Try $2.5 billion, according to an organization called Strong American Schools. That’s the cost to taxpayers for remedial education at public universities, so it doesn’t include the additional cost of tuition and fees paid by the remediated students. The Heartland Institute’s School Reform News reports on the implications:

According to the study, the majority of students said they had taken
a rigorous course load in high school. Some even had taken advanced
courses said to be similar to college courses.

Even so, the majority of the students said their high school courses were too easy, according to the report.

Part of the reason so many students wind up in remedial college
courses, said Neal McCluskey, an education policy analyst at the Cato
Institute in Washington DC, is that not all of them actually belong in
college. Some would be served better by going to vocational school or
spending a few years in the workforce before moving on to higher
education.

?One of the biggest problems is that we as a society, especially
political leaders, say that everyone essentially needs to go to
college?that the American dream runs through ivy-covered buildings,?
McCluskey explained. ?No political leader, or most, won?t say, ?Well,
lots of kids don?t have the wherewithal to go to college.? People don?t
want to think leaders are condemning their kids to a second-class
existence.?