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[Pre-order a copy of David Horowitz’s next book, America Betrayed, by clicking here. Orders will begin shipping on May 7th.]
Elite higher education in America — long unquestioned as globally preeminent — is facing a perfect storm.
Fewer applicants, higher costs, impoverished students, collapsing standards, and increasingly politicized and mediocre faculty reflect a collapse of the university system.
The country is waking up to the reality that a bachelor’s degree no longer equates with graduates being broadly educated and analytical. Just as often, they are stereotyped as pampered, largely ignorant, and gratuitously opinionated.
No wonder polls show a drastic loss of public respect for higher education and, specifically, a growing lack of confidence in the professoriate.
Each year, there are far fewer students entering college. Despite a U.S. population 40 million larger than 20 years ago, fertility rates have fallen in two decades by some 500,000 births per year.
Meanwhile, from 1980 to 2020, room, board, and tuition increased by 170 percent.
Skyrocketing costs cannot be explained by inflation alone, given that campuses have lightened faculty teaching loads while expanding administrative staff. At Stanford, there is nearly one staffer or administrative position for every student on campus.
At the same time, to vie for a shrinking number of students, colleges began offering costly in loco parentis counseling, Club Med-style dorms and accommodations, and extracurricular activities.
As applicants grew scarcer and expenses went up, universities began offering “full-service” student-aid packages, heavily reliant on government-subsidized student loans. The collective indebtedness of over 40 million student borrowers is nearing $2 trillion.
Worse still, an entire new array of therapeutic majors and minors appeared in the social sciences. Most of these gender/race/environmental courses did not emphasize analytical, mathematical, or oral and written skills. Such course work did not impress employers.
Faculty hiring had become increasingly non-meritocratic based on diversity/equity/inclusion criteria. New faculty hires have sought to institutionalize self-serving DEI and recalibrate higher education to prepare a new generation for self-perpetuating radical ideologies.
At the more elite campuses, racial quotas vastly curtailed the number of Asian and white students. But that racialist social engineering project required dropping the SAT requirement and comparative ranking of high school grade point averages.
As less well-prepared students entered college, faculty either inflated grades (80% are A/A- now at Yale), watered down their course requirements, or added new soft-ball classes. To do otherwise while attempting to retain old standards earned targeted faculty charges of racism and worse.
Another way to square the circle of rising costs and fewer and poorer students was to attract foreign students. They pay the full costs of college, especially those on generous stipends from the Middle East and China. Nearly a million foreign nationals, the majority from illiberal regimes, are now here on full scholarships.
While here, many see their newfound freedoms as invitations to attack America. Once here, they too often romanticize the very autocratic governments and illiberal values of their homelands that they seemingly sought to escape by coming to America.
Most foreign students assume they are exempt from the consequences of violating campus rules or laws in general. After all, they pay the full cost of their education and thus partially subsidize those who do not.
Almost half of all those enrolled in college never graduate. Those who do, on average, require six years to do so.
All these realities explain why teenagers increasingly opt for trade schools, vocational education, and community colleges. They prefer to enter the work force largely debt-free and in demand as skilled, sought-after tradespeople.
Most feel that if the old general education curriculum has been destroyed at weaponized universities, then there is no great loss in skipping the traditional BA degree. A far better selection of demanding and well-taught classes can be found online at a lower cost.
The result is a disaster for both higher education and a wake-up call for the country at large.
Entire generations are now suffering from prolonged adolescence as they drag out college to consume their early and mid-twenties. The unfortunate result for the country is a radical delay in marriage, childbearing, and home ownership–all the time-honored catalysts for adulthood and the responsibilities that come with it.
Politicized faculty, infantilized students, and mediocre classes have combined to erode the prestige of college degrees, even at once elite colleges. A degree from Columbia no longer guarantees either maturity or preeminent knowledge but is just as likely a warning to employers of a noisy, poorly educated graduate more eager to complain to Human Resources than to enhance a company’s productivity.
Yet it may not be all that unfortunate that much of higher education is going the way of malls, movie theaters, and CDs. The country needs far more skilled physical labor and less prolonged adolescence and debt.
