IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR WORD POWER.

That used to be a squib in The Reader's Digest, and its presence was a signal to hoi polloi and the slumming upper-middle-class reader alike that adding to your vocabulary was a Good Thing.

There might still be a Reader's Digest, but increasing your word power is a lost art, even among people whose parents didn't pull strings to get them into a tony university.

Going to college no longer expands people’s vocabularies the way it once did: since 1970, there has been a steady decline in the correlationbetween years of education and people’s vocabulary.

Nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates learn almost nothing in their first two years in college, according to a 2011 study by NYU’s Richard Arum and others. Thirty-six percent learned little even by graduation. Although federal higher-education spending has mushroomed in recent years, students “spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago.” The National Assessment of Adult Literacy also shows that degree holders are learning less.

That's an allusion to Declining by Degrees, which I reviewed long ago, and the post makes use of a few other old sources.

Apparently, though, it's time to issue some new red hats, reading "Make School Hard Again."  John V. C. Nye, a Caltech graduate, elaborates.  "I have spoken to admits who chose an elite university because they knew that there, they were unlikely to earn less than a B, while at Caltech they would have to work hard just to graduate."

Yes, and pay attention to the structure behind the athletic front porch and the dreaming spires of the best graduate programs.

The U.S. higher education system is admired for its faculty research and the products of its graduate programs, not for its level of basic teaching—and the former areas, lucky for all of us, remain overwhelmingly meritocratic. Students at the doctoral level are selected with minimal regard for the "holistic" considerations so prevalent at the undergraduate level. They're generally drawn from around the world without attempts to represent different groups equally. If you doubt this, see how far your lacrosse championship or volunteer experience will go in compensating for low GRE math scores when applying to a Ph.D. program in economics or physics at a top-20 university.

The corrupt undergraduate admissions process at most schools today can flourish because the higher branches of the American academic tree are so good. But the lower branches are rotten with grade inflation and social promotion. The move away from an emphasis on genuine academic achievement and meritocratic promotion has done a disservice to the least well-off while offering more opportunities for the rich and connected to buy the trappings of success for their offspring.

Yes, and the children from more modest circumstances, and the returning adults, irrespective of their circumstances, are hard-done-by if the regional comprehensives, mid-majors, and land-grants don't take care of their business.