Someone pointed out upthread that when you remove the scores of children from poor districts the difference is not so pronounced, but unfortunately, that ignores the reality of American economic life. More and more college is regarded as "essential" for economic security, i.e. something better than a McJob. Enrollment continues to grow.
At the same time, those students are arriving less and less well prepared for university work, and they're under prepared in particularly insidious ways, such as having poor problem solving skills and being averse to intellectual challenge. The result is stress and burnout, and low student success rates, which in turn pressure university administrators to find "solutions" at our end of the pipeline to mitigate a problem that was somehow fostered throughout students' prior educational/cultural experience. Solutions often lead to grade inflation, enormous effort expended on individualized attention outside the classroom to identify academically at risk students and intervene, paring back course content and academic standards, and redefining the relationship between professors and students, often resulting in further erosion of academic standards.
The tension between student/parent expectations and academic/professional integrity has never been higher, in my experience. When I began this work we understood that a university professor's primary responsibility was to their profession, and that academic duties were performed to prepare successive generations of colleagues-- as such, personal success was each students' own individual responsibility and high, challenging academic standards were the guarantor of high quality professional development.
Today, students and parents view higher ed in investment terms and expect a return on investment, i.e. they expect to succeed more-or-less by default. The result is that we graduate far more degree holders than their respective disciplines can absorb, and usually graduate them at levels of professional development that are completely inadequate for joining those professions. The whole point of higher ed is shifting away from professional development and toward vocational training, or at least job acquisition.
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