I have many opinions. Firstly, I think current admittedly white US college students are likely the lowest performing student demographic in the world, so this

I have many opinions. Firstly, I think current admittedly white US college students are likely the lowest performing student demographic in the world, so this is the low bar. Saying the authors are lamenting the drop is standards seems accurate to me. Something I found interesting is the suggestion that these students, as bad as they seem, were still improved over when they were admitted to the school. Something the school was measuring as though they were preparing to defend their department budgets. I would argue that having universities run as businesses drives the standards down with self serving statistics like these, meant to muddy the waters IRT the student's actual abilities. Another point that bothered me was the bit about the students teaching themselves how to read. Context clues, metaphor and simile were all things covered multiple times in my grammar school and middle school classes. Are we missing this coursework in lower schools today? If so, and the professors are finding this, the college coursework needs to adapt. It feels like the professors feel as entitled to keep doing what they always did as the students feel entitled to their diplomas.