My father had been the safety laboratory lead at a Hungarian pharmeutical company from 1989 till his retirement about ten years ago (could be a little less). What he told me about has stuck with me: when he started, he could hire people from vocational high schools but by the end, everything they used became so complex he could only hire people with university degrees.

Previous generations sometimes had a chance to learn on the job as a company was specializing. But current generations needs a lengthy education because they are joining companies that are already highly specialized - am working to specialized even more...

There are some vocational coding schools, but these won't prepare you to do real computer science.

There are some vocational carpentry schools with increased focus on AutoCad and other analytical skills. But these won't equipt you to design bridges..

Another point is that HS graduation rates in the United States have been basically flat (after a long, steady increase) since the 1970's [1], despite constant calls to increase it.

When more than 9 of 10 people already have HS diplomas; when the economic condition of each student's family is highly predictive of graduation; and when and each school tends to have a fairly homogeneous characteristics, it's hard for me to see how you can raise graduation rates without lowering the bar. Unless you're open to adjusting the economic condition around under-performing schools, of course.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...

Since the early 1990s, what was then a fairly advanced college prep track for math seems to have become the baseline standard, and graduation requirements have increased in other ways. Compared to comparably-named classes, grading or presentation may have become less rigorous, but the baseline curriculum is more advanced, not less.

Yes, and my mom just last month retired from teachig English in a nothing-special (in ratings terms) high school in a relatively poor area, and was teaching Shakespeare, Donne, and the rest of the traditional canon of classic literature, as well as a small number of more current bits of non-juvenile literature that isn't part of the Eurocentric canon, works from Amy Tan and others (many of which I also remember reading—in college.)

But in any case what makes it challenging or not isn't what books they read, but what the expectations are of what they'll be able to do having read them.

Memory is a tricky thing. I wouldn't be surprised if you aren't comparing today's 13 year old to your 16 year old self inadvertently.

That's easy, we live in a world where each generation is smarter than the previous. For IQ tests measuring abstract thinking todays teenagers score an average of 3 points higher than teenagers did 10 years ago.

This is due to better schooling, better edutainment of kids, and many other things such as increased focus on not leaving behind kids with learning disabilities.

The trend is starting to ease of in the developed world. But only in the last 10 years or so...

Whether the bar have been lowered is hard to disprove. But we know for fact that newer generations are far more book-smart than older ones where in their time.

Note. Some forms of pure generalized intelligence don't have the same trends. But analytical and abstract thinking, also commonly known as book-smart or good in school is trending upwords over the generations.

YES: kids today are actually smarter :)

(This is a reference to several jobs posted at MIT and in other Cambridge, MA workplaces on various occasions.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/same-p...

In general university costs money, both to the Government/State and the student, and thus incentives are somewhat aligned for both parties. Also, student loans are NOT a common thing here... When I was at uni, the cost of the studies was about 1000€/year (500€ for me as my parents have 3 children), now it's about 2 to 3k€/year, but it's still something somewhat feasible. That's Spain, in Germany for example it's free.

There's no way you can generalise about incentive structures like that for an entire continent.

In my country, only public universities exist and the incentive structure is decided politically. Currently, universities get paid a certain amount for each student that graduates, but they are also deducted some set amount if the student doesn't graduate within a specific amount of time. In addition to that, the sum of money gained from a single STEM student is double that of another kind of student, so the universities have quite clear incentives to promote their STEM degrees.

Obviously, an incentive structure based solely on passing students must also inspire grade inflation. The current structure highly incentivises making STEM degrees easy to obtain. Whether that's actually the case, I can't say, but the structure certainly encourages it.

The university departments get different amount of money depending on the amount of students they have, but this money cannot be spent freely (e.g. on increasing professor's salaries), but must be spent for education-related things like hiring more TAs, which is something that departments that get more students need to do anyways.

The professor salary is pretty much standardized (per the TVL), which does allows for sur-pluses in case that the responsibilities justify them, but university "students" do not play a role here. Things that affect these are, for example, having larger management-related responsibilities. For example, a professor with 4 PhD students and 2 postdocs gets less money than a professor with 30 PhD students, large experimental facilities, 10 mechanics, 5 middle management personell, ... adding up to 60 people under supervision.

