I apologize, but here's another thought. I have been involved with a local community college internship program. They have internships for everything from welding to computer coding. So far they have placed 100% of their graduates in high paying jobs, mostly with the companies where they interned. I don't understand why this sort of program isn't more widely available.
This is right on the mark. I would only add that the proximate cause of the reverse assimilation is the federal student aid program. Without that, few if any college leaders would have turned into money grubbers who were willing to sacrifice their standards in order to enroll the maximum number of ill-prepared and academically disengaged students to pad the school's budget. That is when grades started to inflate, the curriculum was degraded, and college became politicized.
"Maybe my impressions are based too strongly on reading conservative media. But my guess is that the universities cannot be saved."
Arnold, one way to guard against this is to support your claims with data whenever possible. On the issue of free speech we have data via the FIRE rankings and they paint a dismal picture. There is an urgent need to adopt and meaningfully respect institutional neutrality and Chicago principles, and to promote viewpoint diversity. I have argued repeatedly and strenuously for this.
But what about the general decline you reference? Is there any hard evidence of decline in applications, export share, patents, artistic achievements, or scientific breakthroughs? And any evidence based on Becker's outcome test that students allegedly discriminated against (white men in particular) are performing better after graduation than the average student? If there is such evidence perhaps you could point to it? If this is the wrong kind of evidence to measure decline perhaps you could explain why, and tell us what would be better? Otherwise we are just dealing in vibes and I'm not sure that's terribly persuasive or constructive.
I care deeply about the health of American higher education and am open to your claims but really hope one can have a more evidence-based conversation. Despite everything, our universities still seem to be the envy of the world, powerful export engines, and magnets for talent globally. At least that's what the data suggests to me.
I agree about grade inflation. Columbia has a policy of listing percentage A for the class alongside the grade, which offers some corrective. There are also other ways that students use to demonstrate excellence, for instance research assistant positions that lead to letter of recommendation.
In any case, of the claim is the universities can't be saved, the grade inflation component of the argument has to be quite minor. I'd like to see hard evidence supporting the more serious claims of decline.
I would subscribe to the call for more robust evidence about the universities’ decline. The argument is plausible but the evidence essentially impressionistic (apart from the evidence on the study of psychology). To give just a counter-argument: the catchment area of elite universities in the US extends to the world, whereas 50 or 60 years ago this was clearly much less the case. Shouldn’t this mean, for example, more top Chinese students instead of mediocre American ones?
“I would subscribe to the call for more robust evidence about the universities’ decline.”
The 3 (female, as it happens) university presidents who spoke before Congress and refused to acknowledge that calling for the genocide of Jews “constitutes bullying and harassment” - in Harvard’s case at an institution that literally taught its students that fatphobia and misgendering “constitute violence” (I am NOT paraphrasing here; look it up) - is for me quite robust evidence of the rot that is DEI.
I think China is less happy than they used to be about sending students to the US. But your point should still apply re India and lots of other countries too
This morning I spoke with a friend in his 70s who reminisced about a Marxist economics professor. Maybe today the professor in question has a somewhat different viewpoint that "we" don't agree with but do we see today's horrors as worse when they are more accurately described as merely different?
Due respect, there is a massive difference between having a few professors teaching “bad” things, and an entire university system and bureaucracy doing the same, rigidly enforcing much of the same, and putting their thumb heavily on the scale in the process.
What is going on is not at all about open inquiry and seeking “truth”. If it were merely that 5% of the faculty was in DEI studies, AK would not be making the claims that he is.
I would add management failure(administrators are not managers). Many colleges are closing. My wife is a professor at a small college that is in trouble. They should cut back and focus on the their historic core (which still does well). Instead of eliminating departments, they are adding the hot new majors. Instead of cutting bloated staff, they did a salary freeze. It is obvious where this will end up. No professor from their core majors will stand up and state the obvious, that would be suicide. The president is a female, I know what a man from 80s/90s would do. Today Management is staffed with people that want to avoid pain. Unfortunately hard decisions need to be made. You are starting to see this in business. One thing I like about my current company, they layoff even in good years. Gives me faith in management
I don't know that whatever is happening, amounts to a culture.
You mention 30 years ago.
I think this piece absolves that academia of decades ago, too much.
Thirty-odd years ago, I attended a state school at which a few of the professors on the liberal arts side of things, were still Marxists. My friend wrote an anonymous editorial in the school paper in re one of his professors, I think in history, snarkily punning on "class struggle". Although I don't believe he named him, I guess it was obvious. He was not surprised that the professor harangued about it at the next class. It would be unfair to suggest that the professor figured him out and it told on his grade, as he didn't care much about grades so it would be hard to assign that - but the professor was not the sort who inspired him to more than his usual effort.
