A recent piece in Not The Bee got me thinking. It was titled “Brace yourselves: It looks like the great college exodus may have finally begun!” and details potential and current college students questioning the worth and wisdom of securing increasingly expensive degrees of potentially nominal worth.
For a long time college has been the dominant socio-economic engine for a significant chunk of the United States population.
Also for a long time we've been mired in poisonous leftist politics that have slowly chipped away at the great foundations underpinning our country. Coincidence?
No.
Once upon a time a college degree meant something. Universities were not trade schools and were never intended to be. They were something more. You could not get a four-year degree in engineering, or computer science, or finance, without first taking “core” courses. Like a Chinese restaurant menu, you had choices, but they had to be diverse (two from column A, one from column B, etc.). These could include history, art, science, theater, and so on.
The intent was to create a rounded education, to turn out men and women with broad knowledge of the world around them as opposed to strictly technical skills. I would argue this was the legacy of our founders, Renaissance men all, worldly and knowledgeable about a whole host of subjects. Yes, you could do this on your own, but college lent order and discipline to the process, two things I was sorely lacking as an 18-year-old.
You want to get a job as an electrical engineer? You want a job on Wall Street? Great. But first read some early American literature. Learn about the Greeks and Romans. Be able to speak knowledgeably regarding the fundamental laws of physics.
People complained, of course. “Why do I need to learn astronomy if I’m studying to be an architect?”
Because it wasn’t just about you. It was about all of us. It was about our culture, our society, and our country.
The crime of what has become of the modern university goes well beyond cost (which is an obscenity), and even beyond nonsense degrees and ideological capture.
It has destroyed an institution that once provided real learning, real education, people who could help others well outside the confines of the responsibilities of their particular occupation. They could competently write newsletters, church bulletins, letters-to-the-editor. They could help out at school science fairs, tutor kids, volunteer locally, run for office, bring their special skills for the betterment of their community.
In short, universities once created citizens.
Now, they create subjects.
We are at a point where it will be up to those who somehow escaped the woke Marxist idiocy so prevalent on college campuses to lead by example, and demand more of their institutions, to demand accountability.
It is also up to those who never attended a university to step into the breach.
I’ve known many an Ivy League grad who was dumber than a bag of rocks, and many a tradesman who was clever, insightful, and well-read.
We must learn to ignore the former and embrace the latter. To celebrate anyone who steps up to say, no, I won’t believe what I can see with my own eyes to be untrue. I won’t embrace your racist ideology nor your intersectional hatefulness.
I won’t join your sick cult.
We must be open to people of all walks of life, the carpenter, the mason, the doctor, the lawyer, the pest control guy, stepping into leadership positions. Either they have the abilities, or they don’t. No more credentialism, no more automatically deferring to a piece of paper.
We wonder why our institutions are so full of rot. They are full of rot because they are full of people whose only qualifications are pieces of paper from corrupt institutions like our universities.
From the experts who told us the Afghan army would last months if not years, to the think tanks who told us Russia’s technologically advanced army would sweep into Kyiv in days, to the clowns who tell us that increased spending and money printing will akshually reduce inflation.
No more.
We need an overhaul, and it can’t come soon enough.
Because knowledge really is good.
Inculcation is not.
Well put!
“…universities once created citizens.
Now, they create subjects.”
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