Lecturers Baffled as Many Students Show Abilities Equivalent to 10-Year-Olds

More than 1,800 lecturers in the University of California system have revealed that a growing number of new students lack adequate basic mathematics and science skills to follow lectures. As a result, lecturers are forced to re-teach lower secondary school-level mathematics before they can begin the university course material. They say an increasing number of first-year students are entering without sufficient foundational knowledge for their studies. The concern prompted more than 1,800 mathematics and science lecturers at the University of California to sign an open letter. They warn that students’ basic abilities are weakening to the point that material which should have been completed at school now has to be repeated in the lecture hall. At the Berkeley campus, about 20% to 30% of students taking introductory calculus arrive with severe preparation deficits. Lecturers say they are compelled to re-teach lower secondary school mathematics before they can start the university syllabus. A report from the University of California San Diego shows an equally alarming situation. In five years, the number of new students with mathematics skills below the senior high school level has increased almost 30-fold, reaching nearly one in eight students. Around 70% of that group did not even demonstrate the mathematics skills expected of a 14-year-old. The problem is not confined to numeracy. At Harvard University, several humanities and social sciences lecturers admit they have started shortening reading lists. An internal faculty report notes that more and more students struggle to finish long texts, maintain focus, and understand complex writing. The OECD attempted to measure this through its Survey of Adult Skills, involving around 160,000 respondents from dozens of countries. To examine the condition of students, the organisation isolated participants under 35 who were still in higher education at the time of testing. The results were striking. In developed countries, about 8% of university students had literacy skills equivalent to the level expected of a 10-year-old child. The proportion for numeracy was roughly the same. Even more worrying, compared to a decade earlier, the proportion of students with the lowest level of literacy skills has more than doubled. More and more students are succeeding in entering higher education, but not all of them arrive with the same academic readiness. The differences between countries are wide. In Estonia, fewer than 2% of university students are at the lowest literacy level. In Poland, the figure reaches about 20% for literacy, while in Chile, almost a quarter of students are at the lowest numeracy level. The United Kingdom, by contrast, recorded above-average results and showed improvement compared to a decade ago. The United States is among the countries with the sharpest decline. About one in seven students has literacy skills that do not exceed primary school level, up from about one in 20 a decade ago. For numeracy, the proportion is close to one in five students. The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the most frequently cited factors. The OECD notes that schools in various countries were closed for an average of about 20 weeks, not including rotational learning systems and disruptions caused by quarantine. However, the decline was already visible long before the pandemic. In the United States, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores began to fall after peaking in the early 2010s. A similar pattern was seen in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results in several countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Other explanations have also emerged, including increased migration, curriculum changes that place more emphasis on soft skills, reduced reading habits, and increased screen time. In the United States, for instance, the proportion of nine-year-olds who read for pleasure has fallen from nearly 60% in the 1990s to around 37% today. According to Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education, the decline in literacy is also visible in older age groups because fewer people are accustomed to reading long and complex texts. Many observers believe universities have also changed the way they select students. Before the pandemic, more than half of US universities required applicants to take the SAT or ACT. Now, the figure is estimated to be only around 10%. As a result, universities are increasingly relying on other indicators that are much harder to measure. Application essays are now far easier to produce with the help of AI, while school grades are also seen as increasingly inflated. Mina Aganagic, a mathematics professor at UC Berkeley and one of the signatories of the open letter, said the selection process has become increasingly difficult to read. “Admissions is becoming a black box,” she said. According to her, it is becoming harder to ascertain whether application documents truly reflect the academic ability of prospective students. The changes do not stop after students are accepted. At Yale University, around 79% of grades in the 2022-2023 academic year were A or A-, up from 67% in 2010-2011. In the United Kingdom, the proportion of bachelor’s degree graduates achieving a First Class honours rose from around 7%.