18 out of 230 bought bought a book, widely accessible and read by most in the early hs, from the over priced campus book store. FTFY. That's not statistics, tha

18 out of 230 bought bought a book, widely accessible and read by most in the early hs, from the over priced campus book store. FTFY. That's not statistics, that's just a single (unenlightening) data point. A personal anecdote about the fact the OP now feels his standards have dropped (providing no numbers for this nor writing samples so we the readership can appraise the truth of this claim) is also ~not~ statistics. As for rising test scores, unfortuantely for you and your "twaddle" most colleges maintain a factbook detailing past admissions data. Lets look at a couple of state schools from the worst part of the US shall we: Clemson University: [1] Engineering school 2014: ACT = 29 SAT_M = 674 SAT_V = 622 2004: ACT = 27 SAT_M = 655 SAT_V = 596 LiberalArts School 2014: ACT = 27 SAT_M = 610 SAT_V = 604 2004: ACT - 27 SAT_M = 606 SAT_V = 595 Auburn University:[2] Entire university 2014: ACT = 27 SAT_M = 591 SAT_V = 577 2006: ACT = 24.3 SAT_M = 575 SAT_V = 554 Francis Marion University[3] Entire Universtiy 2011: ACT = NaN SAT_M = 481 SAT_V 472 2004: ACT = NaN SAT_M 476 SAT_V 472 It appears you have to go down to at least the 76th ranked southern university[4] before the gains in test scores begin to look more like noise and even at that level there's a non 0 increase in performance. We're clearly not talking Standford here. Finally, the internet represents a tool because it allows for more mental bandwidth to be used on analysis over memory. No longer must you remember the exact quote to make an allusion, just the fact that it exists. This is then indexed to other supporting works a student can draw upon to further support their argument. Machines are excellent at recalling and storing information, however struggle with analysis (especially in the context of humanities). Students are more free than ever to peruse these lines of thinking, to demonstrate meaningful mastery you might say, now that names, dates, formatting, indexing, etc have been outsourced to the machine. Just for an example, when a blind blow hard comes and makes assertions comfortable his eloquence will make up for the lack of facts, the internet allows for the rapid synthesis of numbers to render the argument hilariously invalid. [1]http://www.clemson.edu/oirweb1/FB/factbook/minifactbook.cgi http://www.clemson.edu/oirweb1/FB/factbook/minifactbook.cgi [2]https://oira.auburn.edu/ https://oira.auburn.edu/ [3]http://www.fmarion.edu/about/factbook/article12711c7605652.htm http://www.fmarion.edu/about/factbook/article12711c7605652.h... [4]http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/francis-marion-university-218061/overall-rankings http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/... EDIT: number formatting