So while I agree that the universities do have an incentive to grow the number of students in STEM degrees, the professors do not really have a big incentive to make the degrees easier.

The professors that "get rich" in Germany have large consulting companies on the side to which they try to attract the top talent, so if anything, the incentive is to produce more top talent. This can incentive them both ways, making things easier to attract more students to get more students in their companies, or making things harder to filter out the bulk from the top talent. But that's just supply and demand.

Entire departments are built on this principle.

On top of that, there are no limits on how many times you can retake a class, it is not unusual to be stuck with the same class for three or four years until you manage to pass.

That's sadly not true in all of Europe. I attend university in the Netherlands, and since government allowances were replaced by loans a few years back, having a student loan has become the norm for students.

American universities run on government and private finance. If they don’t graduate a certain percentage of students that financing gets withdrawn. So it’s easy to see where giving better grades leads to higher graduations connected to government financing.

I wouldn’t necessarily call it better. I have friends who have taken 8+ years to get their Bac+3. The lower tier universities have capacity issues. The class you need may be full and can take years to enroll. Also, with no motivation to pass students you are truly in your own. Things like office hours, tutors, study labs, and the library not being open late like we have in the US. These are surprisingly uncommon in France.

A more political reason is because University prestige depends partly on the knowledge of the graduading students. So if someone said they studied in X and they had no idea what they were talking about it'd give quite a bad image for the university. It's not rare to see some students crying at the exam review but it mostly doesn't work.

The main difference between grades in Spanish engineering schools and the rest of Europe seems to be that the grade curve is heavily compressed between 4/10 and 6/10 (passing grade is 5/10). The amount of study needed to reach a passing grade would amount to an A elsewhere. As long as 25% (IIRC) of the students pass there are no consequences for the department. If less people pass, they just award a 5.0 to everyone from a certain grade up, they don't do curves. It is not unusual for people to retake a class for three or four years in a row.

There is not much guidance from professors either, no homework or extra assignments. There is just one or two midterms and a final exam, and if you're lucky there will be official course materials to study from but that is not a requirement. Most exchange students have a pretty bad time here, but on the other hand Spanish students abroad usually ace their exams with half of the work they are used to.

I’m glad my university had more focus on labs and hands on work. I pretty much aced all my labs and did okay on paper exams. Paper exams always felt like an exercise for the professor to put students on an explicit bell curve.

EE->IE->IM->I'm Out.

Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Industrial Management, transfer.

There is also heightened student pressure for similar reasons. but it is not just students.

I will say however that universities in my country are heavily recruiting foreign students to the point that everything is in English.

Nope. All cultures I've seen so far have this. It's just that immigrants stuck between a rock and a hard place put in the effort to do better, and threaten their kids into doing the same. Or at least, they do so more often than other groups.

Needless to say, the natives try to sabotage this. This is also the same everywhere. In Europe, in Asia, in America. It's worse where there is more state control (ie. it's pretty bad in the Netherlands for example).

You're not too far from Spain's current situation.

We have some lower qualification titles that last two years and are almost free to get that teach a trade, there are courses to become an electrician, mechanic, plumber, hairdresser, cook, etc. There is even one to become a systems administrator and one to become a programmer.

I'm just slightly worried that STEM's problems are too close to their base of physics and math to be that hard for a computer compared to the layers of abstraction that go into the rest of our works.

Yes and no. If it's a political goal that x% of the population must be awarded a degree, then the standards will need to be adjusted, and below a certain point, the value of the learning goes away as well.

That's because the knowledge taught in primary school is way more essential to day-to-day life. If people don't know those skills then our society fails.

...

"You ask for a miracle ? I give you the (T S A) ..."[1]

[1] Die Hard

There will be plumbers and hairdressers long after the last lawyer or accountant has been replaced by AI. There is neither the demand for, nor do the prerequisites exist in the general population for, Tony Bliar's target of 50% of school leavers to go to university and achieve a degree comparable to those of even 20 years ago.