American Education

 In the 1960s and for the next 20-25 years, American Education was the best in the world.  When I say American Education, I am speaking K-12 as well as undergraduate and graduate school.  It was rigorous, robust, and came with lots of homework.  Sometime between 1985 and 1995, grades K-12 started to suffer as recent college graduates wanted to bring into the classroom, new learning techniques.  There was new math and new ways of learning English.  Teachers started to rely on teaching aid rather than honing their own teaching skills.  Consequently, students got bored.

There was an increased emphasis on going to college and making high grades so you would be accepted.  Students started memorizing for the tests without retaining knowedge or remembering what they memorized.  Those graduates ended up in college and found that they were not properly prepared.  Pressure was placed on the faculty to retain student and not loose revenue so the professors lowered their standards.

In the business world in the 1970s realized their employees did not know basic high school math even though they had graudated.  These companies had to spend millions to educate the workforce and consequently passed those costs onto the consumer with high prices.

Businesses also started realizing that college graduates were coming out of college uneducated and instead of putting pressure on the educational institutions, they just started hiring international students who were better prepared academically.  Many of these well educated student were Asians and/or from India.

Throughout my 45 year career and while I was mainly in administration, I logged a substantial amount of hours in the classroom teaching both degree seeking and non-degree seeking students.  I have noticed over the years a decline in the retention of knowledge, problem solving skills, reading, communications, and presentation skills.  I also have noticed that students do not want to drill down on a subject to learn more or learn more than they have to learn for the grade.

THESE LACK OF SKILL IS WHAT THEY ARE BRINGING TO THE MARKETPLACE AS THEY SEARCH FOR EMPLOYMENT...