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[Order Daniel Greenfield’s new book, Domestic Enemies: HERE.]
1 in 10 college students answered that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had created the New Deal. And only 1 in 10 knew James Madison’s role in shaping the Constitution.
That survey from the ‘American Council of Trustees and Alumni’ was one of several warnings about the catastrophic illiteracy of college students and graduates.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute did its own survey of over 28,000 undergraduates from 80 colleges and the average score on the civic literacy exam was an F. At top schools, including Yale, seniors actually knew less than freshmen. A Collegiate Learning Assessment found that after two years almost half of students showed “no significant gains in learning”.
As terrorist riots rage on campuses and Biden’s latest student loan bailout approaches $1 trillion, a basic question that isn’t being asked is whether college is even good for anything.
The Hamas riots like the surveys showing that less than a third of college students are capable of handing everyday literacy and barely half will ever read a book after graduation are all symptoms of a much larger problem that is destroying the country and tearing us apart.
A liberal arts education, originally intended to broaden the minds of the children of the elite, has been applied to the widest possible population while narrowing the minds of a nation. Few college students graduate with their minds broadened and fewer still with usable skills. Employers have been warning that college graduates are not ready for the workforce, but neither are they ready to pay off their debts or coexist with family members and the country.
Higher education in many fields has become an indoctrination factory in which students imbibe values and attitudes rather than ideas. Like Soviet education, American education works only in technical areas while the rest of it is dedicated to analyzing the world through Marxist paradigms. Literature, history and nearly every ‘studies’ field train students to analyze and denounce the past through the same oppressor/oppressed paradigm no matter the subject.
College students apply by citing their activism, engage in activism as part of their education and graduate knowing little more than how to be activists. The Hamas riots are currently happening on campuses, but previous riots, including BLM, disproportionately drew on college students in the role of activists, planners and organizers because college is synonymous with activism.
Universities have always been hubs of radicalism, but they also distributed ideas, knowledge and skills. Aside from some besieged scientific and technical departments, who are less than a decade away from being ‘DEIed’ into the dark ages, that is no longer what colleges do anymore.
The risk-reward ratio for higher education has never been worse and the arguments for its existence have never been poorer. Trundling off the sons of elites to a theological school made perfect sense centuries ago and there were still some arguments to be made for a liberal arts education before the old schools and their campus culture ushered in the counterculture.
But in a world where higher education can be remote and adult professionals often pursue degrees while they work, telling arrested development teens to put their lives on hold for another four years so they can graduate with a worthless degree and a pile of student debt makes no sense. And that would be true even if the system conveyed knowledge instead of radical hate.
Even as the old four-year college has become irrelevant, federal and state governments have led the way in spending more money on it while trying to shove everyone through its doors.
“I, like an awful lot of people in this audience, was the first in my family to go to college,” Biden claimed at a student loan bailout event.
Not only isn’t this true, but Biden was the scion of a wealthy family, a poor college student and a failed lawyer who was managing a swimming pool before he figured out how to make the jump into politics. Biden and his wife “Dr. Jill”, are the perfect poster children for mediocre elites with no skills except politics who brandish their college diplomas as if they were badges of authority.
Did the Bidens gain anything except a sense of entitlement from their college careers?
During the Hamas campus riots, we’ve seen a professor insist that she couldn’t be arrested because she was an academic and at UCLA, a bearded student being arrested during the pro-terror riots shouted, “I’m an English major” as if that made him immune to law enforcement.
But if it wasn’t Hamas, it would be BLM, abortion, the environment or some other cause.
The purpose of college is no longer education, but radicalization. Generations of faculty who bonded with the university experience because it ‘turned them on’ to leftist politics have made it their mission to transmit their politics to new generations. Occupations and campus radicalism are not aberrations, they have become the larger mission of higher education.
One survey showed that the average college student spends less than 3 hours a day attending class and studying. That’s it for education. What does he or she do the rest of the time?
