Though, in my opinion, education quality has gone down.
In France, 2010ish?, in my last year of high school (in one of the best parisian high school) there was a boy who couldn't read aloud a text without stumbling. I don't know if this would have happened in the past. But back then only 20k students reached that stage and now it's 200k.
edit: stumbling/stuttering
What would you think if I told you I graduated in the 1990s and I felt the same way? Where would that put you?
>there was a boy who couldn't read aloud a text without stumbling.
There could be other reasons for that, like fear of public speaking.
He didn't fear much. He was a bully.
In other words, he was 17 and couldn't read fluently. But he wasn't stupid. He was quite conscientious about his side business and bookkeeping.
ps: I stuttered when I was a child.
I've read and written in English everyday for 10 years. I just can't speak it. One day I realized most news article I read were only translations of other articles. So I decided to skip the middle man.
Is that your professional medical opinion?
Let us assume the answer is no for the sake of argument. Does that necessarily mean the quality of education has dropped? Not necessarily. It could mean that 30 years ago this boy would have failed to graduate.
This doesn't mean that the education was any better then, only that the requirements for graduation are lower now. The top and average students today might be leaving with better knowledge and skills than 30 years ago even if the very bottom looks "worse" because fewer people are pushed out entirely. Perhaps the value of the diploma itself diminishes as a result of this, but that doesn't mean the actual education has diminished.
Of course it's also very likely that there have always been people graduating like this.