Money.
Wow, this sounds like a societal problem, the devolution of our society. We've lost core moral beliefs from top to bottom in this society. I think there has to be some conversion: to somehow reject the materialistic, relativistic, self-centered 'milieu' we're immersed in. It's got to be a moral conversion to the traditional Judaeo-Christian roots us 'older' people grew up in. Tradition is not something to be thrown out, it's always meant 'what worked' for the people. Forget the crap of Intersectionalism, hierarchicalism, gender fluidity...it leads to madness!
So true. Society has largely turned its back on those Judeo-Christian moral beliefs because they inconvenience us. We think we will be deprived of too much. The irony is that in turning our back, we ruin everything we touch, like the education system, and can barely trace back to the cause.
Terrific response. I note that the 15-year transition from “no child left behind” to exacting testing standards to then basically ignoring those standards (and passing kids anyway) happened as the Federal government took over the student lending function. The moral: unlimited money drives out standards (i.e.; morality).
Ok, so let's consider the warped expansion of 'studies'. Women's studies, transgender studies, climate studies. These are truly worthless degrees that make you ideal as a paid protester. But a contributing member of society? Not so much.
Oh, and the image of Mendoza diving across the goal line is indicative of bought and paid for. IU could never have recruited that team without significant compensation - they have so taken the excitement out of college sports with that.
Being paid for labor as opposed to a scholarship that may or may not carry future rewards. I played d3, no scholarships or compensation of any kind. Would never do it again.
I put my name in front of the coaching staff amongst other highly rated academic d3 schools to elevate my chances. Of note, johns hopkins, Chicago, wash u and even mit participate in d3 athletics. I played at first for genuine enjoyment and teammates.
However, the amount of effort didn’t match the rewards. Especially when the demands of the coaches who are all looking to go to higher levels don't match your enthusiasm. The lumps and bumps add up and you are responsible for the injuries as well, not the school. I would advocate young athletes to leverage getting into the school and dropping out of the sport when it is no longer physically or mentally worth it.
I appreciate the Unreported Truths readers that submit insightful write ups like this and Alex for giving them the attention they deserve. Many of the comments are often enlightening as well.
40 years ago I saw rampant cheating in USC Engineering grad school. I know a Mechanical Engineering PhD who tells me that the foreign students have looked him in the eye & say "If I don't get an A I have to repay the tuition to my government. I will do anything to get an A". Some of these people are running departments now. Foreign students are $$$, so don't rock the boat.
Also professional technical organizations like IEEE. This prank was admitted:
LBJ administration had open experiments to find what worked best. DI had great results especially with minorities. Teacher's unions hated it & it was killed.
Excellent point. The foreign competition for spots and grades has been going on a long time and universities never cared because they received full tuition. They couldn't care less about the Anerican student they rejected or forced to take out loans to compete against demographics that had no qualms about cheating. So why again should any parent look at this other than strictly transactional?
I also would add that the value proposition for non-hard-science degrees has been declining for 30-40 years. Back in the pre-1990 days (e.g. 1850s-1950s) a liberal arts degree meant something, that you could think, accumulate knowledge, and persevere. And there were spots for that kind of talent. When the quality of the education decreased (e.g. how many schools teach all freshman philosophy or logic, let alone the classics or latin) the value decreased as much. The Ivys are resting on their reputations with perhaps some exceptions in the STEM sections (but that is even debatable) and it is catching up with them.
Spot on regarding the liberal arts degree. I graduated in 1974 with a degree in French. The economy was awful, but IBM was hiring. They hired me and a friend who had a degree in Art History. I always said that IBM (then) didn't care what degree you had earned, just that you had proven that you could learn because IBM would teach you about business and computers. I've now spent 50+ years in the IT field with amazing foundational training supplied by IBM.
Exactly. You get out of an education what you put it. Do you want to actually learn something or just get a degree? It is the same in K-12: if you don't care, you can slide by and be done and learn little. Or you can try, learn a lot and do well. Put in a little, get little benefit. Put in a lot, get a lot of benefit. It is much like the difference between a computer engineering degree and a Microsoft certified admin: one is very limited, one means you know a lot more. Plenty of people have always wanted to take the easy way out and slide by, it is just a bit easier now with AI, colleges that don't care if you learn only that "the customer is always right".
