Background:
According to a widespread belief, the average IQ of university students is 115 to 130 IQ points, that is, substantially higher than the average IQ of the general population (
M
= 100,
SD
...= 15). We traced the origin of this belief to obsolete intelligence data collected in 1940s and 1950s when university education was the privilege of a few. Examination of more recent IQ data indicate that IQ of university students and university graduates dropped to the average of the general population. 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.
Method:
We conducted a meta-analysis of the mean IQ scores of college and university students samples tested with Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale between 1939 and 2022.
Results:
The results show that the average IQ of undergraduate students today is a mere 102 IQ points and declined by approximately 0.2 IQ points per year. The students’ IQ also varies substantially across universities and is correlated with the selectivity of universities (measured by average SAT scores of admitted students).
Discussion:
These findings have wide-ranging implications. First, universities and professors need to realize that students are no longer extraordinary but merely average, and have to adjust curricula and academic standards. Second, employers can no longer rely on applicants with university degrees to be more capable or smarter than those without degrees. Third, students need to realize that acceptance into university is no longer an invitation to join an elite group. Fourth, the myth of brilliant undergraduate students in scientific and popular literature needs to be dispelled. Fifth, estimating premorbid IQ based on educational attainment is vastly inaccurate, obsolete, not evidence based, and mere wishful thinking. Sixth, obsolete IQ data or tests ought not to be used to make high-stakes decisions about individuals, for example, by clinical psychologists to opine about the intelligence and cognitive abilities of their clients.
Acknowledgement of gender disparity in academia has been made in recent years, as have efforts to reduce this inequality. These efforts will be undermined if insufficient numbers of women qualify and ...are competitive for academic careers. The gender ratio at each graduate degree level has been examined in some studies, with findings suggesting that women’s representation has increased, and in some recent cases, achieved equality. These findings are promising as they could indicate that more women will soon qualify for early-career academic positions. Most of these studies, however, examine a specific—or narrow subset—of academic disciplines. Therefore, it remains unclear if these findings generalize across disciplines. Gambling researchers, and the graduate students they supervise, are a uniquely heterogeneous group representing multiple academic disciplines including health sciences, math, law, psychology, and sociology, among many more. Thus, gambling student researchers are a group who can be examined for gender equality at postgraduate levels, while reducing the impact of discipline specificity evident in previous investigations. The current study examined graduate-level scholarships from one Canadian funding agency (Alberta Gambling Research Institute), awarded from 2009 through 2019, for gender parity independent of academic discipline.
In a widely cited and widely talked about study, MacNell et al. (2015) 1 examined SET ratings of one female and one male instructor, each teaching two sections of the same online course, one section ...under their true gender and the other section under false/opposite gender. MacNell et al. concluded that students rated perceived female instructors more harshly than perceived male instructors, demonstrating gender bias against perceived female instructors. Boring, Ottoboni, and Stark (2016) 2 re-analyzed MacNell et al.’s data and confirmed their conclusions. However, the design of MacNell et al. study is fundamentally flawed. First, MacNell et al.’ section sample sizes were extremely small, ranging from 8 to 12 students. Second, MacNell et al. included only one female and one male instructor. Third, MacNell et al.’s findings depend on three outliers – three unhappy students (all in perceived female conditions) who gave their instructors the lowest possible ratings on all or nearly all SET items. We re-analyzed MacNell et al.’s data with and without the three outliers. Our analyses showed that the gender bias against perceived female instructors disappeared. Instead, students rated the actual female vs. male instructor higher, regardless of perceived gender. MacNell et al.’s study is a real-life demonstration that conclusions based on extremely small sample-sized studies are unwarranted and uninterpretable.
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