I know this is an old post, but I'm amused by an error in your post, pheelyks, especially after all the noise about bad English. Across the globe, we learn in school that it uses an apostrophe only for contraction, never for possession! So it should be "At the very least, it doesn't tell them that its writers do not have the ability to write at a level appropriate for academic purposes." Not "it's writers".
Just for the record.