Who Needs High School?

It's the same old story year after year. The summer after graduation is coming to a close, Fall Semester begins for universities all across the country, and once agian another group of 18-year-olds is left baffled and confused as to why they are struggling to make C's in college, when they had just floated through high school making A's without even hardly cracking open a textbook. The blame for their poor performance automatically falls onto the shoulders of the colleges and the professors, and the classic complaint becomes, "Why don't colleges make it easier on incoming freshman?" Is that really a valid argument? Isn't college supposed to be the place where students, by choice, pay upwards in the tens of thousands of dollars to recieve the training and knowledge neccessary to get a slip of paper proving they have earned their right to contirbute to society in whatever field they so choose? It's not high school anymore. A degree cannot be earned by simply cruising through four years of nothing but, for lack of a better term, worthless standardized tests that do nothing but satisfy sub-par state and federal education standards so that "No child is left behind." The focus of blame here, needs to be shifted off of the universities and onto the high schools. Numerous studies have proven that the difference between what is taught at the high school level and what is expected at the college level is staggering. High schools need to, for lack of another better term, step up their game, so as to better prepare students for the challenges and expectations that college and life have awaiting them.