How standards declined

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There is something askew with education in this country, and I think it all started with the “War Baby Boom.” 

During World War Two, we fielded an armed force of 16 million men in a country whose population at the time was 130 million.  At the war’s end, these national heroes, who made up the “Greatest Generation” returned, got married and had children.  Creating a bulge in the population of people born between 1946 and 1964. 

Having been born in the month before President Franklin Roosevelt died, I just missed being a member of that “bulge.” My experience interfacing with the application process was quite different than many college applicants experience these days.  My challenge was not so much deciding which college to attend, but the anxiety of whether there would be a seat for a student of my mediocre high school average and SAT scores. 

I must have had a special angel looking out for me as I was accepted at Hunter College in the Bronx campus of the City University of New York (now Lehman College).  At Hunter, as was the case with entire City University, tuition was free.  Since there was not enough funding to educate all entering freshman for four years, there were weed-out courses. At a time of no personal computers, English 101 was a weekly composition. If you missed one comma or had one typeover, you were given a failing grade on the essay. The last two of four required semesters of a foreign language was made of reading “The Stranger” by Camus and “Eugénie Grandet” by Balzac in french. Tests involved questions of literary criticism to be answered in French. Somehow or other, they actually granted me a diploma. This was not the case for one third of those who entered the class of 1966. 

What does all of this have to do with the “War Baby Boom?” 

college applicants, Baby Boom, academic standards, Howard Ring
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