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It's been my experience, in doing so, that the issue is commonly enough that a student in the lower percentile has inadequate preparation coming from the public institution that spat them forth. I gather that things like learning to enjoy reading, strong study skills/work ethic are pretty much the last thing many of the students I have tutored understand as a priority... In that sense I have to agree that many students aren't ready for college, straight from high school.
I wasn't. Yet I am now full-time at UCB, getting myself ready to apply to PhD programs in Cultural Studies -something I wasn't aware of, or could have cared less about, when I graduated high school with a below average GPA in 1987.
Maybe it's ok, then, that not everyone goes to, or is told that they belong in college. Maybe they should be told how important it is that someone knows how to repair cars, or be a policeman, or a carpenter. Maybe it's just a temporal thing, as it was for me. Because one isn't ready now hardly means they will not be later.
One of the biggest issues I have with my younger peers at Cal is that many of them haven't got the life experience to make truly informed decisions about their futures because they have no experience in the harsh realities of the real world. Eavesdropping once on a conversation some of my classmates were having revealed this: "I don't know what I'm going to do when I graduate. Maybe I'll be, like, the super educated, philosopher waitress. I'll probably work at a store somewhere."