The developments of the 21st century were baked into the cake, with both the old Marxists even at a state school in the hinterland, and the multicult; even as - I believe you or somebody linked to substacker Joseph Heath's contention about this the other day - that Marxism faded and "gracefully" morphed into egalitarianism. (Radical egalitarianism; Heath doesn't emphasize the equally radical nature of it.)
One other thing stands out to me. I recall taking my son to visit TAMU, get the tour, and so forth. A nice young lady majoring in the business school did a presentation there. She was only entering her second year, I think, but already a junior. She described how you could test out of everything "basic" - English, history, science. Thus it was she had really only ever taken classes in business-y things like finance or accounting or whatever is subsumed under a business major.
This was rather enhanced by the then-new B school being a driving distance away from the campus where several generations of (boys) had taken the typical variety of college subjects though it was a land grant school.
I realize this might sound like a victory to those hostile to college. Make it more vocational!
It struck me as sad and depressing.
I don't necessarily think college as it used to be constituted, really needed reinvention.
If you’re referring to TAMU College Station, I liked the vibe when I visited the area for a random campus visit. Overall, I liked the vibe better than UT Austin.
In line with what you mentioned, we too know many kids in Texas that are able to easily graduate in 3 years with AP credits from high school. I think that’s the new normal for the above average kids.
I agree with this narrative when it comes to merit. Academic freedom is a more complicated matter.
It seems to me that free expression is usually valued more among whatever movement is "insurgent" at a given time. In the 60s, left academics were the big proponents of academic freedom. Probably at that time you would find more support for academic freedom and controversial research among women professors than among the men.
Feminism was controversial at the time after all! Now that feminism is orthodox, of course women support the orthodoxy.
Also female faculty trend younger due to affirmative action and "pipeline" factors. No way that explains the whole disparity, but academic freedom fundamentalists do tend to be older.
I like your attitude here Arnold. It’s one of understanding and poise. Step 1: talk about the problem (this post). Step 2: be grateful for what we have (a future post?). Step 3: Create new and better stuff attacking the vulnerabilities of the old, rotted institutions (much more than a post, but an entirely new Substack?).
We live in a very wealthy and relatively peaceful country historically speaking. Unfortunately our great wealth combined with great power in government has caused an enormous sum of money and power to be channeled into universities that accommodate, reverse assimilate, and shield young adults from the realities of the world. This tax funded system does harm to our children in K-12, and young adults in college, by dumbing them down and making them fragile. It views children as delicate, incapable, and in need of accommodation, shielding and protection. The classroom and school are soaked in safetyism. “Don’t let the kids outside for recess for they might look at the sun during the eclipse. Keep them away from the windows to prevent them from looking at the eclipse.” Not exaggerating here.
“But my guess is that the universities cannot be saved. The reverse assimilation is too deeply entrenched.” Probably, mostly true.
Differences between male humans and female humans help explain some of this reverse assimilation. Men are by nature risk takers, thrill seekers, hunters, warriors, thought leaders, war/business/team strategists, and truth seekers. Women are by nature worriers, far more prudent with their bodies than men, that prioritize childcare and longevity. Joyce Benenson lays it out in her book Warriors and Worriers.
Let’s talk about masculinity, character and role models. Let’s talk about what it means to be a man. I think men need to wake up to what’s going on and create new institutions with firm convictions and principles for men, and run by men.
You say that "one of the causal factors in the decline of the university was the goal of expanding access to higher education." But where did this goal come from? How did higher education metastasize from being Higher Education — a specialized institution dedicated to training societal elites and special preparation for high-status jobs — to being Universal Education, just the next step after high school? Where did this idea that "if you want a good job, you need to get a degree" originate?
The unspoken seed from which so much of the problem has sprung is a specific Supreme Court ruling that remains surprisingly obscure for how influential it ended up being on our society. Griggs v. Duke Power, a decision handed down by the same renegade Burger Court that would impose Roe v. Wade on the nation shortly thereafter, created the system of credentialism that lies at the heart of all of this, as a (likely unintended) consequence of their reckless rewriting of employment law in the name of racial equity.
I'm sure there are multiple books on the pathologies of higher Ed and their root causes, some backed up by data. I am back in school after decades, which experience has included sitting in classes with undergraduates and teaching at a large community college. I can confirm that all of the pathologies are clearly present (e.g., surfing fashion websites while the Professor tries desperately to generate interest). I could go on and on, but one gets the sense that a lot of government action relates, intentionally or not, to managing the unemployment number. I need to get around to reading "Regulating the Poor," since the socialists are adept at projecting what they are doing onto others.
