The fact that crises exist on America’s college campuses should not come as a shock. The value of a college education is rapidly declining, while a widening gender gap shows that fewer and fewer young men are attending. At the same time, a massive student debt crisis looms over former students long after they step out of the classroom. They take on tremendous amounts of debt at a very young age, all on the promise that it will lead to greater financial reward and job fulfillment in the future. However, many are shocked to learn that the degrees they signed up for were not designed with market demand in mind. Much of the blame for the student debt crisis belongs with liberal colleges that teach propaganda rather than skills useful to students after they graduate.
Rather than focusing on career readiness, colleges are focusing on dragging students through the gauntlet of political indoctrination. Recently a University of Cincinnati professor gave a sophomore a 0 out of 20 points for using the correct, but not politically correct, term “biological women” on an otherwise strong homework assignment. A bill in Texas was intended to end tenure for college professors at state schools there, in response to their imposing the woke agenda. But pressure from Texas’ powerful state universities caused the legislation to be flipped around in the House, to the point where the bill, as finally enacted, actually affirms college tenure although allowing for new additional oversight.
Universities hire failed liberal politicians and pay them fat salaries for little or no academic work. San Francisco’s disgraced District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was recalled by that city’s fed-up liberal voters, was hired to direct a pro-criminal “justice center” at the University of California at Berkeley, while the leftwing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the first mayor defeated for reelection there in 40 years, was hired by Harvard to teach about “racial equity” in public health.
We all recognize that America’s colleges have a problem, but we must also acknowledge that it won’t be the university system that fixes the problem. Pay attention to the guidance you give to the young people in your life. You don’t have to feed them into the university machine.
This post originally appeared at https://www.phyllisschlafly.com/family/colleges/acknowledging-the-problems-of-higher-ed/
Phyllis Schlafly