I took Latin in the 9th grade; school year 1962-63, Denver Public Schools. My Dad thought it would be helpful “in case” I went to college. (I did, it was.) Other elective courses I took in Jr. High and High School were Ancient Egyptian History, World History, (US History was required, as was World Geography), Journalism (this class produced the monthly student newsletter, and I think it was 9th grade, but maybe 10th—hey, it was a long time ago). Also, the regular (required) classes were much different from the courses my grandchildren have taken over the past 15 years, especially English (aka, Language Arts), and Social “Studies” (aka, Social “Science”). Between 7th and 12th grades, I read Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Merchant of Venice as assigned readings, and Romeo & Juliet, when I got to choose); A Tale of Two Cities, Animal Farm, The Scarlet Letter (with parental permission), Washington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (which we had to memorize), Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”, Fahrenheit 451, etc., etc. Not to mention all the poets: Longfelllow, Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley, Whitman, Poe, Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, Kipling, etc., and a few more contemporary like Sandburg, e.e.cummings, Frost, etc. Looking back, while I’ve always believed I had a good education, I just realized what a rich, substantial, well-rounded education I received from—of all places—a regular public school system. We’ve got to get back to that, not because everyone needs to read Sophocles, but because students need to acquire the mental discipline it takes to read and come to some understanding of such works. Fantastic brain exercises, and learning how to learn is perhaps the most important skill to be gained from primary education.
These "graduates" then enter the workforce and expect the same. My 40-something daughter works for a large financial institution (she has incredible work ethic, BTW). My wife and I cracked up when she unloaded her frustration on us about being assigned an intern from one of the South's most prestigious universities. She delegated some of the simpler tasks, verbally instructed him in these tasks, and followed up with step-by-step written instructions in an email. The intern kept disappearing, and she would find him in the lounge. When he returned to his station, he would then ask questions on how to complete the tasks instead of reviewing the email instructions. Summary of my daughter's rant: "These snowflakes can't pay attention, don't know how to work, and don't care!"
Amazingly, the dude got a position at another financial firm before his internship was completed. My daughter's team supervisor called a meeting of the team to tell them this, and advised, "Don't look obviously excited that he is leaving, and tell him we enjoyed having him around."
His comments were powerful and so on point. What have parents done to their children? The values they instill are corrupt.
It is the game. Since most people don't really care what you learn but that you have a credential that says Ivy or Ivy adjacent than this is what will be the situation going forward.
2nd and 3rd tier private schools will continue to close up shop if they have a sticker price equivalent to Ivy because their credential isnt worth it. I actually look forward to this madness of paying through the nose for degrees from places nobody cares for in this day and age.
Essentially correct. I've long held that Ivy League schools are way overrated academically. The only thing you can learn at an Ivy, that you can't learn elsewhere, is the secret handshake.
Ivy league schools are all about prestige (deserved or not) and networks. I was reading about some kid named Leopold Aschenbrenner yesterday. Apparently he vaporized $30 billion in assets in a couple of weeks in his "Hedge" fund. His only qualification seems to be a degree from Columbia. But in today's World that is enough to get you a pass on having no actual qualifications.
To be fair, the fact that Little Leopold vanished $30 billion, says as much about his investors as it does about him. He wasn't operating in a vacuum. It is ultimately the responsibility of the investor to perform due diligence, of course the investors themselves were probably similarly "educated & qualified".
I watched the shift towards rewarding cheaters in nursing school. The new department head at my “large public university” mandated homework via a new online platform that she had “negotiated” to bring to the program. The sheer volume of work was numbing and I kept finding wrongly scored answers. I was getting low grades on my assignments because of this and brought the specifics to her. She dismissed my concerns, without denying that my correct answers were being scored wrong. Additionally, she was uninterested in my point that the students who were consistently getting perfect scores were likely cheating. My reward for academic integrity: a “B” in her class and a shitty clinical assignment. When I walked the stage at graduation and had to shake her hand, I looked her in the eye and whispered: “You lack integrity.” So, the cheater was valedictorian and the department head probably got a nice vacation somewhere. Rot is definitely the right word.
Thank you for trying. My nursing school experience was a certificate program. I was the only one to pass the math test on the first try. I observed fellow students consulting their cell phones during the retesting while the instructor sat, glued to her computer at the front of the room. I reported this to the school president. The next class we were all chewed out about someone violating the chain of command. Respecting the chain of command is Vital in nursing!!! But her behavior during testing and the cheating were never addressed. As a class we kept retaking that test until Everyone passed.
