I’m no elitist, but Western desperately needs to stiffen its admission standards.

With first-year entrance grades averaging at 87 per cent, you’d expect Western students would be, by-and-large, an intelligent crowd.

Not so.

A walk through campus will quickly disillusion anyone who ever pictured university as an exclusive academic institution, full of only the brightest and the best.

Instead, Western is infamous for its comically dim-witted student population. Take, for example, one of my personal favourites found on the ever-popular — and well supplied — Facebook page, Overheard at UWO:

Prof: Just a reminder the exam is this Saturday

Girl to her friend: What are you gonna wear for it?

Sadly, this conversation is far from an exception — it seems our student minds are far more concerned with alcohol and aesthetics than Einstein and economics.

Another overheard comment encapsulates Western students’ flippant attitude towards higher learning:

“All my friends at Queen’s think us Western kids are dumb. But whatever; we are richer.”

“Yah, their parents are probably working for our parents.”

While these comments are hilarious, and perhaps exaggerated, they nevertheless bring to light a serious issue — Western is full of idiots.

During my career as an English major, I’ve been floored a few times when peers — in fourth-year classes — have asked for the definition of an adverb, or have reacted with surprise when told the hamburger-style essay is unacceptable in university.

It’s hard to tell whether this decreasing intelligence pool is the fault of high schools or universities, but most likely the blame falls on both.

Certainly most would agree high school grades are inflated. Any upper-year who has attended a first-year class will admit higher entrance averages have no correlation with improved aptitude in frosh — if anything they seem to be losing their mental stamina by the minute. Ask any professor, and no doubt you will receive an earful on how students are increasingly under prepared and under qualified for academia.

Our public education system is in a sad state — many can boast of sailing through high school with an A+ average, despite regularly skipping class and typically writing assignments the night before they’re due.

As for the students who actually do work hard — unless high schools start awarding 110 per cents, there’s not much room for reflecting excellence in grading when a sub-par effort can earn an 85 per cent.

It’s no surprise Western admissions fails to separate the slackers from the studious, with little to go on except for extra-curricular involvement, inflated grades and the odd reference letter. And while I sympathize with the registrar’s office, it’s ultimately up to universities to separate the doers from the dough-heads.

Universities should be striving to intensify the admissions process through more rigorous application requirements — class attendance rates, and examples of schoolwork would be a good start.

Admittedly, when it comes down to it, large research-oriented institutions like Western are more worried about their grant funding and bottom line than their academic excellence.

However, as long as this organization calls itself a “university,” it carries the responsibility of weeding out the less-than scholarly. While Western may be proud of its 87 per cent entrance average, accepting inflated grades is nothing to boast about.