It’s a myth that woke goes broke. More accurately, the broke turn woke. Broken institutions that can no longer credibly pursue their original missions, but are determined to keep on cashing in, embrace radical politics for the same reason that ideologues tend to be the least productive members of society. Higher education surrendered to wokeness because the death of liberalism and the extinction of ideas gives it little other purpose or mission beyond leftist agitprop.
Professors, when they aren’t checking themselves for microaggressions and trigger warnings, complain that students are unable to read even the shortest assignments and can’t process what they read. And that was even before ChatGPT came to be routinely used by college and even graduate students to distill every work or reference into a summarized bullet point list.
Ideas are complicated, but riots are easy. And cheering for Hamas while assaulting Jewish students provides a nice distraction from the work of running Audrey Lorde or free market economics through ChatGPT and then using AI to generate essays they will then rewrite.
Do we as a society need to be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on this failed system?
The four-year college is a miserable failure. If wealthy families want to subsidize a liberal arts education for their kids at Yale or Columbia, they’re more than welcome to, but the rest of us should not be stuck with the bill. The vast majority of professions do not need degrees, they require training and competence: two things a college degree no longer assures employers of.
The only areas of higher education taxpayers should ever consider subsidizing are in scientific or medical fields in order to ensure that they are taught in a depoliticised manner. The rest of it has become little more than a goulash of Marxism, racialism, sexuality and other identity politics activism. Defunded, perhaps traditional knowledge and learning may once again return to fields that are no longer comfortable and unaccountable hubs for the Marxists who hollowed them out.
Defunding college may be the only way to save it. It certainly is the only way to save America.
Great article! I’ve been saying the same thing for years. The real question is “What is it going to take for the Republicans (both Elected Republicans & Republican voters) to quit funding Colleges”? Republicans know what is being taught there and yet they still keep giving them more money! Republicans are supposed to be for small government – they should quit funding the colleges and use the savings to get rid of the Personal Income Tax so that parents and students can save and use THEIR money on whatever private education is best for them. They should also offer more REAL career training courses in High School so kids can graduate HS and go straight into a career (instead of making students take many worthless courses they are never going to use).
You make it sound like the Republicans are an alternative to the Democrat/Communist cabal. When our current Republican Congress has more Democrat votes for its legislation than Republican that should tell you something. Perhaps a good housecleaning is in order. Instead of waiting for Republicans to “age out” or move to the greener pastures that have been funding them, we could bone up on the candidates instead of just going with the “R” following their name. Anybody can be a Republican just like anybody can be a woman.
Just think of all the Money we could save to fund the Police then go to pay for these bunch of Question Authority Anarchists Idiots. Better Weapons Police Cars and Equipment instead of paying these useless little cunts to Block the Streets with their stupid protests
Nah, let’s just hone this “Jailbreak” legislation. That should make it so we don’t need to spend all that money on law enforcement. Problem solved.
Theoretically, there should be no direct government funding for education, only student vouchers.
I don’t want to pay for it. Let people pay their own way. The rest of us shouldn’t be on the hook for them. Fuck, I’m dirt poor and due to my ex wife, I always will be. People need to take care of themselves and the people they care about. There’s a limit to how much I want to help strangers. I don’t like the idea of helping people wealthier than me unless they’re in a bind.
How SELFISH of you!
You are your brother’s keeper.
You need to be an altruist.
Gee T. If the “elite colleges” get defunded who’s going to get hired to teach self-indulgent garbage like Objectivism. Looks like you missed the boat.
Not just America Daniel, the western world has been suffering from exactly the same nonsense over education.
Liberal arts? What has that produced? Modern art and graffiti.
Social studies? What has that produced? Woke nonsense.
Medical education? What has that produced? Over reliance on medication.
Science? What has that produced? Climate change hysteria.
