From ACT to NPC and You Get AOC

Q. In a country where every year the percentage of high school graduates deemed “college ready” declines do we continue to promote the concept that everyone should go to college?

Bad news reported in the WSJ: ACT Scores Show Drop in College Readiness, Especially in Math. As usual, math and science hit hardest.

A greater percentage of U.S. high-school graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam aren’t ready for college-level coursework, with math readiness at a 14-year low.

Reading that awkward sentence makes me think English scores might not be so far behind. Oh wait!

“Readiness in English has also been trending down over the past several years, dropping from 64% in 2015 to 60% this year, the lowest level since the benchmarks were introduced,” according to the report…Science remains the subject area in which students are least likely to be prepared for college coursework.”

Some people are blaming Common Core for the decline, if you can believe it:

“I think testimony we took during our attempts to eradicate Common Core showed the dumbing down of curriculum, the social justice indoctrination, the emphasis on social-emotional learning, reduced quantity and quality of reading, emphasizing screen time rather than classroom instruction,” Thompson said. He explained that the “destruction of proper math” has also been a contributing factor. Common Core proponents, he said, “place a higher priority on indoctrination than education.” - Ohio state Representative Andy Thompson, via PJMedia

Can the news about the children’s education get any worse? Well yes it can, there’s also a racial component to the report, although you won’t read about it anywhere in the MSM: ACT College Admissions Test Scores by Race: Asians Pulling Away. And even worser: “Hispanic and black students continue to lag behind their white and Asian counterparts.”

Average ACT scores:
Overall:  22.1
White:    23.4
Asian:     25.0
Black:     17.9
Hispanic: 19.8

No wonder Harvard had to limit the number of Asians they admitted.

But back to my original question: in a country with such a low level of high school graduates ready to handle college level work (such as it is) why do we continue to encourage everyone to go, often incurring oppressive debt in order to do so?

We might want to consider the possibility that it’s because “university” is just another big business where they respond to their market in order to stay in business. Eventually entrance requirements at all but the top tier universities will boil down to money and a pulse, and they’ll waive the latter if you can come up with the former. Learn to answer all the questions “correctly” and you too can go to college!

With scams like that you will get even more AOCs.

h/t Dissenter