Wow. Those are nurses who are now calculating deadly IV med rates. There is a reason that this nursing math test has historically been “make or break”, requiring a perfect score to continue to graduation. An error can mean death for a patient.
God bless YOU
I just dropped my second child off for their freshman year. My consistent refrain for both kids is master what you are learning before you use any AI tool. If you use AI, you are cheating yourself of understanding and mastery. I believe, for the most part, my kids have adhered to this, but oh is it sometimes frustrating when they are now competing against kids who have faked their mastery. I consistently have told my kids that I have learned more when I had to struggle. So I hope that both my kids have a successful year where they are challenged by their classes and where they master the material. My goal is for them to do their best honestly, which may not mean the highest mark. I went to a top twenty private school, but I am so thankful that my kids had the option of-and chose-our state's highly ranked public school. It would have been really hard for me to convince myself of the value of one of those private schools, especially since I question where the current system is truly helping students develop critical thinking skills. Higher education is in for a reckoning on many levels, but, as this professor alludes, the issues start long before kids reach college, and some of the foundational issues need to be addressed at home.
A friend of mine has a sister who is a college professor and whose pet peeve is cheating. (Math/computer science.) Her first quiz is on school ethics to eliminate the 'but I didn't know' excuse. She has a lot of engineering students and if they don't get the basics, she does not want them building buildings. Completely reasonable. But she was still fighting an uphill battle. I told my friend she should start doing oral exams (harder to cheat). Apparently she has implemented that into her curriculum and it gives her not only a better sense of what the students know, but if everyone is not passing a particular topic/question, where she needs to revisit/revise her own work. I would like to see more.
Thank you for this. My children, all college graduates, grew up before AI. I have perhaps a naive question, but if AI is so essential and wonderful, why can't professors feed students' papers into the system and ask if they are genuine or fakes?
They can identify the AI papers....and are doing it. But if their Admin won't support the failing of the cheaters....
The issue goes far beyond papers. AI can do your math/chemistry/economics problem which gets you through the semester without mastery. If you have a take-home exam, AI can do that for you also. Google for the story about the Brown economics professor and the difference in grades between the take-home midterm and the in-person on paper (no computer) final exam.
It is a more masterful explanation of my comments from yesterday. This system is purely transactional and it has been made that way because the stakes in terms of price and future are massive
I would also mention that had the universities not gone insane with their price increases along with obama taking over the loan business, the transactional nature may not be as in your face and glaring today.
It is time for attentive, caring, accountable parents for college aged kids to realize that higher education is really lower results training.
Again, it’s simple math, don’t support the system and then watch it crash and burn.
Do you folks understand the concept of marginalize and ostracize by now?…
Oh, by the way, have you heard that scumbag Platner in Maine is going to headline some Labor Day event? This guy is such a pathetic, despicable diseased stench hole, and he continues to get press.
I don’t know anybody in this country who has even half a brain can put up with anything the Democrat party says, does, and requests/ demands. These people are beyond evil, they hate everything, they hate pregnancy, they hate children, they hate people who are religious, they hate people who support America, they hate white people, they hate anyone who doesn’t suck their pelvis with glee. These people are beyond hope, they need to be driven from this land, and every day every hour every minute they continue to exist among us, they’re gonna F up your lives, and you’re all going to eventually realize that every moment you give them the chance, you deserve to be F’ed.
My time should be ending here soon…
All 'we' have to do, is to ask a simple question. "Dems, what's your platform... what's your plan".
We're finding out, they don't have a platform that resembles anything about a better future. The losers will keep on losing.
Predates the 0. In the 80s schools figured out if they raised tuition and fees students just borrowed more. Not the school's problem.
When my kids were preschool and early elementary age 20+ years ago, we moved into a Blue Ribbon school district that was one of the top ranked schools in our state.
I was shocked to discover that the school did not teach grammar because it was not tested on the state tests. My elementary aged kids were never assigned a complete novel to read - they were assigned short reading passages with ridiculously easy multiple choice questions.
I was appalled at the amount of time that was devoted to practicing for these state tests.
At the end of the school year, we pulled our kids out and homeschooled them until they were old enough to graduate high school and go off to college.
I have been working as a tutor for more than a decade. The vast majority of the kids I tutor are great kids, but it seems like the vast majority have been given a label, either by their parents or the school system. I frequently hear comments like, "my brain gets tired and I can't pay attention", "my brain was never able to memorize math facts", etc. These kids believe that they have no control over their outcomes and are not responsible due to the label they have been given.
