Colleges like Harvard, UNC are coddling Gen Z with easier courses. It’s going to backfire.

Kids are arriving on college campuses with fewer skills and diminished attention spans. But, rather than challenge students, many colleges are lowering institutional standards to accommodate them.

Colleges around the country have English courses that require students to read a single book all semester. Ivy League schools are rolling out remedial math classes. And some schools are teaching kids skills as basic as structuring sentences.

Colleges surely have a challenge on their hands as high schools graduate less distinguished classes, but lowering the bar is the sort of coddling that keeps kids from reaching their potential. 

College is meant to stretch you to your intellectual max. It’s not a time for hand holding.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the nation’s premier public universities, offers a three-credit course called “One Big Book That’s Worth It” — as though students need convincing that reading a whole book is a worthwhile endeavor.

“This course guides students slowly and carefully through one extraordinary long book that is well worth the time and effort,” the catalogue listing reads. “Required text: one inexpensive book that you will never want to sell back.”

Unfortunately, for Gen Z, this obvious statement might not be self-evident.

Fordham University and Smith College also have courses in their English departments called “One Big Book.” And, in Boston, Suffolk University’s honors college offers the same. The course aims “to strengthen students’ close reading skills” and “[divides] the long book into manageable weekly readings.”

UNC has previously assigned George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and Smith College Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. The “One Series” of courses at UPenn assigns a single book, like Moby Dick or Shakespeare’s Richard III.

It wasn’t long ago that students were expected to read a big book in a few weeks. At Columbia, the core curriculum can demand 150 pages per class per week. But now, in the age of iPhones and diminished attention spans, we’re acting like it’s a feat to get through a single book in half a school year.

Former Duke professor and longtime grade inflation critic Stuart Rojstaczer says that schools have long accommodated kids who don’t take learning seriously: “In any college, you will find that 20% of the class is impressive and serious and gets a lot out of a college degree. Then you’ll find the 20% that barely opens a book and still gets a college degree.”

Meanwhile, schools are rolling out remedial classes. Even Harvard. The school made headlines in April for its Math MA course, which provides “extra support” to “target foundational skills in algebra, geometry, and quantitative reasoning.” This at a university with a 4% acceptance rate!

Other colleges are offering classes for the most basic of writing skills. At Fairleigh Dickinson, students can take the for-credit “Fundamentals of Writing” to learn “college level literacy skills” and “the conventions of Standard English.”

Since when are college-level literacy skills something you learn after you get there?

At the University of Nevada, students who aren’t yet masters of “paragraph development, sentence structure, usage, and grammar” can take Preparatory Composition. 

Though the course isn’t for credit, it’s worth asking how someone who can’t structure a sentence can write an application essay, let alone expect to pass a college course unless they’re planning on AI writing their assignments for them.

Other universities are removing remedial courses altogether. But not because they’re no longer needed.

In 2018, the University of California system did away with remedial courses that weren’t for credit and instead allowed students to stretch a semester’s worth of material over two semesters, all while getting credit for learning things they should have already known. 

Meanwhile, CUNY got rid of their remedial courses because they were overflowing — to the point that they may as well have been the standard courses.

When the CUNY system ditched their remedial classes in 2023, they reported that 78% of new associate-degree students were in remedial courses when they started phasing out the classes in 2016.

Sounds a lot like schools are lowering the bar for everyone and tossing around credit for what would have been considered not-for-credit catch-up work not too long ago.

The data shows that the kids showing up to college are less and less prepared. A recent study from UC San Diego found a 30-fold increase in the number of students unable to do basic arithmetic in just the last five years.

Steven Mintz, professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin says that schools are admitting students with poor preparation and outside obligations, while cutting costs, effectively “dismantling the very supports that once helped students meet high standards.”

“Lowering standards without helping students meet them is a mistake,” Mintz told The Post, stressing he is not opposed to remedial courses. “The real risk to higher education is that institutions are unwilling to be honest about what college-level work actually requires — and unwilling to invest in the structures that allow students to meet those expectations.”

While it’s certainly true that the pandemic kneecapped student learning, colleges shouldn’t be lowering their standards to accommodate degraded skills. 

Everyone knows that college students take the easy way out. If standards aren’t maintained, they will gladly stoop to lowered expectations.

If we coddle our kids, we risk making temporary learning losses lifelong. It’s time to hold the bar steady and let Gen Z reach their potential.