American universities once attracted students from around the world. Prestige places like Harvard and Caltech did so, but it also happened at good state schools like the University of Illinois, University of Texas and even my own alma mater, the University of Colorado.
The scientific education was second to none. Even outside of science, a broad-based humanities program thrived. As an engineering student at CU, my required curriculum included two full years of “Great Books” where we studied Socrates, Homer, Virgil, Chaucer and Milton.
But then some interrelated things happened.
First, our culture mistakenly came to believe that being an educated person requires college. Today, many businesses require a college degree for everyone on the payroll.
Colleges were happy to go along with this. It meant more customers.
It also meant dumbing down the curriculum, and you might think colleges would resist that. They did in principle but not in practice. After all, teaching easier stuff is easier.
This sentiment permeates all levels of the education industry. Self-serving high schools perversely pride themselves on how many of their graduates go to college, as if there’s not a single one in the graduating class who would be happier in military service, or in a trade or in a restaurant. Meanwhile, those same high schools fail to teach these college-bound youngsters the basics that they used to teach.
Second, our leftward-drifting society began rejecting Western ethics and values such as work and objective truth. Those things are too hard. A work ethic demands work, and many people don’t like work. Objective truth requires hurting the feelings of those who believe in things that are false.
Our culture was so rich that we could afford frivolity. The engine of enterprise created by industrial and technological revolutions harnessed to free market economies was powerful.
Laziness and falseness were drags on the economy but the economy still generated phenomenal riches for almost everyone. Our poor people are considered middle class in most of the rest of the world.
In the colleges, this feel-good luxury translated into a disregard for their mission of educating students. Why should they imbue students with knowledge, if we’re so rich that knowledge is not necessary anymore? And how could they, if there’s no objective truth anymore? Full Story - Glenn K. Beaton - Aspen Beat
Professor Watch List
Students Exposing Leftist Teachers
A conservative organization, Turning Point USA comprised of High School and college students has begun compiling a database of college professors involved in indoctrination of students and discrimination against non-compliant students, students that fail to conform to the left wing conversion regimen being force fed to young people under the guise of education. Read More
At Home and at Harvard, Communist China Runs the Ultimate Cancel Culture
China is furiously cracking down to stop information about the coronavirus and its origins in Wuhan from getting out
At Harvard, a "powerful person" proactively censors Chinese dissident Teng Biao -- while he lives and works in the United States. The university's own student newspaper is taking the Ivy League school to account for it. The Harvard Crimson: Read More
No Wonder the Kids are Historically Illiterate
Generally, when a buyer is defrauded of services, the demand for the goods diminishes. As more emerges of what colleges and universities across this country are not doing, the demand will dry up unless there are drastic changes.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has published a report titled "What Will They Learn?" It is a survey of core requirements at our nation's colleges and universities and one does not need a Ph.D. to comprehend the paucity of education now apparent in far too many places. In fact, "for over a decade, ACTA has expressed concern that rising employer dissatisfaction with college graduates, as well as the decline in civic competency and informed discourse in the public square, are attributable to an overall deterioration of core curricula in the liberal arts. . .
. . .many colleges and universities are watering down their requirements, allowing students to bypass college-level writing, mathematics, and economics courses and to graduate with a mediocre knowledge base and skillset. Read More