There is an increasing worry across the world that students are completing school and reaching college without being prepared for the academic demands of higher education.
This is not merely the old complaint that “students were better in our time”. Universities are increasingly reporting that many first-year students do not have the reading, writing, numeracy, attention and study habits expected of them.
This should concern schools, teachers, principals, education boards, parents and governments. It is not enough to say that a child has completed Class 12 or passed a board examination. The harder question is: has the student actually developed the capacity to handle college-level learning?
A global warning from universities
A recent article in The Economist highlights this problem sharply.
More than 1,800 mathematics and science lecturers at the University of California, one of America’s largest public university systems, signed an open letter warning that first-year undergraduates are increasingly arriving without the basic skills needed to succeed. At the Berkeley campus, they said that 20–30% of students taking an early calculus course were showing “severe preparation deficits”. The problem had become so serious that instructors were having to reteach middle-school mathematics.
The same article refers to another report from the University of California, San Diego, where academics noted that the number of first-year students entering with mathematics skills below high-school level had increased nearly thirtyfold in five years. Almost one in eight first-year students had mathematics skills below high-school level, and around 70% of these lagging students were not performing at the level expected of a 14-year-old.
The problem is not limited to mathematics. In literature and the humanities too, lecturers are reporting that students struggle with sustained reading. At Harvard, some humanities and social-science professors have felt compelled to shorten texts because students are arriving with less experience of reading complex prose and less capacity for focus and sustained attention. Students are struggling with readings that earlier batches completed with ease just ten years ago.
India cannot ignore the warning
For Indian educators, it would be a mistake to dismiss this as an American problem. India’s situation may be different, but the warning is relevant. We too have expanded access to schooling and higher education. More students are staying in school longer and more families aspire to college. This is a major achievement. But access and completion must not be confused with readiness.
Indian data already shows the difference between enrollment and learning. ASER 2024 reported that school enrollment among children aged 6–14 remained very high at 98.1% in 2024. But the learning indicators show why enrollment alone cannot satisfy us. Among Std V children in government schools, only 44.8% could read a Std II level text in 2024. Among Std VIII children in government schools, 67.5% could read a Std II level text. In arithmetic, only 45.8% of Std VIII children nationally could do a basic division problem. These figures are not about college students, but they show how gaps in reading and arithmetic can remain inside the system for years.
The gaps widen after elementary school
The NITI Aayog report on school education, as reported by ThePrint, makes the same point in another way: India has 14.71 lakh schools serving 24.69 crore students, but access has not automatically translated into quality learning or continuity. Only about 5% of schools offer continuous schooling from Grades 1 to 12. Students are often forced to change schools after Grade 5, 8 or 10, and these transitions can affect retention and progression.
The stress becomes sharper after the elementary stage. The national dropout rate is 0.3% at primary level, 3.5% at upper primary, and 11.5% at secondary level. The transition rate from secondary to higher secondary improved from 67.7% in 2014-15 to 75.1% in 2024-25, but the higher secondary Gross Enrolment Ratio remains only 58.4% nationally. These numbers matter because college readiness cannot be built if students are already struggling to remain and progress through the upper stages of schooling.
Teacher capacity is also part of the readiness problem. The NITI Aayog report notes that around 1.04 lakh schools operate with only one teacher, and that nearly 14% of planned teaching days are lost to non-academic duties such as elections and surveys. A system cannot expect strong reading, writing, mathematical reasoning and independent study habits if many teachers are overburdened, stretched across grades, and pulled away from teaching time.
The problem does not end with college admission. Graduate-readiness reports show that formal education does not always translate into employability. Mercer’s India Graduate Skill Index 2025 says that 42.6% of Indian graduates who apply for jobs are overall employable. It also notes that Mercer analysed data from more than 2,700 campuses and assessed more than 1 million students. This is not a school-readiness report, but it strengthens the larger concern: moving through the education system and collecting certificates does not automatically mean that young people are prepared for the next stage.
College readiness is built in school
This is why the school system must take the college-readiness question seriously. A student entering college is expected to read a difficult chapter, follow an argument, write clearly, handle basic numbers, ask questions, manage time, work independently and persist when the material becomes difficult. These habits are not built suddenly in the first semester of college. They are built slowly, year after year, inside school classrooms.
