Is it possible to spend $200,000 on a college education and graduate dumber than when one started? Sadly, apparently it is not only possible but it is true.

Last week, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) released the results from their second Civil Literacy test of college freshmen and seniors. The statistically valid questions cover America’s history, government, international relations and market economy. The test results inform ISI of how much our college students know and how much they learn by the time they graduate with a four-year degree. The results of the first assessments in 2005 were dismal and this year’s tests confirmed those results. Here are their latest findings:

1. College Seniors Failed a Basic Test on America’s History and Institutions.
2. Colleges Stall Student Learning about America.
3. America’s Most Prestigious Universities Performed the Worst.
4. Inadequate College Curriculum Contributes to Failure.
5. Greater Learning about America Goes Hand-in-Hand with More Active Citizenship.

Fifty schools were surveyed including many of America’s elite universities. Incredibly, students at Cornell, Yale, Duke, Princeton, Rutgers and UC Berkeley scored worse as seniors than as freshmen! They actually knew less about American civics when they graduated than when they entered. How can this be? The full report discusses this situation in great detail.

I’ve long suspected that our students are terribly lacking in understanding of the foundational principles of a representative democracy just from listening to current political discourse. This is cause for concern for us as a nation when our young, educated citizens have such a shallow understanding of civic issues and very little perspective on events that occurred before they were born.

“For a wise, a knowing and a learned people are the least likely of any in the world to be enslaved.”—Samuel Webster, 1777

The quiz is available online for anyone to take. I mustered up some courage, took it and made an 87%. (I don’t know my Plato and Socrates and just-war theory) It’s a challenging assessment; I wouldn’t have done that well when I was in college. My oldest son who was homeschooled and is now a junior at the University of Alaska-Anchorage made a 77%. Whew! Better than the average Harvard grad at a fraction of the cost.

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