You do correctly note that the rot is not monocausal, but it seems to me that the administration changes are at the root of the rot, rather than the students, but perhaps this is a distinction without a difference.
And while I don’t doubt for a second the generalization that women are less pro free speech than men, it is also clearly true that younger people are less pro free speech than older ones. My *suspicion* (and note I have no data) is that the fact that women heads are clumped at the bottom of universities with the worst free speech policies is likely more a function of the age of the women university chiefs skewing younger than male ones - most especially given the DEI push in academia the last decade or so. I’d be very curious if someone did this age breakout as was done for sex.
I’m not sure I agree with your reverse assimilation theory for universities. The equality-minded folks that seek to reduce standards are not necessarily the same people and don’t necessarily have the same culture as the minorities that they seek to prop up.
Said better: isn’t this an example of a luxury belief - elites feeling good about lowering standards to help minorities regardless of whether or not it actually helps minorities?
Sorry Prof, but reverse assimilation is not happening. It is simply dumbing down to get the equal outcomes that all the (already) cultural marxists in academia salivate for. How could a bunch of high school rubes infect those who are already infected? And of course, as you mention, it’s all powered by free taxpayer money. Whether this wave of poison will become a tsunami and destroy everything in its path, or eventually dribble into irrelevance, i don’t know. But we certainly need alternative institutions to survive and thrive in the future.
How does this explain the capture of the elite colleges by woke ideology? If anything the elite colleges have gotten pickier as to whom they will accept. The number of DEI admits is far too small to explain what has happened at Princeton.
"I think that we would be better off with a student population less than half the size that we have currently. Many young people aged 16-22 should be doing something different."
Wouldn't that result in a massive die-back of faculty, staff, programs, and institutions?
I apologize, but here's another thought. I have been involved with a local community college internship program. They have internships for everything from welding to computer coding. So far they have placed 100% of their graduates in high paying jobs, mostly with the companies where they interned. I don't understand why this sort of program isn't more widely available.
Requiring colleges whose students get govt. guaranteed loans to note dropout & graduation rates, as well as grad job placement rates, would help.
The govt money now flowing to colleges needs more customer friendly data on performance.
This is right on the mark. I would only add that the proximate cause of the reverse assimilation is the federal student aid program. Without that, few if any college leaders would have turned into money grubbers who were willing to sacrifice their standards in order to enroll the maximum number of ill-prepared and academically disengaged students to pad the school's budget. That is when grades started to inflate, the curriculum was degraded, and college became politicized.
"Maybe my impressions are based too strongly on reading conservative media. But my guess is that the universities cannot be saved."
Arnold, one way to guard against this is to support your claims with data whenever possible. On the issue of free speech we have data via the FIRE rankings and they paint a dismal picture. There is an urgent need to adopt and meaningfully respect institutional neutrality and Chicago principles, and to promote viewpoint diversity. I have argued repeatedly and strenuously for this.
But what about the general decline you reference? Is there any hard evidence of decline in applications, export share, patents, artistic achievements, or scientific breakthroughs? And any evidence based on Becker's outcome test that students allegedly discriminated against (white men in particular) are performing better after graduation than the average student? If there is such evidence perhaps you could point to it? If this is the wrong kind of evidence to measure decline perhaps you could explain why, and tell us what would be better? Otherwise we are just dealing in vibes and I'm not sure that's terribly persuasive or constructive.
I care deeply about the health of American higher education and am open to your claims but really hope one can have a more evidence-based conversation. Despite everything, our universities still seem to be the envy of the world, powerful export engines, and magnets for talent globally. At least that's what the data suggests to me.
Great points. Grade inflation is very well documented though, and that feels like one aspect of what he's talking about.
Might just end up being something we should treat like regular inflation, and start introducing grades higher than A+...
I agree about grade inflation. Columbia has a policy of listing percentage A for the class alongside the grade, which offers some corrective. There are also other ways that students use to demonstrate excellence, for instance research assistant positions that lead to letter of recommendation.
In any case, of the claim is the universities can't be saved, the grade inflation component of the argument has to be quite minor. I'd like to see hard evidence supporting the more serious claims of decline.
Yeah his burn it all down view seems way over the top to me
I would subscribe to the call for more robust evidence about the universities’ decline. The argument is plausible but the evidence essentially impressionistic (apart from the evidence on the study of psychology). To give just a counter-argument: the catchment area of elite universities in the US extends to the world, whereas 50 or 60 years ago this was clearly much less the case. Shouldn’t this mean, for example, more top Chinese students instead of mediocre American ones?
