Students are doing worse than you think
Some at college or university are testing no better than 10-year-olds.
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Professors have been griping about students for as long as there have been ivory towers.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The Economist
In recent weeks, more than 1,800 maths and science lecturers at the University of California, one of America’s largest and best public university systems, have signed an open letter detailing a tricky problem. First-year undergraduates, they say, are increasingly arriving without the basic skills they need to succeed.
At the campus in Berkeley, they write, some 20 per cent to 30 per cent of students taking an early calculus course turn up displaying “severe preparation deficits”. The challenge has become so great, they add, that instructors are having to reteach middle-school mathematics.
