If this is accurate, we're in trouble too deep for a mere quick fix like DOGE to cure

The full article is entirely persuasive to me, and the fact that Glenn Reynolds, who as a law professor must be familiar with the modern crop of students, chose to post ii on his own site, at least suggests that he doesn’t disagree.

SAD:

The average college student today: How things have changed. “Most of our students are functionally illiterate. This is not a joke. . . . I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or whatever. No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read. They just couldn’t do it. They don’t have the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read,2 and most certainly not the attention span to finish. . . . Their writing skills are at the 8th-grade level. Spelling is atrocious, grammar is random, and the correct use of apostrophes is cause for celebration. Worse is the resistance to original thought. What I mean is the reflexive submission of the cheapest cliché as novel insight.”

On the upside, they’re ready for careers in journalism.

Plus:

“I can’t assign papers any more because I’ll just get AI back, and there’s nothing I can do to make it stop. Sadly, not writing exacerbates their illiteracy; writing is a muscle and dedicated writing is a workout for the mind as well as the pen.”