Getting an Education in America

Interesting but wrong.

He's bemoaning the fact that a B.A. serves the same screening purpose that a high school diploma did up until the late 60s, early 70s, the focus on college as a ticket to a decent job and hence a good standard of living.

As motivation to improve he compares European secondary education to American, after being appalled at the idea that people are trying to recruit the bottom 40% of the intelligence distribution into college, where they will fail, but will pay money before they drop out. He fails to realise that he's almost certainly not seeing a random sample of the products of European secondary education.

The main strengths of the Irish and British systems of secondary education, the only ones I'm vaguely familiar with, are the exit exams, which are brutal, anonymous and fair. They're also available in different gradations of difficulty (usually two, Higher and Ordinary, occasionally three for the subjects people just keep failing, add Foundation.) This means you can stream, and all results are comparable. No trying to compare an A from Podunk High School, west Virginia with one from Philips Exeter Academy.