Debasing The Coinage

A useful trick for "saving" money used to be debasing the coinage--putting less silver or gold in a coin than the face value stated.  When people discovered this was happening, inflation became rampant.

We've gotten rid of that today, we just don't put any precious metal in our coins.

In the 1990s, the heyday of Whole Language and Fuzzy Math, education took such a turn for the worse that taxpayers, those who fund education, had enough.  A high school diploma was no longer indicative even of an ability to read, and standardized testing in schools took on greater prominence with NCLB.  Jobs that used to require only a high school diploma started requiring college degrees, not because the jobs were more difficult, but because a degree meant some modicum of learning existed in the holder.

What's happening on college campuses today, where seemingly everything is important except actually learning something of value--and no, protesting about chalk writings is not of value--has devalued university degrees that outside testing of college students is now being discussed:

The New America Foundation is out with a new white paper, written by Fredrik DeBoer of Purdue University, on the prospects for a standardized or semi-standardized system of testing for college students...

The paper, while attentive to concerns about unreliability and unintended consequences, is cautiously optimistic about the impact such an assessment system would have on higher education quality. And it suggests that the results could help the federal government control tuition increases by steering subsidies away from low-performing schools.

Go ahead, college students of today, keep shooting yourselves in the foot.

Scratch that, it's time for the adults to assert themselves.  Shut up and get back to class.  We're tired of funding your hissy fits.