Published: 08:50 AM, 30 April 2026
Students in many wealthy nations are performing poorly in universities
While developing nations still battle to expand access to education, the West now faces a different challenge: maintaining the quality and intellectual seriousness that once made its schools world-leading. The reasons are complex—technological distraction, policy missteps, cultural shifts, and the aftershocks of the pandemic—but the pattern is unmistakable. Western education systems are losing ground, and the consequences could reshape economies and societies for decades to come. The clearest evidence of decline comes from international testing programs such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The 2022 PISA report described the drop in performance as “unprecedented.” Average math scores across the 81 participating countries fell by 15 points compared with the 2018 results, the equivalent of roughly three-quarters of a school year’s learning. Reading declined by another half-year’s worth, while science remained largely stagnant.
Germany, France, Iceland, the Netherlands and the United States—math scores plummeted by 20 to 25 points or more. Analysts stressed that while the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted schooling worldwide, the downward trend had already been under way for years. According to the OECD’s education director, Andreas Schleicher, these results “reflect systemic weaknesses that long predate the pandemic.” The pattern is confirmed by national data. The United States’ National Assessment of Educational Progress—often called the “Nation’s Report Card”—shows that after two decades of modest improvements, reading and math scores plateaued in the early 2010s and then began to fall. Eighth-grade math scores, for example, dropped from their 2013 peak of 74% of students at or above the “basic” level to just 61% in recent testing, the lowest level since the 1990s. Recovery since the pandemic has been patchy: elementary math scores have ticked slightly upward, but reading remains in decline, particularly among low-performing students and girls.
In Germany, the erosion of academic standards has prompted alarm among educators and commentators. Once admired for its rigorous Gymnasium system and world-class vocational training, the country now faces what one teacher described as the “slow death of academic rigor.” The Bologna Process reforms of the late 1990s, which harmonized European university degrees into the bachelor-master-doctorate model, also triggered a wave of grade inflation and bureaucratization. Standardized examinations replaced teacher-designed assessments, while pedagogical fashions such as “competence orientation” discouraged factual learning in favor of loosely defined communication skills. Students trained to recognize question formats rather than to understand complex material. As one veteran German teacher observed, “multiple choice has supplanted multiple perspectives.” The complaints echo across Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, where education policy has increasingly prioritized access and equality over excellence and intellectual depth.
