Run says: "The BA degree today is the high school education of 1970"

LeRoy: Yes, and one of the major reasons for that is the very poor quality of most of our high schools today....both compared to what they were like in 1970 (though I would say 1965), and compared to what high schools are like in most of our trading competitors. As Bill Gates has said, "American high schools are obsolete." Less than 20% of our college-bound freshmen are even ready to take college-level science courses; if they want to, they must first take remedial courses...and the same is true in mathematics.

Really, to get any kind of a decent education today, you have to go to college....with very few exceptions. [I like to think that the high school where I teach is one of those exceptions, and I think the facts support that claim.]

The first-best option is to fix our high schools.