Defund College

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

   

 1 in 10 college students answered that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had created the New Deal. And only 1 in 10 knew James Madison’s role in shaping the Constitution.
That survey from the ‘American Council of Trustees and Alumni’ was one of several warnings about the catastrophic illiteracy of college students and graduates.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute did its own survey of over 28,000 undergraduates from 80 colleges and the average score on the civic literacy exam was an F. At top schools, including Yale, seniors actually knew less than freshmen. A Collegiate Learning Assessment found that after two years almost half of students showed “no significant gains in learning”.

As terrorist riots rage on campuses and Biden’s latest student loan bailout approaches $1 trillion, a basic question that isn’t being asked is whether college is even good for anything.

The Hamas riots like the surveys showing that less than a third of college students are capable of handing everyday literacy and barely half will ever read a book after graduation are all symptoms of a much larger problem that is destroying the country and tearing us apart.

A liberal arts education, originally intended to broaden the minds of the children of the elite, has been applied to the widest possible population while narrowing the minds of a nation. Few college students graduate with their minds broadened and fewer still with usable skills. Employers have been warning that college graduates are not ready for the workforce, but neither are they ready to pay off their debts or coexist with family members and the country.

Higher education in many fields has become an indoctrination factory in which students imbibe values and attitudes rather than ideas. Like Soviet education, American education works only in technical areas while the rest of it is dedicated to analyzing the world through Marxist paradigms. Literature, history and nearly every ‘studies’ field train students to analyze and denounce the past through the same oppressor/oppressed paradigm no matter the subject.

College students apply by citing their activism, engage in activism as part of their education and graduate knowing little more than how to be activists. The Hamas riots are currently happening on campuses, but previous riots, including BLM, disproportionately drew on college students in the role of activists, planners and organizers because college is synonymous with activism.

Universities have always been hubs of radicalism, but they also distributed ideas, knowledge and skills. Aside from some besieged scientific and technical departments, who are less than a decade away from being ‘DEIed’ into the dark ages, that is no longer what colleges do anymore.

The risk-reward ratio for higher education has never been worse and the arguments for its existence have never been poorer. Trundling off the sons of elites to a theological school made perfect sense centuries ago and there were still some arguments to be made for a liberal arts education before the old schools and their campus culture ushered in the counterculture.

But in a world where higher education can be remote and adult professionals often pursue degrees while they work, telling arrested development teens to put their lives on hold for another four years so they can graduate with a worthless degree and a pile of student debt makes no sense. And that would be true even if the system conveyed knowledge instead of radical hate.

Even as the old four-year college has become irrelevant, federal and state governments have led the way in spending more money on it while trying to shove everyone through its doors.

“I, like an awful lot of people in this audience, was the first in my family to go to college,” Biden claimed at a student loan bailout event.

Not only isn’t this true, but Biden was the scion of a wealthy family, a poor college student and a failed lawyer who was managing a swimming pool before he figured out how to make the jump into politics. Biden and his wife “Dr. Jill”, are the perfect poster children for mediocre elites with no skills except politics who brandish their college diplomas as if they were badges of authority.

Did the Bidens gain anything except a sense of entitlement from their college careers?

During the Hamas campus riots, we’ve seen a professor insist that she couldn’t be arrested because she was an academic and at UCLA, a bearded student being arrested during the pro-terror riots shouted, “I’m an English major” as if that made him immune to law enforcement.

But if it wasn’t Hamas, it would be BLM, abortion, the environment or some other cause.

The purpose of college is no longer education, but radicalization. Generations of faculty who bonded with the university experience because it ‘turned them on’ to leftist politics have made it their mission to transmit their politics to new generations. Occupations and campus radicalism are not aberrations, they have become the larger mission of higher education.

One survey showed that the average college student spends less than 3 hours a day attending class and studying. That’s it for education. What does he or she do the rest of the time?

