In The Book of the Journeyman, Albert Jay Nock laments the decline of education:
Following the strange American dogma that all persons are educable, and following the equally fantastic popular estimate placed upon mere numbers, our whole educational system has watered down its requirements to something precious near the moron standard.The American curriculum in “the liberal arts” is a combination of bargain-counter, grab-bag and Christmas-tree. It is not long since the newspapers were quoting President Butler of Columbia as saying he did not think he had a man in his whole institution, student or professor, who could pass the examinations that Columbia College used to set for entering freshmen fifty years ago.