Professor Reeves gives some figures. "In Michigan, Colorado, Texas and New York, academic tests have been altered or thrown out because of low scores." But some data cannot be hidden. "A third of the freshmen at the relatively select University of Wisconsin-Madison do not return for a second year. I toiled for decades on a Wisconsin campus on which a mere 18 percent of the entering freshmen ever graduate." That's one problem, those who undertake to go to college but drop out.
The statistical rewards for staying in college and completing the work are widely advertised. College graduates earn 50 percent more money, on average. But the National Association of Scholars worries, too, about those who do stay the four years and graduate. What have they learned?
The suspicion grows that the emphasis should be on reforming the work done in secondary education. High-school dropout rates have been sharply reduced, from 27 percent in 1960 to 11 percent today. But SAT scores move in the opposite direction, and professors addressing matriculated freshmen are often dismayed not only by the lack of preparation, but also by the lack of genuine interest. "The most well-intentioned professor cannot educate those who refuse to be educated. All too often, such students demand that they be passed through the system and awarded a diploma, as they were in high school."
Someone wrote that education is "for those who will not do without it." That's a little high-brow callous; sure, you can teach yourself Chinese, but it helps to learn it from somebody. On the other hand, professor Reeves desponds, you don't get very much learning in classes that teach women's studies and current affairs to listless students whose interest is not in learning, but in receiving a diploma.
America is a can-do society. We educate tens of millions and fight successful wars and create poets and musicians. But one reason we prevail against bad winds is that we isolate our shortcomings and criticize them, and end up coping simultaneously with college standards in Wisconsin and terrorists in Iraq. This aptitude for finding a way to do it is the American thing that most annoys our European friends.