Everyone knows that the nation’s colleges and universities now commonly promote “social justice,” which essentially means radical left politics. But what we do know about how well they still do all the other things we’ve expected them to do?
We invest much time and money in higher education. What are we now getting for all of that?
At college, students ought to be taught how to think productively, to reason, and to write cogently. But already by 2011, that was no longer happening, according to a study done by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa and published in their book, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.”
Literacy, Employment, and Citizenship
Well, then: Are graduates being adequately prepared for the workplace? Not at all, according to a study done in 2006 by four organizations (including The Conference Board) that looked at the matter from an employer’s point of view. The 400 employers surveyed considered college graduates to be “deficient in writing in English and written communications,” and leadership skills: “The future U.S. workforce is here—and it is woefully unprepared for the demands of today’s (and tomorrow’s) workplace.”Again, the situation today will almost certainly be even worse than it was in 2006.
But surely, one might think, the campus obsession with diversity ought to mean that minorities are doing better? No, the reverse is true. African American students enter higher education with College Learning Assessment scores significantly lower than their white counterparts (about 1,000 as against 1,170), but Arum and Roksa found that the gap got much larger, not smaller, during their first two years of college.
Instead of correcting a serious social problem that we badly need to fix, colleges make it worse.
The college instructors who complain of these deficiencies are, of course, the same people who train the high school teachers who are responsible for them.
One Success
Is there anything that colleges and universities are good at? Yes, they do a splendid job of promoting radical politics. Recent Gallup polls find that almost exactly half of young adults (18–39) now have a positive view of socialism—another astonishing result.The string of failures is related to this one success, because success in either one of the two areas means failure in the other. A first-rate college education means developing inquiring minds, analytical thinkers who look at all sides of an issue before reaching a conclusion. Radical politics needs the exact opposite: an unwavering commitment to an idea set in stone, with nothing allowed to erode that commitment.
“A cocoon of ignorance” may be a fine way to protect an enthusiasm for socialism, but it’s a disaster for education.
The buildings that house our major universities still look as imposing as ever, and the diplomas students receive look impressive, too. That helps to maintain the illusion that academia is just as it was—but it isn’t, because the defining feature of a university is its teaching faculty, and that has changed beyond all recognition. Open-minded explorers of ideas have largely been replaced by closed-minded political activists. It’s not just that the right kind of people are missing: Their replacements are the last people we should want for higher education.
The enormous sums of money that the nation devotes to higher education are being diverted to something completely different: The promotion of radical politics. In ordinary language, that’s called embezzling. In any other area of life, we’d not hesitate to withdraw funding that’s being used for an unauthorized purpose. It’s about time our society did just that.