The decline in our educational standards is directly reflected in the evolution of the SAT: the SAT has devolved into a joke of a test. Instead of multiple page reading passages followed by multiple questions, there now are short three sentence blurbs followed with one question. Instead of requiring the students to answer the math questions without the use of a calculator, the SAT has now embedded DESMOS, an online graphing calculator, into the test that the students use. Students don't even need to know how to manually solve many of the problems now - they simply type the question into DESMOS and the answer is given to them. I have had more than one student tell me that it "feels like cheating when I use DESMOS".
I don't know how society can dig itself out of this. I fear we are on an educational path where the movie Idiocracy will be viewed as a documentary.
While I agree with many of your statements, I want to urge caution on blanket statements about students with IEP/504s. Some kids (including smart kids) have very legitimate issues that warrant specialized instruction or 504s. The challenge for parents is to not let the challenge become a crutch or an excuse. My kid did have an IEP through fifth grade and a 504 through 12th grade. He is also one of the hardest working kids I know with incredible problem-solving skills. Since the beginning, we were clear that his challenges are not an excuse to coast, his accommodations are not to be abused but rather just to level the playing field. He just told me, when we were discussing his college accommodation plan and what was omitted as compared to high school, that he wanted to use them as little as possible because the real world will not be as accommodating. Please do not let all the testing scandals override the fact that there are kids who should have accommodation or specialized instruction to help them learn to overcome real challenges. My husband is also a public school teacher, and he sees both kids who should have support that may not and kids who have too much support and are able to use a crutch. So, I am not saying that the system is working perfectly, but, rather, there is a reason the system is in place, though I will fully concede that some of the system issues could be solved in a different manner that would help ALL kids and not just those who need support.
I agree that there are legitimate learning differences with some students where interventions and extra services are required. My point is that there now seems to be a label for things that a generation ago were simply personality traits. Back in my day, some kids were shy and parents worked with the child to help them come out of their shells. There doesn’t seem to be any shy kids anymore; instead they are labeled with social anxiety and many are treated with medication. I don’t think parents are doing their children any favors by making kids feel that they have no control over their outcomes due to the labels. (I am not saying every parent does this, but I have seen it many times)
Agree 100% that some of the necessary solutions start at home and our society embracing personal responsibility and autonomy. Our choices have consequences, good and bad, and sometimes the choices we make are the choice of inaction or the belief that we are not capable so we do not try, which, again, is a choice with a consequence. Labels, whatever they might be, are not the end of the story; the effort and character of the person can make all the difference, but character development starts at home, where parents need to empower their kids to make good choices.
Yes! Both my children had plans for different reasons but they were expected to work. Both needed the support.
How would you explain wealthier zip code areas having higher rates of students with exceptional educational needs?
Parents with means are able to pay for the private testing that identifies their kids. Many kids in the system without strong parent advocates who can privately identify do not get the support they need. I am one of those parents who had my child privately tested at six because what the school system was telling me did not make any sense. My child has dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD. He learned to read because we bought years of private tutors (what was provided in the public school system was not sufficient) and other therapies. He will always have those challenges, but he has learned to succeed despite them. Every kid like him should have a similar chance at success, and it is shameful that kids with means with similar diagnoses are more likely to get the support they need because they have parents with the means to get the info (private diagnosis) that warrants support. I share our story to the rooftop because I want every child to get what they need to succeed in school. We cannot achieve equality of opportunity if much of our population is illiterate. Much of our population is illiterate because they have unaddressed learning needs and a school system that does not utilize the best techniques to teach reading. Jumping off my soapbox and yes I volunteer in this space.
The big change? Sixty years ago only smart kids went to college. Smart kids would figure out a way to success. Now, anyone and everyone goes to college. Dumb kids are not going to find the way to “ success.”
Sad but true.
Lots of smart kids didn't go to college and instead learned a trade. There are so many different kinds of "smarts," and this world desperately needs all of them to be nurtured, honed, and utilized. Just imagine building a house without an architect. But also without an electrician, carpenter, or plumber. All are essential.
Unfortunately, starting with the post WWII era, college was sold as the only path to success.
