SURRENDERING WITH A SHRUG.

For a long time, Cold Spring Shops has called attention to the folly of admitting unprepared students and calling it access.  "[S]tate institutions that were separate but not equal during Jim Crow remain less than equal today.  And thus, does access beget assessment and remediation and fretting about retention."  We've always been clear-eyed about where that leads.  "When you admit unprepared students and call it access, what do you have to do to boost retention?"

At Inside Higher Ed, you decide to redefine "prepared."  The article's link title is "Three Strategies to Support College Readiness."  It's more accurate to understand the article, as the text will bear out, as three strategies to redefine readiness.  No, seriously.  "Rather than asking students to catch up and mold to higher ed’s traditional structures, experts in the field are asking, are colleges set up to help students succeed?"

What would we ever do without experts?

Student readiness has declined from a number of angles: historically low ACT scores, a lack of study skills, class attendance, classroom participation and meeting deadlines consistently. Teenagers entering higher education are also more likely to say they struggle with their mental health and loneliness.

You could stop enabling dysfunction, and maybe you'd get less of it.  That's not Received Wisdom at the house organ for all wokeness all the time.  Standards?  That's so last century.

College readiness is the idea that a student should be prepared and equipped to succeed at their institution, but many in higher ed want to shift the conversation to institutional readiness. Student success leaders share their perspective that, if a college enrolls a student, that is the indication the student can be successful there.

That has always been the perspective, but the successful students don't go through four years fat, dumb, and drunk.  These days, being unprepared is simply another challenge to be accommodated.  "Instead of placing responsibility on students ... colleges and universities can model institutional readiness."

What's it going to take, a fatal accident on the Space Station or a complete breakdown of a government function before people who should know better catch on that enabling helplessness only produces more of it?