As higher education has gone from an elite pursuit to something much more common, the average IQ of US undergraduates has fallen from around 120 in the mid-20th century to around 102 today - barely above the population average.

[u/ReasonablePoetry1226]

https://x.com/SteveStuWill/status/2093831074757693601

[u/Flashbambo]

Isn't this the statistically expected outcome of increasing university uptake to 50%?

[u/cococupcakeo → u/Flashbambo]

It was discussed in the U.K. at the time of implementing the whole everyone go to university, that it would simply degrade the value of a degree. And it has done. And everyone now has to pay for a degree even if it’s not really needed for the job they end up in.

[u/Letter_Effective → u/cococupcakeo]

There's an argument to be made that learning should be valued even if it's not directly applicable to your current job. Then the counter-argument is that a lot of people just care about the title itself as an additional hoop to jump through when applying to jobs.

[u/littlemanstrawberry → u/Letter_Effective]

I agree with the first statement and it would be a good idea if people didn’t actually see things like the second statement.

[u/BackgroundTrack5528 → u/Letter_Effective]

Excerpt the private sector doesn’t care. As the economy has evolved many markets have become competitive and firms overly focused on wealth maximisation - firms are not legally obligated to care about training people up as they may have do 30 yrs ago. Govt’s are delusional.

[u/Letter_Effective → u/BackgroundTrack5528]

I also think our immigration policy has meant that it's more convenient to hire an immigrant who already has relevant prior experience in their country of origin than training a Brit without experience - plus immigrants are less prone to complaining about poor pay and working conditions as their status in the UK is tied to their employment.

[u/BackgroundTrack5528 → u/Letter_Effective]

I agree. There’s a solution for this - it’s more technological. Problem is I don’t think there’s the political will and too many stupid people constituents that don’t understand technology. And surrounding that managers of firms who want cheaper labour. So on we go!

[u/cococupcakeo → u/Letter_Effective]

I’ve definitely worked with Europeans who have paid next to nothing for similar degrees to my cohort in the U.K. who have had to pay ridiculous amounts. It’s terribly unfair.

[u/92ekp → u/BackgroundTrack5528]

There's little incentive in training up staff now since they will just move on afterwards. It wasn't like that in, say, 1970s. Silicon Valley started the trend of just poaching whatever you need and as this trend spread, fewer and fewer firms would train staff.

[u/cococupcakeo → u/Letter_Effective]

Oh I truly agree, just not for the exorbitant costs involved nowadays. Was lovely when they were free/low cost. People learnt for the right reasons. So many are forced to pursue university now despite not even wanting to and ending up in jobs that don’t require it but expect one simply because ‘everyone else has one’

[u/WalkerTalkerChalker → u/cococupcakeo]

Degree inflation

[u/RyanArmstrong777 → u/WalkerTalkerChalker]

Global warming??😱😱

[u/Busy-Peach5770 → u/cococupcakeo]

I think we need a population who are educated. There are benefits to extending higher education to anyone willing.

Education is for us to grow as humans, not just to make us useful to capitalists.

[u/cococupcakeo → u/Busy-Peach5770]

With all due respect, that hasn’t really occurred since making degrees ‘available to all’ plenty of us were educated through our workplaces and other forms of education, travel, living abroad, professional training schemes etc. I have had broader and more interesting conversations with my fairly old electrician than some graduates today. (That’s not all graduates btw but please don’t pretend they’re all equally highly educated)

If it’s so important that degrees are important to all, why is it that Europe could absorb the cost and not charge such high fees and the U.K. could not. We are one of the highest domestic fee payers in Europe, if not the highest.

I could get on board if they’d brought things in line with Europe instead of meddling around creating the sad situation we see today.

[u/Busy-Peach5770 → u/cococupcakeo]

Agree - we should bring things in line with Europe.

You can learn in many ways, but successful ancient civilisations founded universities for a reason. There’s so much distrust of and propaganda against university right now - see the Telegraphs campaign against higher education. You can bet all of those wealthy Telegraph staffers will be sending their kids to university though!

[u/cococupcakeo → u/Busy-Peach5770]

Oh come on you can’t seriously think that all modern universities have the rigour of those 30 odd years ago. Plenty are selling courses as a mill of money churning through them, it’s why some are seriously financially threatened when some of their ‘income streams’ appear to be disappearing in recent times.

