2026-06-30
6 分钟The Economist.
Hi, John Priddow here.
I host Checks and Balance, our weekly US politics podcast.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
You're about to hear an article from the latest edition of The Economist.
I hope you enjoy it.
Academics have always moaned about their students.
Scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before, complained Egbert of Liège,
an 11th century know-it-all in an age when not even a tenth of humans could read.
Recently, there have been lots of new worries about standards in colleges
and universities, especially in America, home to many of the world's best.
But this time, as our international section notes, the laxity is not just in lecturers' heads.
Maths professors report that they are having to pack freshers off to remedial courses before real learning can start.
Some are turning up to university ignorant of things they should have learned early in secondary school.
Lecturers in humanities warn that students are struggling to understand
texts that a decade ago their counterparts would easily have grasped.
Students increasingly ask for reading lists to be cut short.
Tests run by the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, suggest
that students in colleges and universities are less literate than they were a decade ago.
The best are cleverer than ever, but a growing number have basic skills that would embarrass a child half their age.