> 5. Did the government make everyone smarter or lower standards you ask? I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I think that moving from 3.4% to 50% University population has possibly diluted the fraction of geniuses within academia but greatly increased the number of geniuses within academia and improved education and academia as a whole.
(in all honesty, this is not about the UK)
No you can't. I mean how can you actually believe this ?
So why does 50% of the population now pass ? That's impossible if the standards were the same and therefore that cannot be what is happening ...
Anecdotally, there are also many articles and other sources of information that point out that lowering the bar is indeed what is happening.
As for my anecdote, being able to theoretically derive statistics from number theory was a required ability for any math degree, any CS degree, and even more than a few engineering degrees. Now you're lucky if a student mumbles out "just use anova" because that means they at least attended the work sessions. Knowing what the preconditions are is essentially unheard of, understanding why those are required preconditions (and therefore where & why you can "cheat") ... I have not seen a single student that was able to do that in a decade.
Now you can discuss whether this is required by the marketplace or not. But I was part of the decision to remove it and ... that was not the reason. "Everybody fails" (which meant slightly over 70%) was the reason. Needless to say, nothing was put in it's place, and no hard subject was ever introduced into the curriculum.
And that's not even the worst of it. Almost any degree now has an easier version associated with it. Frankly, that's how initially the university defended itself. Statistical calculator, roughly translated to English. But there's backlash. You see, employers realized that these people can't do statistics, they can only work SAS. Guess what the pressure is demanding ... Is this pressure that we now demand that these people now get a full math degree, and learn theoretical mathematics ?
Or is the pressure on for hiding the difference between people with the (very hard) theoretical understanding and the ones with just a few practical skills ?
What do you think ?
But I'm sure that you're right and in fact just a slight change in government policy was all that was required to make the entire population smarter, more precise and more able in theoretical maths. How lucky are we that we have a government that cares to make such a tiny change with such miraculous results !
Were you born in 1984 ?