>Let me add a stronger defense. Those making it to college a generation or
>two ago were overwhelmingly from elite groups. The "dumbing of America" is
>largely a statistical artifact, since SAT comparisons and measures of
>college students' knowledge between now and the past usually are comparing
>much larger percentages of the population taking the SAT or being in college
>to those in the past when few went to college.
The college audiences I found most exasperating weren't the ones from nonelite groups - they were at places like Bucknell, which processes the dimmer offspring of the upper middle class, and the state universities that process the middle middle class (admittedly nonelite, but still the same demographic that would have been in college a generation ago). The more downscale places, like CUNY, are filled with students who aren't well prepared, but they're lively and engaged.
What are Yalies like now, Nathan?
Doug