This is an accurate description of what my large R1 research university did after Covid to maintain enrollment. It’s a heavily tuition driven place without the tens of billions of endowment dollars an Ivy has.

They “opened the floodgates” to students to maintain enrollment, in the words of a colleague. People who would have been denied without a second thought pre-COVID were admitted. The acceptance rate went from 40%-50% to 80%+. (Numbers are approximate.)

Accepting these students required adding two levels (at least!) of remedial math below what used to be the absolute last resort, “should you really be in college?” remedial math class we had pre covid. These new classes basically taught middle school level material or lower.

Nearly all of the students taking those classes don’t belong in college bc they are totally unqualified to do college level work. It’s irresponsible to admit them, charge them $200,000, then graduate them as heavily indebted but basically high school educated adults. They have no skills.

I can’t make up for their failure to learn math in (as this author correctly says) 5th - 12th grade.

I make this comment to note that the situation hasn’t changed.

Also: to the extent that anyone is looking for villains on student debt (overall the “crisis” is overblown but there absolutely are students who get screwed), blame the universities which admit unqualified students and also the high schools and middle schools which utterly failed them.

Also blame our failure to pay math teachers more than PE teachers. There are a lot of villains. The system is horrible.