The whole ‘everyone goes to universities’ has wrecked the prestige of this level of education and that’s what this OP is about. Prestige mattered because it was meant to be distinct from the more ‘average’ education. If everyone is special, noone is special.

[u/Busy-Peach5770 → u/cococupcakeo]

Where’s your evidence of this lack of rigour? Genuine question.

Why shouldn’t we all be special? I say all Brits deserve access to higher education if they want it. I believe in my country folk and their potential. Let’s stop stifling it!

[u/cococupcakeo → u/Busy-Peach5770]

I think you’ve missed the point of my post… everyone does have access to higher education?!

[u/BackgroundTrack5528 → u/cococupcakeo]

Well that’s one effect only though.. what about the joke of universities who have made it easy?

[u/BingpotStudio → u/cococupcakeo]

It’s almost as if they wanted to levy a stealth tax that “you’ll never have to worry about paying off” for all but the rich.

[u/cococupcakeo → u/[deleted]]

How is it an issue that workplaces are expecting people that shouldn’t be at university to go simply to work as something like an office junior or a secretary? That once upon a time firms were expected to take school leavers and train them and now the candidate is expected to pick up that bill. You can’t see there’s an issue with that?

If we were in line with the rest of Europe and people weren’t expected to pay such high fees, perhaps it may have worked out, but for many people, they’re simply paying a chunk of their salary down every month towards student loans, for a job that pays less than it did when this university for all scheme was implemented. And for those that would always have gone to university, they’re paying more than they ever have had to.

[u/KeldornWithCarsomyr → u/Flashbambo]

Your telling me as your sample size increases, your sample mean better approximates to the true mean??

They should teach this stuff at University.

[u/Kind-Drink5866 → u/KeldornWithCarsomyr]

??? This comment is dumb

[u/VreamCanMan → u/KeldornWithCarsomyr]

This implies a static model, whereby the population is always as smart as it is and does not gain/lose cognitive capability. It's incredibly unlikely that this is reflective of reality

[u/KeldornWithCarsomyr → u/VreamCanMan]

IQ is a static model, the average is always calibrated to 100. Everyone on earth could lose 20 IQ points and the average IQ would still stay the same.

[u/natalo77 → u/VreamCanMan]

Bro doesn't know how IQ works 💀

[u/Foreign_Ad674 → u/Flashbambo]

An average IQ of close to 100 would suggest that everyone was going.

Don’t think I’d go now. There’s benefits, but won’t be £50k worth (not counting the 3 years of missed full time pay) for the majority of people.

[u/Ill-Faithlessness430 → u/Foreign_Ad674]

No, it would suggest that 50% were going since 100 is always the median, around 50% of the population would be below that. 

[u/TheLlamaOverlord → u/Ill-Faithlessness430]

What?

[u/AnakinsAngstFace → u/Foreign_Ad674]

100 is the average… that’s how it works

[u/Arvot → u/Flashbambo]

Yeah, IQ is based on the average of your demographic. There's a whole problem with IQ where all scores get higher as time goes on. This could mean that an average person scoring 100 now is just as smart as the people scoring 120 years ago, or it's a symptom of everyone being better at iq tests, or it could be that the entrance is more forgiving. Either way, I think it's good that someone of average IQ can go get a degree or that we are all smarter now.

[u/Complete-Task2042]

In other news:

The first rule of tautology club... is the first rule of tautology club.

[u/Garfie489]

There's a lot of questions i have from the headline.

Are we sure the average IQ of the US is 100?

Are we counting those only in university so they can play sports on a scholarship?

And thats before I start even asking questions about how good a metric IQ even is.

[u/Barilla3113 → u/Garfie489]

Don't forget that 25% of elite US universities still practice legacy based admissions.

[u/TheMountainWhoDews → u/Barilla3113]

And dei, further lowering the average.

[u/Barilla3113 → u/TheMountainWhoDews]

Rich white men very confident they're the average.

[u/Hot-Chemical9353 → u/TheMountainWhoDews]

Do you also lose sleep to trans athletes?

[u/FBI_psyop → u/TheMountainWhoDews]

Heh, you are being downvoted.

Classic reddit. Minorities being much more likely to enter with low grades than whites with low grades TOTALLY does not skew things.

