College Students Should be Angry

Today's college students have a right to be angry. Many pay exorbitant prices — that burdens them with deep debt — for a degree of questionable worth with decreasing prospects of a good career and positive return on investment. That anger should be channeled toward liberal con artists who routinely sell them a pack of lies, starting with their colleges and universities.

From Investor's Business Daily, Colleges Substitute Western Greats With Gender Studies:

Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald shocked a New York City audience at the 2013 Wriston Lecture this month with some examples of what leftist academics have done to the American college curriculum.

"Until 2011," she noted, "students majoring in English at UCLA had been required to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton — the cornerstones of English literature.

"Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the 'empire,' UCLA junked these individual author requirements and replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a course each in gender, race, ethnicity, disability or sexuality studies, imperial, transnational or post-colonial studies, and critical theory." [snip]

UCLA is far from alone, "but the UCLA coup was particularly significant because the English Department there was one of the last champions of the historically informed study of great literature uncorrupted by ideological overlay," Mac Donald noted.

IBD argues that "for parents who assume a degree from a famous college with a long-established reputation gives the wisdom of the ages to their kids, a closer look might reveal they're paying a lot of money for ideology, not edification."

Sadly it's the college students—not their parents—who pay the greatest price for higher ed's con job, and they are likely to be the last ones to discover how very badly they have been short-changed.

Could Traditional Universities Become Extinct?

"Have the tools for [traditional universities'] demise been put in place – the Internet, personal computers, iPads and other tablet PCs, videoconferencing  apps, online publishing and online libraries of very affordable and in many cases, free content?" asks Brian Watt at ricochet.com.

What are parents and students (and in some cases taxpayers) paying for today beyond the acquisition of a diploma? Administrative overhead? Athletic programs? Housing? Maintenance of buildings? Gardeners? Security? Contraception? Liability insurance? Legal counsel? Bail?

The "socializing aspects of university life may disappear," writes Watt, along with "the more radical hybrid of social/anti-social activities – like protests and riots either motivated by winning or losing a sports title or vandalizing school property because capitalism is of course, evil and unfair..."

But consider also that the easy availability of college coursework taught by the best professors in the world to those living in less affluent parts of the world who might never haven been able to afford to attend or be qualified for a traditional university may eventually result in another renaissance, enlightenment or technological revolution giving them the opportunity to learn and then create or do amazing things.

It's an interesting thought:  a first-class education without a crushing student debt burden.