The NAS keeps track of just how ignorant a nation we are becoming. It makes for disheartening reading.
Higher education is considered the jewel of America's education system.
Math and science departments attract talent from all over the globe. Yet as the NAS demonstrates in study after study, general education is in decline, grade inflation is the order of the day, and in humanities departments, rigorous requirements have gone the way of the typewriter. Even when I was a student in the late 1970s, the dumbing down trend had gotten underway. Still, a few trivial courses had already turned up in the course guide. That was academic rigor compared with what passes for higher education today.