What is "college-level work"?

What skills does a student need to be "ready for college-level work"?  How should colleges deal with students who are not ready for college level work?  Should such students be excluded from college?  Should they be sennt to community college first?  Should they be given a time limit for "getting up to speed"?  Should they be allowed to take other courses while they're making up "deficiencies" in reading/writing? 

I would think that students who are accepted to a four-year college or university should already be ready for college-level work, minus some of the study and organizational habits that a student will form over the course of his or her studies.

To be ready for college-level work students need

• ·      to be able to read, understand and summarize college-level reading materials
• ·      to be able and willing to form opinions
• ·      to write down assignments and remember to complete them
• ·      to keep track of their schedules
• ·      to use basic word processing software
• ·      to have basic internet skills (opening a browser, basic search functions, email use)

Community colleges need to be prepared to offer coursework that teaches the above skill set and prepares students for college.

Students who demonstrate that they are not prepared for college level work should be offered a study skills/college survival skills course that covers the above topics. They may be able to take introductory classes in math, science, art, music, etc. while getting up to speed, but any upper-division or humanities classes like history, literature or sociology would likely prove too difficult.

In addition to the above skill-set, college students very quickly need to be able to organize their ideas into paragraphs and short essays, respond to texts using quotes and paraphrasing, support their ideas through reasoned argument, and perform basic research (library and database). The freshman-level composition and reading classroom is designed to introduce these skills so that students can succeed in the humanities and upper-division classes in other fields.