STEM courses, professional schools, and traditional campuses are better insulated from mediocrity and should survive. Otherwise, millions more starting adulthood at 18 debt-free and fewer encumbered, ignorant, and entitled at 25 is not a bad thing for the country.
This is a real tragedy. I went to college in 1967-71 and was a liberal arts grad. It was a terrific experience. I learned about all sorts of things, from the Tokugawa Shogunate, to the Doctors Plot, to astronomy and beyond – things that I never would otherwise have heard of. It was rigorous and sharpened my thinking and writing skills. What they’ve done to “higher education” is a crime against our students and country.
Things you should have learned and learned of in High School.
the answer to the question posed is NO !!
They can’t be saved, no.
The only solution involves strict enforcement of the laws and regulations, and long prison terms.
But we don’t have any law and order in the US anymore, thanks to the BLM terrorist organization.
The BLM’s job was to disable the law and order.
And then they invented DEI, which is the Trojan Horse for domestic and foreign enemies to infiltrate every organization in the US, with the purpose of destroying it from within.
Armed Patriots can solve the problem easily, but that is least likely to happen either.
BLM is so yesterday. It’s now BDS and Intifada ( kill all Jews) .
Over educated people are dangerous, they are unable to control their thinking and like autistic people they can be easily manipulated into believing that they are doing the right things by killing people to save the planet.
Conservatives should employ progressive tactics when next in power. Tax all DIE university endowments at 100%, end all federal grants and loans, and use the plunder to cancel all student loan debt (without burdening taxpayers).
Any student having an elite diploma during the last 20 years or so will always be suspect as a meritless affirmative action hire – but this presumption can be rebutted by excellent performance on the job.
It would be a wonderful thing to see these phony Communist Leftist Islam supporting indoctrination centers go out of business.
So tired of hearing about our B.S. elite universities. Why are they elite? Because the “elites” and our corrupt leftist media say they are? Considering the socio/economic disaster the so-called elites have created post WWII, perhaps it’s time for another name. After all the “elites” gave us Wilson, FDR, JFK, Johnson, Carter, the Clintons, Obama and Joe Biden. Quite a poison ivy league track record.
Not sure we can blame the “elite” universities for all of those mentioned. LBJ attended and graduated from SW Texas Normal College, in San Marcos, and Carter was a graduate of the Naval Academy. A “normal” college was back then what a college geared toward training teachers was called.
Considering the proficiency level of HS graduates, a 4 year degree is more like a satisfactory HS education plus 1. I wish Mr. Hanson would have said something about the remedial classes necessary before even taking a first year college level class. Perhaps that’s how they get away with the non-meritocratic faculty hiring. Somebody has to teach the kids how to read big words, do the times tables and wrestle with the “gozintas”.
No and who cares anymore?
Some behaviors, some words and deeds are unforgivable.
No, let them fail.
They deserve no less.
We could say their failure is karma for their poor behavior. Scholars they are not.
Sure. Eliminate ALL tenure and institute a code of ethics requiring total expulsion from ALL university employment across the U.S. for plagiarism, academic dishonesty, lying on background checks, visa or citizenship fraud, felonies and violation of the Constitution or Bill of Rights.
Background info: my brother has been a Communist organizer for the past 20+ years. He is also a college professor. He organizes wet behind the ears students to engage in protests against issues he is paid to organize against. The students are his cannon fodder. If the protest is shut down, the students suffer, not him. If the protest is successful, he gets paid. And believe me, I have tried to shut him down many times, but the entire system exists to support him.
Communists and Islamists largely run our universities now. Affirmative Action and DEI were just excuses to load educational and governmental institutions up with radicals. Want to fight back? Boycott the Ivy League and don’t hire any graduate coming out of it, Research the schools your kids want to attend and don’t be afraid to say no to financing bad schools. There are few good schools left, but those should get your money instead. Do your research.
Mandatory 3 year military/service programs should be required of ALL 18-22 year olds!
It all starts in Grammer School and ending the NEA Control of the whole School system