<p>Some CC posters, including some with direct college classroom experience, have recently made very insightful and influential (to me at least) comments about the (low) level of academic "skills" that students bring to college today. I have thought about this a lot recently and discussed it with students, parents and employers. Their responses varied and, unsurprising to me, their comments were inverse to their age, ie, the youngest were the most complimentary of today's students. </p>
<p>My personal view on this is evolving and I wonder what other CCers think. What do you think of the academic preparedness of today's high school students? What do you think of students? (high school and college) abilities to think critically and/or to apply academic lessons learned to new situations or unrelated topics? Should these "skills" be an important factor in the college admissions process? How? What responsibility (if any) do college faculty have in creating and/or developing these skills? Is their contribution measurable? How important are these skills in post-graduate work and life? Lots of questions and not all related to admissions, but I hope you will share your thoughts on as many of these topics as possible.</p>
<p>I think we're fine. Old people always think that the younger generation is going to bring an end to apple pie and the american way. Our generation is just as capable as previous generations, and college faculty only develop us further.</p>
<p>Most of the articles I've read lamenting the low level of academic skills that students bring to college have to do with the need for many college students to take remedial math and writing classes when they start their college career. I don't think that most CCers have that problem. More generally, I think that the best prepared high school students today are even better prepared than similar students were 20 years ago, having taken far more advanced courses than we did. That is a relatively small percentage of kids starting college. When you talk about college students in general (the millions starting college every year), it is widely reported that many of them don't have the math and writing skills needed to suceed in college, and probably in post graduate life.</p>
<p>This doesn't address "critical thinking" and "problem solving" skills. Those are important, but I'm not as sure how to measure them.</p>
<p>"Old people always think that the younger generation is going to bring an end to apple pie and the american way. Our generation is just as capable as previous generations, and college faculty only develop us further."</p>
<p>True statement. Think of how many advances have been made in science and technology- at times, we're learning things in high school, or even younger, that didn't even exist when our parents were our age.</p>
<p>But I have some classmates, some of whom are going off to very good schools next year, who still aren't getting the difference between your and you're- that's just wrong. </p>
<p>I feel that it's more the responsibilities of the public high schools to step it up, not the colleges. We're capable of learning much more at a younger age- foreign students come to my school and take senior classes as sophomores because their countries educational systems were so much more advanced. </p>
<p>My (public) high school has an English teacher who is not qualified to teach, so has held the "long term sub" title for four years. It's a loophole that keeps her in the classroom teaching that "thru" is the correct spelling of the word. We could, and should be better prepared for college than that.</p>
<p>So yeah, we are fine. Especially the people here on CC, who are often looking to go to the ivies etc. But my mother's an English professor at a state college here in MA, and sometimes we read her freshmen papers and laugh at how bad they are. Writing a paper is a basic skill and that kind of thing should be taught at every level until a student gets it- no one should graduate from high school, let alone college, confusing you're and your (or god forbid through and thru)- but many in reality do.</p>
<p>I think it completely depends on where you go to school and what your individual teachers expect of you. At some school a a paper that should deserve a C, becomes an A simply because all of the other papers are worse.</p>
<p>If no one ever challenges you or teaches you basic grammar, then you're going to show up at college ill-prepared.</p>
<p>When a college finds that it's freshmen are not 'up to snuff', that's when faculty start clamoring for higher admissions requirements.</p>
<p>There are two categories of students, IMO. One category is probably the most highly qualified generation, ever. These kids are taking classes with difficulty levels far beyond what kids of earlier US generations took. They come to college having writting tens, if not scores, of research papers, and having taken college-level calculus or higher before matriculating. They read. They read a lot. When they come to the classroom, they ask insightful questions in context of books/articles read outside the classroom. When you introduce data, they leap ahead to the implications, and pose enormously useful hypotheses based on what they were just told, or based on the work they have done outside the classroom.</p>
<p>This category is relatively elite. In our undergrad classrooms, where the average student has, probably, around an 1120 - 1180 SAT or so, this represents 1 out of approx. 25 students. Some classrooms have none of these kids. Some have two or even three (honors classes, of course, have a few more, but they are probably still the minority).</p>
<p>The second catgory is woefully unprepared. As a rule, they do not read anything they don't have to read, and it's rather doubtful that they absorb much of the material they DO have to read. Their writing is primitive. It's not just syntax and grammar (though those can be awful). It's the ability to string thoughts together into a coherent whole. Most in this category haven't even the basics of logical thought construction. Reading their work is like reading a fever dream.</p>