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Can the Current Universities Be Saved?
Can the Current Universities Be Saved?
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.
Here’s How We Know The Climate Crisis Is Not About The Climate
Here’s How We Know The Climate Crisis Is Not About The Climate
Over the last three calendar years, 2021, 2022, and 2023, “no country has reduced its carbon emissions more than any other major nation on a per capita basis,” the Committee to Unleash Prosperity tells us.
“Even though our GDP is about 50% higher than China’s, our per capita emissions are roughly the same,” says the group.
The data also tell us that though China’s emissions grow every year, “ours have come down every year over the last decade.”
Yet the U.S. is continually singled out as the worst greenhouse gas offender, while China – and India – escape the wrath of the klimate kooks, from Greta Thunberg to Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who actually “praised China’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
The CTUP chart above shows a sharp decrease in U.S. emissions and a modest drop in European Union emissions. But look at the increases in India, Southeast Asia, and China, particularly the latter. Can anyone remember when climate alarmists traveled to Beijing, Mumbai, or Jakarta to publicly chastise the nations these capitals represent for their emissions? When was the last time a U.S. lawmaker demanded that these countries cut their fossil fuel use?
If our “leaders” were being honest, then we wouldn’t have an entirely mad administration demanding that we cut “greenhouse gas emissions 50-52% below 2005 levels in 2030,” reach “100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035” and achieve “a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.”
Nor would our elites have feted Thunberg and treated her as an authority who must be revered while she ranted and scolded and screeched. Pope Francis would not have admonished America for its “irresponsible” Western lifestyle and Bill Nye, no science guy but an engineer and an actor, would have never said that voting (he means for U.S. Democrats) is the best option “if you want to do one thing about climate change.”
Then there are the cranks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who insist that “observed and anticipated increases in greenhouse gas emissions from China and other countries don’t let Americans off the hook for reducing emissions.” And never forget that Al Gore has made a post-vice presidential career out of blaming the U.S. for what believes is a disaster in the making.
If the climatistas were truly concerned with the planet, they would nag the countries that are increasing emissions. But those aren’t developed Western nations, so they get a pass. This gives the game away. Climate hysteria is not about stopping some imagined warming, it’s about choking capitalism, punishing wealthy societies, and establishing a socialist-collectivist governance model.
Should the U.S. cease to exist tomorrow, or if we simply stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, (which means we’d cease to exist not tomorrow but in a short time), the global temperature, whatever that is, would not move. Surely the climate zealots know this. But emissions are not the issue. The issue, as we’re reminded, is always about the revolution with these people. The goal is to punish the West for daring to ride capitalism to a prosperous existence.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Thursday, May 2, 2024
Know your enemies
CEO of male hair loss and ED treatment brand is ‘eager’ to hire anti-Israel student protesters
They are here to kill Jews and then other infidels
Stanford submits ‘deeply disturbing’ photo of campus anti-Israel protester wearing Hamas headband to FBI
Published May 2, 2024
Officials at Stanford University submitted a photo of someone on campus wearing a green headband worn by Hamas terrorist fighters to the FBI as the school struggles to reign in anti-Israel protesters camping overnight on school property.
Like at other universities across the country, anti-Israel students at Stanford have created an encampment in the White Plaza portion of the northern California college campus to protest Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
A photo of someone at the encampment wearing a green headband, a face covering and glasses eventually came to the attention of school administrators.
“We have received many expressions of concern about a photo circulating on social media of an individual on White Plaza who appeared to be wearing a green headband similar to those worn by members of Hamas,” the school said in a Wednesday statement. “We find this deeply disturbing, as Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the United States government. We have not been able to identify the individual but have forwarded the photo to the FBI.”
A university spokesperson declined to comment on the matter to Fox News Digital.
Updated May 2, 2024, 10:31 a.m. ET
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