At Temple, students take a standard test called the Praxis test, and they're not doing well. Well, in one sense, colleges of education are clearly responsible. They admit the students. In general, they seem quite ready to pass the buck to their colleagues in education. One thing I have been insisting on in this discussion is that the university is a system, imbricated or reticulated.
Units are part of a whole, and play a role in the economy of the whole.
There are ways to make it work, though it will never be easy. But a first step is going to be, to get beyond the stovepiping characteristic of the modern university and bring the different units into more collaborative, and mutually responsible, arrangements, without the handwashing and finger-pointing we have too often seen. To take an ax to remedial programs is to place exaggerated hope on only one solution, which may be no solution at all.