Comment by mgraczyk
18 days ago
> I teach at a regional public university
I think this is the main explanation. The median college student has a lower IQ now compared to 10 years ago because more people are going to college, and the marginal new student is below the college educated median.
That's it, everything else is downstream. The top 100k university students are as studious and capable as ever before.
> The top 100k university students
Can you tell me which universities these students go to, or other attributes about them?
Around 2 million people take the SAT every year.
A score of 710 on the reading portion gets you into the top 5%.
So there are ~100k students who scored 710 or higher on the reading portion of the SAT.
Those students are the ones I'm talking about. I claim that anyone who can score a 710 on the reading portion is above the level of capability that the author of this post is complaining about.
Some evidence for this claim, a score of 710 would put a student in the top 10% of a "regional public university", but the same student would be in the bottom 10% of Harvard or MIT students (probably would not get in with a 710). In other words, the author of this article is complaining about a capability level which is the overwhelming majority of his school, but ~0% of the students at the best schools.