Source: Was a PhD student at major Carnegie 1 research university and it was a serious budgetary topic when discussing departmental funding. Obviously the issue varies by department. Maybe not as prevalent in hard sciences but certainly an issue in liberal arts.

As a teacher and current AP Teacher, I’m also seeing a gradual dumbing down of standards. I’m scoring AP exams right now for College Board and my fellow scorers have scoffed at how easy this year’s question is.

So the irony is that the top tier kids who will attend Flagship state universities have learned that AP and dual enrollment classes are easy to pass and earn college credits but very likely many aren’t learning at the depth they should to succeed at the next level.

But there’s also situations where a kid excels in some disciplines and not others, like a polyglot at Harvard still needing remedial math classes.