College is hard. Or at least, it’s supposed to be.

Among people who have been involved with academia over time, there’s a general sense that school is getting easier. One of the most common complaints I hear from professors is the need to continually go back and teach things that used to be common knowledge within high school graduates. In other words, students are coming to the university knowing less and less. This places a burden on professors in that they have to teach college students junior high and high school material.

Stating the obvious: Why are we paying so much money to get an adolescent education?

Even the most cursory survey of entrance and academic standards over time from virtually any university you choose to examine will reveal this in spades. For those of you at Iowa State who might choose to challenge the veracity of that statement, I encourage you to go to the Special Collections department at the Parks Library and ask to see the old Iowa State course catalogs from 100 years ago. Pay special attention to the beginning stuff about getting into to college.

There are many reasons we can point to for why school is getting easier. Some of the most commonly tossed about reasons include worsening teaching ability, declining standards to be a teacher, grade inflation or schools “teaching the test,” as they say. There’s been some hullabaloo in the news in the last couple years about teachers themselves being dumber than ever and establishing some sort of new series of requirements to become a teacher.

Whether you agree that we need to change how we select teachers or not, the fundamental premise makes sense: If people are graduating high school and college more ignorant than ever, we can expect that our teachers, who themselves are among those ignorant graduates, will be less competent. And when incompetent people teach, their students become incompetent, thereby sustaining the cycle and producing a gradual decline in societal intelligence.

Then there’s grade inflation. Essentially grade inflation is the theory that over time, the average grades awarded to students have increased. Now, the obvious answer is we’re getting smarter, but I don’t think anyone can make a rational argument American society is becoming more brilliant when we elect imbeciles to represent us in Congress, or while people tune in by the millions to watch Snooki be stupid on television.

So if we’re not getting smarter and the average grades given to students are going up, clearly something’s going on. As they say, follow the money then. Schools are awarded grants and appropriations based on academic performance. Further, teachers are quite often paid based on the academic performance and reviews of their students.

Think about that and ask yourself: How many classes have you received an A in that you didn’t really earn?

One’s education is supposed to produce a well-rounded individual, who knows about a broad variety of subjects, has been taught critical thinking skills, and therefore is competent enough to be able to do essentially any task. And what a person educated in this fashion does not know or understand, they are skilled enough that they can teach themselves. This is the essence and end goal of what is known as a classical liberal education.

Rather than do that, however, because of the funding and payroll caveats, many teachers and schools teach what’s on the test, whether it’s their own test or a standardized test like the ITBS or ACT. What specifically is on standardized tests is, of course, classified top secret until the test is given, but we do know ahead of time what kind of questions will be on them. And obviously, a teacher knows exactly what’s on their own tests.

So knowing all that, a student can be taught the things he needs to know to excel at the test. In so doing though, all sorts of knowledge that’s important to produce quality intellect and character in a human being is lost in the gaps between test questions.

Admitting there’s a problem is one of the steps to recovery. We don’t have to agree on the exact problems with education, or their solutions even. Though knowing what we know — that we’re all getting dumber — we can each individually counteract the effects of declining education in America, even if the university won’t man up and do it for us.

You’re here and you’re registered for classes. That part was easy (God knows the school takes anyone with a pulse these days: The ISU Fact Book shows we admitted 84.3 percent of all applicants and 86.3 percent of freshman applicants in 2011). And now that you’re here, challenge yourself. Take hard classes. Take classes that have nothing to do with your major. Take classes from professors who are notorious for being ball busters. Work hard to work hard.

Take an interest in your education, folks. You’re here to become the person you’re going to be for the rest of your life, and you’re faced with a simple choice: Do you want to be a good, well-rounded person? Or do you just want to skate through life a complete dumbass?

The way is easy. Strive hard.