According to the authors of the study (conducted from 2006-2018), overall declines in IQ held true across all age groups after controlling for educational attainment and gender – but participants in the 18- to 22-year-old range showed a steeper drop in cognitive abilities.
American Family News contacted Dr. David Randall, research director for the National Association of Scholars, for his reaction. Randall says more studies are needed in order to verify this decline; but if the decline is, in part, caused by substandard schooling, he suggests it would have to be the softening effect of generations of progressive instruction and training.
"There may have been such horrible schooling in the last generation or two that it's actually managed to degrade even results in IQ tests," he tells AFN.
As Campus Reform points out, Millennials (the main age group that would have completed their K-12 and college education during the time of the study period) have experienced "vast changes" in the U.S. education system. For example, a nationwide low reading proficiency can be attributed, at least in part, to progressive curricula from teachers colleges; and "grade inflation," expensive tuition, the "woke" campus culture, and a lowering of academic rigor have all contributed to a crisis in higher education.
Still, Randall argues there's more to life than having a high IQ. "At the end of the day," he says, "we are all equally God's children and all have equal dignity regardless of intelligence.
"Our worth is not our intelligence as individuals or as a nation – it's in the moral choices we make."
Earlier this year, Campus Reform reported that because of a post-pandemic "hangover from virtual high school," some colleges and universities in the Pittsburgh had lowered expectations of their students – and that in one case, a statistics prof had to teach basic math skills to his students because teachers "actively helped" them in high school.