“I would subscribe to the call for more robust evidence about the universities’ decline.”
The 3 (female, as it happens) university presidents who spoke before Congress and refused to acknowledge that calling for the genocide of Jews “constitutes bullying and harassment” - in Harvard’s case at an institution that literally taught its students that fatphobia and misgendering “constitute violence” (I am NOT paraphrasing here; look it up) - is for me quite robust evidence of the rot that is DEI.
I think China is less happy than they used to be about sending students to the US. But your point should still apply re India and lots of other countries too
This morning I spoke with a friend in his 70s who reminisced about a Marxist economics professor. Maybe today the professor in question has a somewhat different viewpoint that "we" don't agree with but do we see today's horrors as worse when they are more accurately described as merely different?
Due respect, there is a massive difference between having a few professors teaching “bad” things, and an entire university system and bureaucracy doing the same, rigidly enforcing much of the same, and putting their thumb heavily on the scale in the process.
What is going on is not at all about open inquiry and seeking “truth”. If it were merely that 5% of the faculty was in DEI studies, AK would not be making the claims that he is.
I would add management failure(administrators are not managers). Many colleges are closing. My wife is a professor at a small college that is in trouble. They should cut back and focus on the their historic core (which still does well). Instead of eliminating departments, they are adding the hot new majors. Instead of cutting bloated staff, they did a salary freeze. It is obvious where this will end up. No professor from their core majors will stand up and state the obvious, that would be suicide. The president is a female, I know what a man from 80s/90s would do. Today Management is staffed with people that want to avoid pain. Unfortunately hard decisions need to be made. You are starting to see this in business. One thing I like about my current company, they layoff even in good years. Gives me faith in management
"They imported an inferior culture."
I don't know that whatever is happening, amounts to a culture.
You mention 30 years ago.
I think this piece absolves that academia of decades ago, too much.
Thirty-odd years ago, I attended a state school at which a few of the professors on the liberal arts side of things, were still Marxists. My friend wrote an anonymous editorial in the school paper in re one of his professors, I think in history, snarkily punning on "class struggle". Although I don't believe he named him, I guess it was obvious. He was not surprised that the professor harangued about it at the next class. It would be unfair to suggest that the professor figured him out and it told on his grade, as he didn't care much about grades so it would be hard to assign that - but the professor was not the sort who inspired him to more than his usual effort.
The developments of the 21st century were baked into the cake, with both the old Marxists even at a state school in the hinterland, and the multicult; even as - I believe you or somebody linked to substacker Joseph Heath's contention about this the other day - that Marxism faded and "gracefully" morphed into egalitarianism. (Radical egalitarianism; Heath doesn't emphasize the equally radical nature of it.)
One other thing stands out to me. I recall taking my son to visit TAMU, get the tour, and so forth. A nice young lady majoring in the business school did a presentation there. She was only entering her second year, I think, but already a junior. She described how you could test out of everything "basic" - English, history, science. Thus it was she had really only ever taken classes in business-y things like finance or accounting or whatever is subsumed under a business major.
This was rather enhanced by the then-new B school being a driving distance away from the campus where several generations of (boys) had taken the typical variety of college subjects though it was a land grant school.
I realize this might sound like a victory to those hostile to college. Make it more vocational!
It struck me as sad and depressing.
I don't necessarily think college as it used to be constituted, really needed reinvention.
If you’re referring to TAMU College Station, I liked the vibe when I visited the area for a random campus visit. Overall, I liked the vibe better than UT Austin.
In line with what you mentioned, we too know many kids in Texas that are able to easily graduate in 3 years with AP credits from high school. I think that’s the new normal for the above average kids.
I agree with this narrative when it comes to merit. Academic freedom is a more complicated matter.
It seems to me that free expression is usually valued more among whatever movement is "insurgent" at a given time. In the 60s, left academics were the big proponents of academic freedom. Probably at that time you would find more support for academic freedom and controversial research among women professors than among the men.
Feminism was controversial at the time after all! Now that feminism is orthodox, of course women support the orthodoxy.
Also female faculty trend younger due to affirmative action and "pipeline" factors. No way that explains the whole disparity, but academic freedom fundamentalists do tend to be older.
I like your attitude here Arnold. It’s one of understanding and poise. Step 1: talk about the problem (this post). Step 2: be grateful for what we have (a future post?). Step 3: Create new and better stuff attacking the vulnerabilities of the old, rotted institutions (much more than a post, but an entirely new Substack?).