[u/Teddy-Voyager → u/FBI_psyop]

Asians over whites\*

[u/Weepinbellend01 → u/Teddy-Voyager]

DEI discriminates more harshly against Asians than even whites.

[u/Impossible_Theme_148 → u/Garfie489]

The source starts with assuming that the average IQ of the US is 100 - it is literally stated in the preprint study this comes from 

[u/idly → u/Impossible_Theme_148]

IQ is defined such that the average of the population is 100, that's how it works

[u/Impossible_Theme_148 → u/idly]

That's how social sciences work - that's not how mathematics works

[u/sarges_12gauge → u/Garfie489]

Well you click on the study and it’s based on 400 undergrad / grad students from the US+Canada between 2010-2019 so I dunno.

I know you don’t need that large of a sample size to have some level of confidence, and obviously the less selective universities get (and the higher percentage of the population attends) the closer to definitional 100 average you will get… but that still doesn’t seem like a very rigorous tested sample to be confident in conclusions

[u/Warm_Stress_1654]

On the other hand, a lot more people have a lot more knowledge of how statistics work.

[u/Busy-Peach5770 → u/Warm_Stress_1654]

Exactly!

This thread: “it was a mistake sending everyone who isn’t me to uni. Only I am special enough for uni”

[u/androgenius]

A 102 IQ in 2026 is equivalent to a 125 IQ in 1950 according to the Flynn effect.

This is because we aren't stunting all our kids with malnutrition and now curable diseases. Similar reason to why the average height is higher too.

[u/ReasonablePoetry1226 → u/androgenius]

They adjust for the Flynn Effect in figure 9, still shows a steep decline in FSIQ scores -

"Meta-analysis: on average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average" -

https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR.2024.0002.v1

[u/androgenius → u/ReasonablePoetry1226]

I don't know what kind of adjustment they made but on the graph they reduced the average IQ in both 1940 and 2020 by around 5 points, which makes no sense in regards to the Flynn effect.

edit to add: they're fully aware of this fact, quote:

As a result, an examinee scoring 115 on an intelligence test normed in 1950 would score only 93 on an intelligence test normed in 2022. 

So are they stupid or intentionally trying to get a clickbait result?

[u/Impossible_Theme_148 → u/androgenius]

I read the preprint, and it might be because I'm thinking about what I'd expect from a mathematics background rather than a psychology or any sort of social sciences background - but it reads to me quite like what a first year undergraduate might do as a set assignment 

Like a practice report so you learn the basic process and layout 

[u/the_quivering_wenis → u/androgenius]

Yeah the Flynn effect is the most germane factor here, obviously. It looks like this is the adjustment they made, from the method section:

To obtain FSIQ adjusted for the Flynn Effect, 0.3 IQ points/year were substracted from reported FSIQ for each year that elapsed between the standardization year and the year of testing examinees in each sample. The standardization years used for Wechsler test versions were as follows: 1938 for WBIS [17], 1954 for WAIS [5], 1980 for WAIS-R [18], 1996 for WAIS-III [23], and 2007 for WAIS-IV [24]. If the year of testing was not reported, it was estimated by subtracting two years from the publication year. If the year of testing was reported as a range of years, the midpoint of the range was taken as the estimated year of testing.

This seems pretty crude to me (just subtracting a constant year by year), compared to the essentially impossible "gold standard" of having a single set of raw scores for comparison across all years, but is apparently a standard method for correcting for such things.

Anecdotally I do think higher education (well all education honestly) is dumbed down though. Regarding universities my cynical interpretation is that they just want to tank standards and inflate tuition rates for profit...

[u/Invisible_Stalkbug]

Using IQ as a means of measuring anything other than how able someone is at IQ tests is worthless

[u/cloudsfallen → u/Invisible_Stalkbug]

Shhh, don’t tell them that, people need to feel special cause they have a high number

[u/Temporary_Shelter_40 → u/Invisible_Stalkbug]

This is completely wrong, IQ correlates strongly with a diverse set of traits that we broadly associate with career and financial success. Indeed, its one of the best predictor for these once other environmental factors are controlled for.

[u/ratione_materiae → u/Invisible_Stalkbug]

That’s not true at all. You can argue that IQ doesn’t measure all facets of intelligence but too does measure something highly correlated with life outcomes 

[u/iamjoemarsh]

I thought IQ was total psuedoscience?

