"This may be far afield of our topic, but while we are on it...If American colleges and universities would not devote so many resources to "fun days," all Greek housing developments, goofy games (and other such distractions), a hundred different activist organizations that have nothing to do with education and the holy grail of every university: football and sports, then maybe students in the US could actually pick up some real education."
This is a small part of the problem. The big part is in the liberal arts curriculum, both the old and new parts. The old parts consist of programs offering degrees, such as social work, art history, and others for which there is no job market. The new part consists of programs such as gay studies, women's studies, multiculturalism, transgender sexuality, etc., again what the hell do you do with these degrees except attempt to convert others to your way of thinking?
I hate to say it, but many foreign students in the hard sciences, engineering, and math are on average, the better students because they work harder.
In many foreign countries (India is a prime example) education is the only way to success (unless you are one of the lucky few born into it). In this country, sad to say, many kids today are born into success and consider it a birthright -- while kids not born into success are often not taught at home that education is the best means of advancing yourself.
Many American kids don't work hard because they don't have to.
You've got two big points there.
I'm sure you're right. As soon as we get our society back to a level of Asian squalor, our kids will have a great deal more incentive to give up their diversified life of fun, prosperity, worship and all the other cherished traditions of this great country. Bring on sewage in the streets!
Your other big point is on top of your head!
They weren't when I was in the hard sciences back in the 70's. Back then, the main influx was a lot of Indians and Pakistanis (before China). They got preferred treatment (grants, scholarships and school jobs) and got free rides while we had to work our butts off at Summer jobs etc. to stay in school and avoid the student-loan trap. They often could not speak an intelligible form of english, and they were often not any brighter or harder working than many of my classmates at the University of Minnesota. Some of these graduate Teaching Assts. could not even fathom the undergraduate lesson plans. (I am speaking of Physics, Chemistry, Math, and as they called it then, Computer Science). They were a measurable impediment to the average student in their classes. But PC, even then, prohibited any direct action to cure the problem, and grumbling in the classroom was effectively neutralized, as the U.S. displacement machine ground on.
I think it fair to say, a healthy proportion of my classmates assumed these folks were being given PC grade inflation.
I also noticed that many of them seemed to gravitate into nuclear phsyics and wanted to learn how to enrich uranium, and build atom bombs.