Even though American students compare themselves against their older generation, the result is not encouraging. In a conference held by American Statistical Association, there was a general consent that today college students are less prepared for academic training than learners twenty or thirty years ago. I would like to see the promised return of the investment on technology. They may undermine the improvement contributed by computer technology. Last year in the Conference of Arizona Association of Institutional Analysis, a participant emphasized that an educational institution is not a straight input-output system.
Instructors have no control of what students do outside of school.
A US government report revealed that in 1997 violent crimes occur in one of ten American public schools. And there are high teenage pregnancy rate, high drug abuse rate and many other social ills. If I were in charge of the budget, I would like to re-distribute some money from building websites to hiring more social workers, counselors and campus securities. There are many flaws in those cross-cultural studies such as comparing the general student population in the US with the elites in Asia. Actually performance of American and that of oversea students do not differ significantly.