College used to be valuable; now it’s mostly a waste
The United States became the world’s leading economy in the 19th century at a time when only a very small percentage of the people attended college. America had many great inventors, scientists, engineers, architects, and so on. They mastered their fields and often advanced them, overwhelmingly based on learning done in the real world, not in classrooms. Numerous colleges dotted the land, and it was not expensive to go, but few Americans thought the benefits were worth the cost.
That changed dramatically due to federal policies enacted in the 1960s. President Lyndon Johnson believed that getting more Americans through college would help win his “War on Poverty” and he pushed Congress to pass the Higher Education Act of 1965, which began federal subsidies for college attendance with easy loans. As a result, college enrollments began to rise rapidly as more high school students chose to attend, often influenced by the fact that, on average, college graduates earned substantially more than high school grads did. College appeared to be a sure-thing investment.
Higher education leaders loved this growing demand for their product and all the additional money they now had available to spend on expansion. Simultaneously, politicians told people that higher education was an economic booster—the more students who graduated, the higher our GDP would be. Many families bought the hype and encouraged their sons and daughters to enroll, even if they weren’t particularly good students and had little desire to pursue serious academic work.
Consequently, colleges found themselves deluged with applicants, an increasingly high percentage of them ill-prepared for college-level work. In the past, such students would not have been accepted, but now college administrators chose growth and money rather than maintaining their standards. To keep the marginal students enrolled (and paying), schools permitted or even encouraged grade inflation and dropped required courses that demanded hard work. They allowed faculty members to introduce new courses that had scant intellectual content (e.g. about pop culture topics) but appealed to students who wanted easy credits. They also approved courses that focused on grievances against society, which again promised easy credits, provided that the student regurgitated the professor’s views.
And higher education changed in another way — it became far more expensive. With easy federal money available to high school grads as long as they used it to enroll in approved colleges, higher education leaders realized that they could raise tuition. They did so, at a rate well in excess of the rate of inflation. After a few years, Congress, wanting to keep college affordable, responded by making its financial aid more generous, which of course allowed college officials to increase their charges still more.
In short, due to government meddling, over the last 60 years, college has become much more expensive while at the same time delivering much less educational value. That doesn’t mean that no student benefits from attending. What it does mean, however, is that students and their families need to very carefully consider their post-high school options. If they don’t, they’re apt to make the mistake that so many have made of jumping headlong into college, borrowing heavily to cover the expense, only to later find out that the expected good job never materializes.
There is another reason to look skeptically at colleges, namely the high degree of political indoctrination we find at many of them. More than a century ago, Marxist opponents of our free society realized that they could achieve their objectives by infiltrating our educational institutions. They began their “long march” early in the 20th century and it has proven to be highly successful. Faculties are now composed largely of “progressives” who don’t hesitate to try turning their students into zealots for transforming America.
At many schools, students hear attacks on our traditions almost daily—the message that our country is hopelessly backward, indelibly racist, and a scourge on the planet. Rarely do they hear any defense of free enterprise, individual responsibility, and limited government under the Constitution. Students have been manipulated by slogans such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as we saw as protests erupted against Israel after the Hamas atrocities. This isn’t learning. It’s indoctrination.
It’s true that there are many professors who don’t agree with the Marxist critique of America, but they just teach their courses. They don’t try to counter the left’s incessant propaganda. That is why so many students leave college as “social justice warriors” and so few as defenders of America’s traditions. In the old days, college leaders would not have tolerated professors who abused positions, but today, it is normal.
Instead of teaching young people to be careful, objective, rationalists, much of what college now accomplishes is the very opposite—turning out zealots who think they have all the answers and will not tolerate anyone who disagrees with them. Employers have begun noticing this. Many of them now regard college (especially degrees from supposedly prestigious schools) as an indicator of probable attitudinal problems more than of high ability.
The traditional college degree is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a successful life. So, how should students and families think about post-high school options?
College can be a worthwhile learning experience for students who truly desire advanced education. For a young person who has developed a deep interest in science, economics, history, or some other discipline, going to college might be the best choice, but that choice must be made with care. Look for the now rather rare schools where the preferred major is taught without an overlay of politics and the rest of the curriculum is blessedly free of such junk as mandatory “diversity” courses.
But suppose that the young person is interested in the quickest pathway into a good career—in that case, there are several options to consider. At community colleges there are numerous courses that can open doors; there are programs run by companies such as Google that train people in computer coding with the prospect of employment after successful completion; there are apprenticeship programs in many in-demand fields like precision machining. For training in useful skills, college isn’t the best place to look.
There are even programs such as the 1517 Fund that will back imaginative and ambitious students who want to plunge right into business.
With employers increasingly looking for evidence of knowledge rather than just a college degree, ambitious young Americans have lots of good choices. Smart ones will consider a wide range of them.
If you look back to the year 2000, there was a general consensus that a college degree was the key to the American Dream of a successful life. But that was never true and today we can see that success depends on an individual’s effort, not on the particular sort of education he or she received. Per contra, many cases stand out where highly educated (or it might be more accurate to say highly credentialed) people have done things to ruin their lives and those of others. Let’s take college down from the pedestal.
George Leef is director of external relations for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