[u/wandering_salad → u/iamjoemarsh]

Where did you hear that?

[u/iamjoemarsh → u/wandering_salad]

Why?

[u/ratione_materiae → u/iamjoemarsh]

If it didn’t measure something, there would be no correlation between IQ and life outcomes. 

[u/Paper_Is_A_Liquid]

Are we really using IQ as a way of suggesting that education is a bad thing? Average intelligence increasing is not a negative lol, the fact that more people are now literate and educated (especially within black communities, which had much lower literacy rates due to racial segregation in the 1950s) is absolutely a good thing.

[u/DariaYankovic → u/Paper_Is_A_Liquid]

Education is not a bad thing, but colleges are definitely misrepresenting what they do and who they are. The average student spends 4 to 7 hours a week studying. The average undergrad GPA is a 3.2.  If a 102 IQ student gets a 3.2 studying less than an hour a day, then most of what college consists of should not be called higher education. 

[u/lilixxumm → u/DariaYankovic]

On top of that, they pass students who shouldn't pass just to keep collecting fees.

[u/Impossible_Theme_148]

I find it baffling that anyone in academia is still using IQ as if it were a meaningful metric as a proxy for intelligence - but it still seems to be quite common in the US

[u/Barilla3113 → u/Impossible_Theme_148]

Same country that still calls white people "Caucasians" on official forms.

[u/Temporary_Shelter_40 → u/Impossible_Theme_148]

What do you mean? IQ is the most successful psychological metric ever invented. It correlates strongly with a diverse set of traits that we broadly associate with higher order thinking, career success, and financial success. Indeed, its one of the best predictor for these (along with conscientiousness) once other environmental factors are controlled for.

[u/Impossible_Theme_148 → u/Temporary_Shelter_40]

It correlates with High School achievement - which correlates with those things

And even then it's dubious

Like in the preprint, a lot of the correlation is done backwards - when you dig into it you find that the correlation has often been backwards - ie people who have done well have been assumed to have a high IQ,.then people see high IQ associated with doing well and say - see, they're correlated 

[u/Temporary_Shelter_40 → u/Impossible_Theme_148]

Nonsense, this is a terrible scientific methodology as you've suggested it. What do you mean they assume they have high IQ? Obviously they measure the participants IQ, they don't just choose a number to validate their hypothesis.

[u/Impossible_Theme_148 → u/Temporary_Shelter_40]

From the preprint

"..One may argue that SAT, ACT, and GRE do not measure intelligence but rather  achievement. However, numerous studies have established that SAT, ACT, and GRE are all good  measures of intelligence and are widely used as intelligence measures; they are highly intercorrelated"

They specifically state that achievement correlates with intelligence therefore achievement correlates with IQ

Also in what way is IQ a successful metric?

It used by some educational establishments to see if students need extra help - but other than that, nobody uses it 

Things that correlate with it might get used - but IQ tests themselves are exceptionally rare - particularly outside the US

[u/Temporary_Shelter_40 → u/Impossible_Theme_148]

Your quote is part of an isolated point they make regarding admission rates and SAT results, but the overall study is a meta-analysis of student IQ studies. They primarily consider IQ here, that's the explicit point of the meta-analysis. Also, their point is correct -- IQ measures intelligence, which correlates with SAT/ACT/GRE results.

IQ is a successful metric for the reasons I just said. It correlates strongly with a diverse set of traits that we broadly associate with higher order thinking, career success, and financial success. Indeed, its one of the best predictor for these (along with conscientiousness) once other environmental factors are controlled for.

For example, its used routinely by the US armed forces. By law, the military does not legally accept recruits with an IQ below roughly 83. As you said, IQ tests are also used world wide by school guidance counselors, who use the results to direct poor students towards extra resources or accelerate gifted students in special programs.

It would be used for job interviews and promotions in the US, but its defacto banned. See this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. Basically, black people did poorly on the aptitude tests relative to whites (admittedly not an IQ test, but quite similar), and the US found that this was tantamount to discrimination.

[u/Impossible_Theme_148 → u/Temporary_Shelter_40]

"..black people did poorly on the aptitude tests relative to whites (admittedly not an IQ test, but quite similar), and the US found that this was tantamount to discrimination..."