The Economist article points to several possible reasons for the decline in preparedness. One is the pandemic. School closures and disrupted learning meant that many students lost months, and in some cases years, of proper schooling. Some university teachers said that after the pandemic, it felt as if some students “had not gone to high school”. But the article also notes that in many places, school learning levels had already been weakening before Covid. The pandemic may have accelerated the problem, but it did not create all of it.
The decline of deep reading
Another reason is the decline of deep reading. The Economist notes that the share of nine-year-olds in America who say they read books for pleasure has fallen from nearly 60% in the 1990s to 37% now. It also points to the possibility that people are getting less practice than before in reading long and complex texts. This should worry Indian schools too. We often treat reading as an early-grade skill, but older students also need reading stamina. Can a Class 11 or Class 12 student read ten pages of serious writing and understand the argument? Can the student summarise it? Can the student disagree with it? Can the student connect it to another idea? These are college-readiness skills.
Marks can hide weak preparation
There is also a deeper problem in how education systems define success. If schools focus mainly on marks, board results and pass percentages, students may learn how to perform in a narrow examination format without developing wider intellectual ability. A student may reproduce an answer without being able to think through a new problem. A student may pass mathematics while still fearing numbers. A student may complete English assignments without being able to read a full book or write an argument independently.
This is where Indian school leaders must be honest. Our obsession with board examinations, invigilation, answer-sheet evaluation and marks sometimes hides the more important question: are children learning enough to move forward? Exam security and fair marking are important, but they cannot become a substitute for educational seriousness.
Parents must ask harder questions
Parents too must change how they think about success. It is not enough to say, “My son has completed Class 12 CBSE,” or “My daughter has passed the board exam.” Parents must ask: Can my child read well? Can my child write clearly? Can my child work without constant supervision? Can my child understand basic data? Can my child sit with a difficult task without giving up? These are the abilities that will matter in college and later in work.
The central issue is not that today’s students are less intelligent. That would be an unfair conclusion. The problem is that too many students may be moving through the system without developing the foundations that higher education silently assumes. College assumes that school has already built attention, reading, writing, numeracy, curiosity, discipline and intellectual independence. When school fails to build these, college must either repair the damage or dilute its own standards.
Both options are dangerous. If colleges spend the first year reteaching school-level material, higher education loses depth. If colleges dilute the syllabus so that underprepared students can cope, degrees lose meaning. The better solution is to address the problem earlier, in school.
What schools must now do
This requires a shift in school priorities. Foundational literacy and numeracy cannot be treated as only primary-school concerns. Reading must become stronger in middle and high school. Writing must be practised across subjects, not only in English class. Mathematics must be taught for understanding, not only for procedural marks. Students must be asked to explain, argue, solve, create, revise and reflect. They must be gradually trained to handle difficulty.
A call to principals, boards and teachers
Principals should ask hard questions within their own schools. How many students read books beyond the textbook? How often are students asked to write independently? Are mathematics classes building understanding or only exam technique? Do students know how to take notes? Can they summarise a chapter? Can they complete a project without copying? Are teachers rewarding curiosity, or only correct answers?
Education boards must also think beyond pass percentages. If a board examination can be passed without strong reading, writing and reasoning, then the examination itself must be questioned. If students can score well while depending heavily on coaching, memorisation or pattern prediction, then the board is not measuring readiness adequately. A Class 12 certificate should mean that a student has reached a certain level of academic maturity, not merely that the student has survived a familiar exam format.
Teachers are at the centre of this challenge. They are the ones who see the gaps early. A good teacher knows when a student is copying without understanding, reading without comprehension, solving without reasoning or passing without confidence. But teachers need support. They need time for reading, writing, discussion, remedial work and feedback. If the entire school calendar is consumed by syllabus completion, tests and events, teachers cannot build deeper readiness.
A school certificate should not be a polite fiction. It should mean that a young person is ready to read, think, write, reason and struggle with the next level of learning. If colleges are now beginning by repairing what schools failed to build, then the warning has arrived too late. Schools, boards, teachers, parents and governments must listen now.
The ideas, opinions, and perspectives expressed in this editorial are those of the publication. AI-assisted tools may have been used to support research, drafting, and editing.
Sources used: The Economist, “Students are doing worse than you think”; ASER 2024 National Findings; ThePrint report on NITI Aayog’s “School Education System in India: Temporal Analysis and Policy Roadmap for Quality Enhancement”; Mercer, India Graduate Skill Index 2025.