Ben Wildavsky reviews The Lowering of Higher Education in America, which refers to modern students as “unprepared, half-asleep catatonics who drift in late and leave early”:
Mr. Toby draws on social-science data as well as personal experience—he taught sociology at Rutgers University for 50 years before retiring a few years ago—to decry the intellectual conditions that prevail on the American campus. Sidestepping the matter of students’ innate abilities, he blames low academic standards mostly on the easy availability of financial aid to undergraduates who are unqualified for college-level coursework.