We live in a very wealthy and relatively peaceful country historically speaking. Unfortunately our great wealth combined with great power in government has caused an enormous sum of money and power to be channeled into universities that accommodate, reverse assimilate, and shield young adults from the realities of the world. This tax funded system does harm to our children in K-12, and young adults in college, by dumbing them down and making them fragile. It views children as delicate, incapable, and in need of accommodation, shielding and protection. The classroom and school are soaked in safetyism. “Don’t let the kids outside for recess for they might look at the sun during the eclipse. Keep them away from the windows to prevent them from looking at the eclipse.” Not exaggerating here.
“But my guess is that the universities cannot be saved. The reverse assimilation is too deeply entrenched.” Probably, mostly true.
Differences between male humans and female humans help explain some of this reverse assimilation. Men are by nature risk takers, thrill seekers, hunters, warriors, thought leaders, war/business/team strategists, and truth seekers. Women are by nature worriers, far more prudent with their bodies than men, that prioritize childcare and longevity. Joyce Benenson lays it out in her book Warriors and Worriers.
Let’s talk about masculinity, character and role models. Let’s talk about what it means to be a man. I think men need to wake up to what’s going on and create new institutions with firm convictions and principles for men, and run by men.
You say that "one of the causal factors in the decline of the university was the goal of expanding access to higher education." But where did this goal come from? How did higher education metastasize from being Higher Education — a specialized institution dedicated to training societal elites and special preparation for high-status jobs — to being Universal Education, just the next step after high school? Where did this idea that "if you want a good job, you need to get a degree" originate?
The unspoken seed from which so much of the problem has sprung is a specific Supreme Court ruling that remains surprisingly obscure for how influential it ended up being on our society. Griggs v. Duke Power, a decision handed down by the same renegade Burger Court that would impose Roe v. Wade on the nation shortly thereafter, created the system of credentialism that lies at the heart of all of this, as a (likely unintended) consequence of their reckless rewriting of employment law in the name of racial equity.
I wrote an article on it last year: https://robertfrank.substack.com/p/the-most-significant-case-youve-never
I'm sure there are multiple books on the pathologies of higher Ed and their root causes, some backed up by data. I am back in school after decades, which experience has included sitting in classes with undergraduates and teaching at a large community college. I can confirm that all of the pathologies are clearly present (e.g., surfing fashion websites while the Professor tries desperately to generate interest). I could go on and on, but one gets the sense that a lot of government action relates, intentionally or not, to managing the unemployment number. I need to get around to reading "Regulating the Poor," since the socialists are adept at projecting what they are doing onto others.
I have only minor quibbles plus a question.
You do correctly note that the rot is not monocausal, but it seems to me that the administration changes are at the root of the rot, rather than the students, but perhaps this is a distinction without a difference.
And while I don’t doubt for a second the generalization that women are less pro free speech than men, it is also clearly true that younger people are less pro free speech than older ones. My *suspicion* (and note I have no data) is that the fact that women heads are clumped at the bottom of universities with the worst free speech policies is likely more a function of the age of the women university chiefs skewing younger than male ones - most especially given the DEI push in academia the last decade or so. I’d be very curious if someone did this age breakout as was done for sex.
You cannot save them and the public should not be funding them.
I’m not sure I agree with your reverse assimilation theory for universities. The equality-minded folks that seek to reduce standards are not necessarily the same people and don’t necessarily have the same culture as the minorities that they seek to prop up.
Said better: isn’t this an example of a luxury belief - elites feeling good about lowering standards to help minorities regardless of whether or not it actually helps minorities?
Sorry Prof, but reverse assimilation is not happening. It is simply dumbing down to get the equal outcomes that all the (already) cultural marxists in academia salivate for. How could a bunch of high school rubes infect those who are already infected? And of course, as you mention, it’s all powered by free taxpayer money. Whether this wave of poison will become a tsunami and destroy everything in its path, or eventually dribble into irrelevance, i don’t know. But we certainly need alternative institutions to survive and thrive in the future.
Just wanted to add that the points about female influence are spot on.
How does this explain the capture of the elite colleges by woke ideology? If anything the elite colleges have gotten pickier as to whom they will accept. The number of DEI admits is far too small to explain what has happened at Princeton.
"I think that we would be better off with a student population less than half the size that we have currently. Many young people aged 16-22 should be doing something different."
Wouldn't that result in a massive die-back of faculty, staff, programs, and institutions?
I decided to go backwards and look for interesting links but instead I found this,
"progressives and radicals rule the collegiate classroom, outnumbering right-of-center faculty by 12 to one on some estimates."
See the problem?
I didn't see it yesterday. Left-of-center might outnumber the right 12 to 1 but most of those aren't radicals and progressives.