As a Gen Xer who waited to have children, I am raising my kids (a few years in public, most years in a small private school), alongside older Millennials . I have been surprised at times how different their perception of the teacher/parent relationship is. If a teacher has to call home or mention an undesired behavior of one of my children in passing at a school event, I make a beeline to my child with angry eyebrows and a consequence. Not so with many parents. They think their child isn’t capable of being a twit on occasion. They will complain to the principal and spread their dissatisfaction among the parents if there has been a consequence for their child associated with the undesired behavior. It’s not serving their children, and I wonder where this adversarial tendency toward teachers who have traditional classroom norms stems from.
Families, parents and kids, offloading tensions to those outside the family. Fifty years ago all the self-help stuff introduced ways for people to make relationships better, and it has on many occasions turned into blaming the person who will least upset the system. In the school environment that's the teacher.
An excellent and, I believe, extremely important argument. We are creating/have created a culture where substantive contributions will be (are already becoming) more rare. Real learning, real experience (with its challenges, failures and successes) are what creates growth in the individual, inventions that transform our lives (for better or worse) and a rich culture….all of that will disappear if parents, teachers, officials of all kind…accept that “fake” is fine. Forget new cures for major diseases, forget resisting totalitarianism of all kinds, forget substance. Ai cheat and “influencers” who look great but are totally ignorant are today’s heroes. I’m an old lady. But, I remember my failures more than my successes…not in a negative way…what I learned from them helped me be more successful in all aspects of my life. We’re destroying that route to a meaningful life.
So true. We may have bowed low to materialism in the 50s and 60s, but we are now scraping the ground with our bowing to the everyman celebrity of social media and our acceptance of the undifferentiated success offered by the current educational system.
Money. This is all about making money. When the Govt began writing and backing student loans schools became transactional. Tuition grows faster than inflation by a large number each year. DEI was added to keep the money flowing.
Public equation which includes high school and elementary school has been ruined by the teachers unions. Again, Money.
Wow, this sounds like a societal problem, the devolution of our society. We've lost core moral beliefs from top to bottom in this society. I think there has to be some conversion: to somehow reject the materialistic, relativistic, self-centered 'milieu' we're immersed in. It's got to be a moral conversion to the traditional Judaeo-Christian roots us 'older' people grew up in. Tradition is not something to be thrown out, it's always meant 'what worked' for the people. Forget the crap of Intersectionalism, hierarchicalism, gender fluidity...it leads to madness!
So true. Society has largely turned its back on those Judeo-Christian moral beliefs because they inconvenience us. We think we will be deprived of too much. The irony is that in turning our back, we ruin everything we touch, like the education system, and can barely trace back to the cause.
Terrific response. I note that the 15-year transition from “no child left behind” to exacting testing standards to then basically ignoring those standards (and passing kids anyway) happened as the Federal government took over the student lending function. The moral: unlimited money drives out standards (i.e.; morality).
Ok, so let's consider the warped expansion of 'studies'. Women's studies, transgender studies, climate studies. These are truly worthless degrees that make you ideal as a paid protester. But a contributing member of society? Not so much.
Oh, and the image of Mendoza diving across the goal line is indicative of bought and paid for. IU could never have recruited that team without significant compensation - they have so taken the excitement out of college sports with that.
Being paid for labor as opposed to a scholarship that may or may not carry future rewards. I played d3, no scholarships or compensation of any kind. Would never do it again.
Then why did you do it if it weren’t for the love of the game?
I put my name in front of the coaching staff amongst other highly rated academic d3 schools to elevate my chances. Of note, johns hopkins, Chicago, wash u and even mit participate in d3 athletics. I played at first for genuine enjoyment and teammates.
However, the amount of effort didn’t match the rewards. Especially when the demands of the coaches who are all looking to go to higher levels don't match your enthusiasm. The lumps and bumps add up and you are responsible for the injuries as well, not the school. I would advocate young athletes to leverage getting into the school and dropping out of the sport when it is no longer physically or mentally worth it.
I appreciate the Unreported Truths readers that submit insightful write ups like this and Alex for giving them the attention they deserve. Many of the comments are often enlightening as well.
40 years ago I saw rampant cheating in USC Engineering grad school. I know a Mechanical Engineering PhD who tells me that the foreign students have looked him in the eye & say "If I don't get an A I have to repay the tuition to my government. I will do anything to get an A". Some of these people are running departments now. Foreign students are $$$, so don't rock the boat.
