The Decline of American Higher Education

As we survey, with considerable chagrin, the wreckage of what used to be American higher education, we are trying to figure out what went wrong. At the least, we understand that the implosion of America’s university system did not date to yesterday. It has been a long time coming. 

Whether it can be repaired remains to be seen. As I have often noted on these pages, colleges now divide themselves into STEM subjects and the rest. The former seem to be relatively healthy; the latter seem to be on life support.

So, we turn to an extended analysis by Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars. 

Wood suggests, at the opening of his long essay on the topic, that colleges, especially in the liberal arts, are more concerned with therapy than they are with teaching much of anything. 

Contemporary college is a place that demands students take seriously their supposed quest for “identity” and their responsibilities to those of different “identities.”

One does not want to belabor the obvious, but the hiring practices of these universities, over time, have produced faculties where far too many professors do not know how to teach anything but identity politics and leftist ideology. It is nice to think that they can all change on a dime, but I imagine that faculty simply do not know enough to do otherwise. They are teaching at the limits of their feeble minds. Keep in mind, they were not hired for their academic excellence.

It is a place where certain ideologies are so far in ascendency that they cannot be discussed let alone criticized: America’s endemic racism, climate-change catastrophism, and patriarchy lead the list. These should be understood not as systems of belief so much as symptoms of cultural confusion. Contemporary college is so lacking in a coherent intellectual core that anything that students run into that rings of passionate advocacy wins admiration. Black Lives Matter zealotry, transgender raving, antisemitic bloodlust, and postcolonial or indigenous fabulism each attract cultic worshippers who mistake their idols for “critical thinking.” Why not? They have been brought up to believe that “critical thinking” means attacking whatever stands in the way of today’s version of “social justice.”

As for children of privilege and especially Asian Americans, they are told that they did not earn their way, and that they are heirs to a vast organized criminal conspiracy. They need not learn how to function in a corrupt world, but need to do penance for the sins of their ancestors.

What else stands in the way of recruiting the next generation of college students? Animus against white and Asian students. A college that demeans students by teaching them they are unfairly “privileged” or deserving of shame for the supposed actions of their ancestors may win today’s social-justice points but rapidly loses its credibility as an institution of higher learning.

And, of course, colleges are more and more hostile toward members of the male gender. This does not merely discourage men from attending college, but it makes for a significant gender imbalance. Which means that college men can do what they please with increasingly desperate and deprived college women.

Students also hear from their peers and elder siblings who have gone to college. One thing they learn is that college is increasingly a hostile environment for men. Well, maybe not for men who believe they are women, or men who want to explore their “gender identities” or try on “queerness.” But the percentages of men who actually fit into these categories is pretty small. Women now also have to reckon with a college environment where the percentage of heterosexual males has fallen significantly below the percentage of heterosexual females.

Naturally, since affirmative action admissions and diversity hiring programs have produced the current destitution of American universities, these latter have decided to double down on a failed policy.

As for recruiting students from underrepresented groups, all too often this has come at expense of academic standards….

Further deterioration of academic standards is plausible, and it is another obstacle to higher education retaining its status as the best path to prosperity.

And, of course, colleges and universities want students to become citizens of the world, not citizens of a great nation. This diminishes pride and patriotism, to say nothing of loyalty to the nation.

An institution disdainful of the nation and even of the ideal of nationhood is not well-positioned to thrive. Much as it may emphasize that its students are “citizens of the world,” it depends on the support of actual citizens who are not amused by the idea that their country is just a construct, and one that oppresses some and privileges others.

The result is a moral crisis, one that we are not going to solve in a day, or even a week:

…. our colleges and universities often foster what is worst in young people: ingratitude to their families and their nation, self-centeredness, and aimless alienation. Colleges ignite group resentment, unwarranted pride, or equally unwarranted shame. And the education that colleges provide has been hollowed to near pointlessness. Students graduate with a veneer of knowledge rather than a core. An increasingly obsolescent institution has wedded itself to an increasingly noisome cultural stance.

And you think that we are going to compete against China or anyone else in the clash of civilizations.

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