A few points...
The reason some students can't spell is because other skills are prioritised at school, skills that I for one would have liked to have had the opportunity to take on but didn't get it: problem-solving across different subjects, working with others, etc. Not being able to spell totally accurately doesn't make a person less intelligent.
Some universities, in order to gain funding, accept student with less qualifications than the Ivy League institutions but they still offer valuable Higher Education to students who wouldn't have got a sniff of a university education in our day.
I visit primary schools both to teach and advise and I can say that grammar and even etymology is taught. Parsing, as such, isn't taught, but parts of speech most certainly are.
When I was at Primary 40+ years ago, we were taught spelling, long division, calculating square roots, etc, but in a class of 40, I reckon it's fair to say that only a handful of us actually understood them to any extent and I doubt any of us understaood them all fully. In those days, ten of us would have gone to 'Senior Secondary', twenty would have gone to 'Secondary' and the rest 'Junior Secondary'. Most of the second group would have been very ordinary at spelling, grammar, etc., and the others would have been pretty clueless. Nowadays all three groups go on to mingle at Secpondary school so obviously it will seem as though standards are falling. Also, kids nowadays follow a much broader curriculum than in our day so they have less time in each subject therefore they cover less ground. It doesn't mean they are any less able than kids in our day. They have different skills.
(I could go on... B) )