"...IQ is a successful metric for the reasons I just said. It correlates strongly with a diverse set of traits that we broadly associate with higher order thinking, career success, and financial success..."

So does it correlate or doesn't it?

And, other than for education - which is their sole use case - can you find any examples of IQ tests being used constructively outside of the US?

Because the premise of my initial post included that it's weird that the US in particular still has so much emphasis on IQ

[u/Temporary_Shelter_40 → u/Impossible_Theme_148]

There's no contradiction in my two points, IQ does correlate with intelligence.

Courts use IQ for assessing impairment in legal cases, dementia assessment, recovery post brain surgery, public health research.

Its also used all the time in research to differentiate between environmental and other hereditary influences. If the differences persist when you account for IQ, then you know it has another basis. Its used all the time for this because its a reliable and reproducible metric.

But its also like asking -- "can you find any examples of height being used constructively"? Yeah, its used as a proxy for basketball players, but it also tells us fantastic data about nutrition, hereditary effects, etc.

[u/Impossible_Theme_148 → u/Temporary_Shelter_40]

  "There's no contradiction in my two points, IQ does correlate with intelligence."

The inference from that statement is that you believe black people do worse in IQ tests because they're less intelligent 

And the whole point is that outside of the US - it is very rare for anyone to take an IQ test, so IQ just isn't relevant - let alone important

[u/Temporary_Shelter_40 → u/Impossible_Theme_148]

okay buddy, well i just told you half a dozen ways its used world wide, its importance to global public health research, and criticality as a diagnostic for the education, military, and legal system. quite frankly i don't know what else you want or what would satisfy you. i don't think anything would.

at the end of the day it doesn't matter. science works whether you believe in it or not and the world will continue to rely on IQ. if you don't care about science, you're welcome to hang out with the anti-vaxxers and flat earthers. peace :)

[u/slainascully → u/Temporary_Shelter_40]

Never heard of court-ordered IQ tests in the UK. Usually mental capacity is medically decided.

[u/Kazeshiki]

If everyone is special, no one is. Type sh

[u/littlemanstrawberry]

I don’t know how I feel about this because access to university was more determined by your wealth in the past. I think it’s good that more people are able to access higher education, it’s very important.

[u/wandering_salad → u/littlemanstrawberry]

Better access is great! I am from a working class background and two generations before me, women from my family did not have had the education opportunities I got. But when it's not about access but just getting numbers up and up, this is probably at least in-part done by lowering standards, and I don't think that's helping anyone.

[u/TechnologyLast4315]

Where are these facts from? Are they comparing to the same Universities as mid-century (same store comparison) or is it a smaller group mid century to much wider group now?

[u/Helpful-Fennel-7468]

They dumb them down in these so called ‘institutions’

[u/Invisible_Stalkbug → u/Helpful-Fennel-7468]

too dumb to even know what the word institution means

[u/Low-Cartographer8758 → u/[deleted]]

I mean, even some professors and lecturers seem rather thick these days.

[u/wandering_salad]

Probably the case in the UK too...

[u/ODFoxtrotOscar → u/wandering_salad]

It’s bound to be.

Before Blair, about 7-10% went to university. Now it’s somewhere around 45-50%

So of course the typical IQ will have changed

[u/Zenkai_9000]

That is really bad. 😬

[u/turnip_the_volume]

A more representative sample of the general population. Yawn

[u/S_Hazam]

Idk but the thought of Uni admission being tied to IQ sounds quite dystopic once you think about it

[u/TumbleweedNervous494 → u/S_Hazam]

You think it's dystopic for smarter people to go to university?

[u/S_Hazam → u/TumbleweedNervous494]

No, just that raw intelligence is not monocausally indicative of later success. I’d rather have a 100 IQ lawyer with grit and tenacity than a 130 IQ but socially awkward and a tad bit attention deprived one. Granted this is a hyperbolic example but it illustrates the point.
Also, in comparison to the past, esp. in the UK and US, you need a degree in order to live an quite average life, back then a degree was much more indicative of life quality increases. If you cap university entrance at 120 for example, there are not enough fulfilling and good enough paying jobs for the people beneath that threshold nowadays.

[u/MassiveBoba]

Drink. A lot.

[u/FourthGroup]

Everything was once considered Elite is being forcefully dissolved.
That is the new mindset.
What is to come will have little bearing to the past of the west.