We keep hearing that America’s colleges and universities are the envy of the world, which seems to imply that they impart to students an extremely high level of knowledge and deep, refined skills necessary for success in today’s world. The trouble with that idea is the fact that many students manage to obtain college degrees despite the fact that they don’t even have the basic language and math skills that would have been taken for granted among high school students fifty years ago. Last year’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy report showed that basic literacy of college graduates is low and falling and a new paper released this week by the Pope Center shows that college graduates also have weak writing skills and explains why that is the case.

In “English 101: Prologue to Literacy or Postmodern Moonshine?” retired English professor Nan Miller, who taught writing for twenty-six years, examines the changes in the typical freshman composition course. She laments that those crucial courses are now dominated by “composition theorists.” Miller writes that “Composition is now taught according to their vision, in spite of evidence that shows a sharp decline in literacy among college graduates.” The ideas of the theorists, she contends, “hold students hostage to a bad idea.”

This is a portion of Nan Miller’s speech to the John Locke Foundation Monday. Miller discussed a recent study examining college writing courses to a crowd of 40 people. This excerpt shows typical conversations one may have about college writing programs.

Imagine for a minute that you have a daughter who is a freshman at Carolina. That�s the question I put to you. What if� (when the ink is barely dry on the tuition check) you had this conversation with your daughter. I�ll call her Page, and let�s say that she has been at Carolina for about a month and has left Chapel Hill for her very first weekend at home. She might be bursting with the details about her social life, but you are impatient to hear about the courses you just wrote the big check for. So you interrupt�

RALEIGH � Postmodern theorists have changed the way composition courses in college are taught, eliminating literature and grammar instruction by imposing group discussions with little involvement from the teachers, according to a new study released Monday by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

The study, written by Nan Miller, a former English professor at North Carolina State University and Meredith College, discusses several fallacies that she believes have severely lowered the quality of writing among college students.

While University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill is infamous and controversial for his assertion that the people killed in the World Trade Center attacks shouldn’t be mourned because they were just “little Eichmanns,” that moronic statement is not at issue in the university’s investigation of him. A professor is just as entitled to say stupid things out of class as a retail clerk is entitled to say stupid things on her free time.

The University of Colorado appointed a team of scholars to investigate allegations that Churchill was guilty of plagiarism and academic fraud. Their findings were very clear: Churchill had indeed committed numerous, flagrant violations of the canons of scholarship. Later this year, the university will decide what penalty to impose.