The Downward Spiral of Post-Secondary Education

By Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller| April 14th, 2019

Something is seriously rotten in our education establishment, especially in colleges and universities. The culprits are the evolution of the educational agenda, the cult of progressivism on campus, and the debt that students accumulate for an increasingly disappointing outcome.

Total student debt as of 2018 stood at approximately $1.56 trillion, and the average student who graduated in 2018 faced a debt of about $30,000. Lending Tree offers a breakdown of the depressing statistics. The average graduate of a private institution owes nearly $40,000, and some 88 percent of graduates are indebted at some level. Students who attend elite colleges without winning scholarships and those who go on to graduate school will almost surely enter the workforce owing $100,000 or more. And these are debts that bankruptcy cannot erase............

First and foremost, many students entering higher education are ill-equipped to handle either the intellectual rigor or the discipline necessary for college. The failure of many secondary schools to prepare students for college is well-documented; a large fraction of students entering many of the institutions in the California State University system, for example, require significant remedial work before they can undertake college-level courses.

But children reared to experience “success and self-esteem” without real achievement have been sheltered by helicopter parents unwilling or unable to confront disappointment in their kids. Such students, perhaps unfairly labeled  “snowflakes,” are so named because of their propensity to see themselves as special and to melt at the slightest disappointment or challenge.............To Read More....