Also professional technical organizations like IEEE. This prank was admitted:
https://retractionwatch.com/2014/02/24/springer-ieee-withdrawing-more-than-120-nonsense-papers/
How much of the "peer-reviewed" technical academic literature is bunk?
& lower education...
Primary & secondary schools were designed to make factory robots & cannon fodder by the Prussians 200 years ago.
https://yardsaleofthemind.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/schooling-and-covid-recap/
in the 60's they tried to correct this with Direct Instruction
https://x.com/C_Hendrick/status/1745454906063061468
LBJ administration had open experiments to find what worked best. DI had great results especially with minorities. Teacher's unions hated it & it was killed.
Excellent point. The foreign competition for spots and grades has been going on a long time and universities never cared because they received full tuition. They couldn't care less about the Anerican student they rejected or forced to take out loans to compete against demographics that had no qualms about cheating. So why again should any parent look at this other than strictly transactional?
I also would add that the value proposition for non-hard-science degrees has been declining for 30-40 years. Back in the pre-1990 days (e.g. 1850s-1950s) a liberal arts degree meant something, that you could think, accumulate knowledge, and persevere. And there were spots for that kind of talent. When the quality of the education decreased (e.g. how many schools teach all freshman philosophy or logic, let alone the classics or latin) the value decreased as much. The Ivys are resting on their reputations with perhaps some exceptions in the STEM sections (but that is even debatable) and it is catching up with them.
Spot on regarding the liberal arts degree. I graduated in 1974 with a degree in French. The economy was awful, but IBM was hiring. They hired me and a friend who had a degree in Art History. I always said that IBM (then) didn't care what degree you had earned, just that you had proven that you could learn because IBM would teach you about business and computers. I've now spent 50+ years in the IT field with amazing foundational training supplied by IBM.
Exactly. You get out of an education what you put it. Do you want to actually learn something or just get a degree? It is the same in K-12: if you don't care, you can slide by and be done and learn little. Or you can try, learn a lot and do well. Put in a little, get little benefit. Put in a lot, get a lot of benefit. It is much like the difference between a computer engineering degree and a Microsoft certified admin: one is very limited, one means you know a lot more. Plenty of people have always wanted to take the easy way out and slide by, it is just a bit easier now with AI, colleges that don't care if you learn only that "the customer is always right".
I took Latin in the 9th grade; school year 1962-63, Denver Public Schools. My Dad thought it would be helpful “in case” I went to college. (I did, it was.) Other elective courses I took in Jr. High and High School were Ancient Egyptian History, World History, (US History was required, as was World Geography), Journalism (this class produced the monthly student newsletter, and I think it was 9th grade, but maybe 10th—hey, it was a long time ago). Also, the regular (required) classes were much different from the courses my grandchildren have taken over the past 15 years, especially English (aka, Language Arts), and Social “Studies” (aka, Social “Science”). Between 7th and 12th grades, I read Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Merchant of Venice as assigned readings, and Romeo & Juliet, when I got to choose); A Tale of Two Cities, Animal Farm, The Scarlet Letter (with parental permission), Washington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (which we had to memorize), Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”, Fahrenheit 451, etc., etc. Not to mention all the poets: Longfelllow, Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley, Whitman, Poe, Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, Kipling, etc., and a few more contemporary like Sandburg, e.e.cummings, Frost, etc. Looking back, while I’ve always believed I had a good education, I just realized what a rich, substantial, well-rounded education I received from—of all places—a regular public school system. We’ve got to get back to that, not because everyone needs to read Sophocles, but because students need to acquire the mental discipline it takes to read and come to some understanding of such works. Fantastic brain exercises, and learning how to learn is perhaps the most important skill to be gained from primary education.
These "graduates" then enter the workforce and expect the same. My 40-something daughter works for a large financial institution (she has incredible work ethic, BTW). My wife and I cracked up when she unloaded her frustration on us about being assigned an intern from one of the South's most prestigious universities. She delegated some of the simpler tasks, verbally instructed him in these tasks, and followed up with step-by-step written instructions in an email. The intern kept disappearing, and she would find him in the lounge. When he returned to his station, he would then ask questions on how to complete the tasks instead of reviewing the email instructions. Summary of my daughter's rant: "These snowflakes can't pay attention, don't know how to work, and don't care!"
Amazingly, the dude got a position at another financial firm before his internship was completed. My daughter's team supervisor called a meeting of the team to tell them this, and advised, "Don't look obviously excited that he is leaving, and tell him we enjoyed having him around."