Commentary
It’s no secret that high school graduation means far less than it used to. “Individualized progress plans” for those who can’t meet the universal standard, social promotion, and increasing accommodation for mental health concerns like anxiety mean that having a high school degree is now no guarantee of literacy or numeracy.
The collapse of high school graduation standards means that many employers now demand a university or college degree. Universities responded to the increased demand for their stamp of approval by creating more and more capacity, and students responded to this burst of credentialism by heading off to uni in droves. The increasing failure of increasingly expensive high schools meant that increasingly expensive universities had to expand massively. A win for bureaucrats and a loss for taxpayers….