Recently, scandal has struck the Frontiers in Psychology journal. Following the acceptance of the paper ‘Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average’, debate broke out on X (formerly Twitter). Most controversially, the paper asserted this,
‘The decline in students’ IQ is a necessary consequence of increasing educational attainment over the last 80 years. Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s.’
I am not expert in this field, yet this hypothesis seems reasonable; in many activities, elites tend to be more able. Certainly, it does not warrant the actions of the journal’s Chief Editor, who overruled the handling editor and three peer reviewers (a very unusual step) and objected to the argument that declining IQs reflected university expansion. Frontiers in Psychology retracted the paper and it is now under review in another journal.
Following the affair, much commentary has concentrated on the role of social media in forcing the retraction. As readers will guess, I do not approve. Yet few have commented on another topic: objection to the argument that falling IQs reflected widening access.
In academia, I have long observed resistance to the idea that certain subjects, institutions or groups have more merit than others. There are limits to this; student grading is central to academia. Yet beyond the imperative of internal hierarchies, a core need of a capitalist society, many are reluctant to acknowledge external hierarchies.
For example, few like to acknowledge that certain teaching and assessment methods are more intellectually rigorous than others or that (say) classical music is more culturally significant than popular music and deserves greater protection. When such questions involve equality and diversity – traditional academia is famously non-diverse – reluctance increases. In the case of this article, the editor so dislikes the idea that elite academia could have more merit than mass academia (on just one metric) that he has retracted the paper.
This reflects wider trends. In recent decades, confidence in Western culture has declined and egalitarian philosophies have become more influential. Watching the BBC’s 2018 remake of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation series, Times columnist James Marriott observed that presenters were unable to assert that some forms of culture were superior to others; Clark had no such problem and was much more informative.
In academia, path dependency has made this idea particularly forceful. As the sector has become less elitist, large constituencies have emerged in non-traditional institutions and subjects; resultingly, appeals to parity with traditional academia have become part of professional identity and help protect positions in the sector. Last year, a New Statesman article worried about the decline of standards in universities, making reasonable points. Reaction was revealing, much being anecdotal or ad hominem rather than engaging with the arguments.
Whatever its origin, we may worry about this development. Beyond concern for truth, the erosion of external hierarchies encourages declining standards. Like the BBC presenters, those who cannot identify academic standards cannot defend them.
Equally, this attitude leaves subjects defenceless against the market. Today, venerable disciplines such as philosophy and ancient languages are under attack. Yet if one does not use external hierarchies, it is difficult to assert that such disciplines are intrinsically worthy. Of course, this suits managers who are eager to cut costs. For this reason, some note an alliance between managers and progressives.
Many of those who resist external hierarchies associate them with attacks on non-traditional academia. But this need not be the case. One may regard classical music as meriting special protection and support the teaching of popular music; one may acknowledge the leading role of traditional institutions and esteem non-traditional institutions.
Certainly, hypotheses which uphold external hierarchies should not be dismissed by editorial fiat. We should hope the article finds a good home. Whether academia will rediscover external hierarchies is another question.
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Might this be ultimately about the business model? Higher ed has built huge businesses by expanding the client pool and necessarily introducing subjects that less academically able (in the traditional sense) students will be interested to study. It sounds like a paper describing the consequences of that is too hot to print.
Wholesale rejection of academic rigor in public schools, dismissal of academic achievement testing for admissions, lowering of academic standards for grads, EEOC professors sporting skeezy CV’s, mass immigration of >90IQ populations from all the planet’s lowest achieving countries.
How could anyone be surprised by the results? This is not a fluke; it’s the culmination of a successful campaign.