The majority of higher education could be dispensed with.
regardless of whether they are defunded nothing will save america . its destruction has been deliberate by the unelected swamp carried out by the democrats . the rinos have been complicit in its destruction .as well .
I think they call that whistling past the graveyard. If anything, the dunces in govt will conclude the answer to our problems is MORE funding.
Social Security is “scheduled” to run out of “funds” by 2035! I recall seeing that we WASTE $165 BILLION per year on “higher education”! Ten years of savings could be put towards SS! Eliminate the WASTED fund for ILLEGALS and there’s another $100 BILLION or so per year! Stop funding our ENEMIES and let them HATE US FOR FREE would generate another $50 BILLION or so per year! UN/WHO/CHINA – cut all of the out and pocket the SAVINGS! Eliminate about 90% of Gov’t EE’s – BILLIONS!! Convert WELFARE people into JOBS that the ILLEGALS (who have gone back home) used to do – BILLIONS in savings! Once MILLIONS are GONE HOME and other MILLIONS are WORKING, crime and related costs should decrease – MORE BILLIONS!! Pretty soon we’re talking BIG MONEY! And “higher education”? It needs to begin in Grammar School (see how old I am)!!
OH – additional questions for the “college educated” : When was the War of 1812 fought? Who wrote the Monroe Doctrine? Name all the Kardasians! Chances are they’d get ONE correct!!
Whew, I know all of them. Except names of the Kardasians, who were bad aliens in a Star Trek franchise.
In. 1930s Germany, college students were among the most passionate and ardent National Socialists.
True, I know of a case like that, one brother was against the NSDAP, the siblings were for it, at least one was fanatical about it. I’ve been trying to think what to say about that case.
The education system mirrors the degradation of society. It is very easily fixed by defunding it completely. That would unfortunately shine a light on the lack of funds produced by our economy since every job has been shipped out to China etcetera. These useless eaters with studies degrees need to be put to work with a shovel or let them live with mommy and their blue ribbons.
The next fiscally responsible President could:
A. Mandate that the five post-secondary institutions under legitimate Executive branch control must open online branches which
1. Admit everyone who applies
2. Charge no tuition
3. Define courses by their syllabi
4. Employ no faculty
5.. Conduct no classes
6. Grant credit by exam
7. License independent agencies to administer exams at a fee to be negotiated between the student and the exam administrator.
B. Mandate that all executive branch agencies must accept degrees earned through exam as equal to degrees earned through attendance at brick-and-mortar schools.
I’d rather the next fiscally responsible president say if you want to attend college, pay for it yourself and let the chips fall.
Higher Education is in the process of defunding itself. By embracing worthless degree programs, over investing and bureaucracy, HIED is killing off its revenue. Aside from embracing cultural drivel, two phenomenon are driving its transformation – elearning and the crushing weight of student debt. What’s the point of shelling out $1200 a credit hour for pablum when you can get the same education for $100 month online (certain programs, some discipline required). The return on investment is just not there anymore. If you have to borrow $100k to land a $50k a year teaching job, soon there will be no teachers. It’s not affordable.
Elearning, yes. Crushing debt, I doubt it. Now with the leftists decades long push for “free” college. They’re not going to let go of that as long as there are Democrat/Socialists in Congress.
I was saying this 30 years ago. TY
At the time of Martin Luther the universities were in a pretty awful shape, art was pretty much at its zenit; around 1800 in Germany and 1900 in England (i think) schools were pretty great. Britain thought it needed educated people to govern the Empire. In the USA, I think, schools were good as long as there were a lot of Urban slum dwelling Jews. World War 2 brought insane power and wealth to the USA – schools that demanded hard work and learning were no longer considered necessary. In Germany after the backbreaking 1950’s and still poor early 1960’s, people wanted (watered down) socialism and to escape from blue collar work, the “Social- Democrates” destroyed the Gymnasium, the Abitur now handed out like candy; its voting bloc was sent to university en masse and then demanded white collar work.