It’s a myth that woke goes broke. More accurately, the broke turn woke. Broken institutions that can no longer credibly pursue their original missions, but are determined to keep on cashing in, embrace radical politics for the same reason that ideologues tend to be the least productive members of society. Higher education surrendered to wokeness because the death of liberalism and the extinction of ideas gives it little other purpose or mission beyond leftist agitprop.

Professors, when they aren’t checking themselves for microaggressions and trigger warnings, complain that students are unable to read even the shortest assignments and can’t process what they read. And that was even before ChatGPT came to be routinely used by college and even graduate students to distill every work or reference into a summarized bullet point list.

Ideas are complicated, but riots are easy. And cheering for Hamas while assaulting Jewish students provides a nice distraction from the work of running Audrey Lorde or free market economics through ChatGPT and then using AI to generate essays they will then rewrite.

Do we as a society need to be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on this failed system?

The four-year college is a miserable failure. If wealthy families want to subsidize a liberal arts education for their kids at Yale or Columbia, they’re more than welcome to, but the rest of us should not be stuck with the bill. The vast majority of professions do not need degrees, they require training and competence: two things a college degree no longer assures employers of.

The only areas of higher education taxpayers should ever consider subsidizing are in scientific or medical fields in order to ensure that they are taught in a depoliticised manner. The rest of it has become little more than a goulash of Marxism, racialism, sexuality and other identity politics activism. Defunded, perhaps traditional knowledge and learning may once again return to fields that are no longer comfortable and unaccountable hubs for the Marxists who hollowed them out.

Defunding college may be the only way to save it. It certainly is the only way to save America.

 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

How to Fix Education? Defund it!

By Rich Kozlovich 

There has been a great deal of talk about the outrageous increase of the cost of education, and especially higher education these days. I think it's possible these insane increases in education might be the best thing that has ever happened to higher education. I know that may sound insane, but in the real world it's the cost of things that re-focuses people’s attention, and we really need to get rid of the idea education is a Golden Calf, irrespective of it's failures.  Success in life is about persistence and hard work, and that success can be achieved with or without graduating with a degree! As , who I think was the finest President of the 20th century noted:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On!' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” 

 

At some point someone will stand up and force this issue of funding for higher education by the government and the demands the Department of Education imposes on the institutions, and that's where the problem lies entirely.  Furthermore, these universities deliberately raise tuition costs in order to make it possible for more students to qualify for government loans or funding of some kind, many of whom shouldn't be there in the first place. Another good reason to get rid of the Department of Education, and to end this student loan fiasco.  

But, let's try and understand this properly, and that can only be done when we define things properly since it's definition is what leads to clarity.  The question that must be asked and answered in order to properly define what's happening is this:  What's higher education really all about?

First, let's take for example this issue of racial quotas. They created this to grease the squeaky wheels.  They ended up with more squeaks. When you read the issues regarding racial quotas you begin to realize that absolutely no one had a clue about what's right, wrong, legal, or illegal, including the Congress, and until their recent ruling ending quotas, the Supreme Court.   The whole thing became a racial quota mess.  As Justice Clarence Thomas noted in the Students For Fair Admissions vs Harvard 2023 ruling:

"The solution to our nation’s racial problems cannot come from polices grounded in affirmative action or some other conception of equality. Racialism simply cannot be undone by different or more racialism."

Universities have been, and continue being forced to be the engineers of social change!  Why?  Isn't imparting knowledge their purpose for being? No, and it's all turned into a mess of leftist propaganda and indoctrination.  An expensive mess that fails to properly educate these kids  having a functionally illiteracy rate that's staggering.  

But I have the answer. Eliminate federal funding of any kind!  Make them totally self funding, tax them accordingly, including their endowment funds, which are massive, then watch now quickly things change.

Let the university regents set their own admission and education standards for whatever reason they please, and then let them justify their positions to the parents paying for all of this.  Reality will force the price down, it will force professors to actually teach their classes, it will drop class size, it will put those universities and colleges out of business that need eliminating, which in my opinion are the largest and most "prestigious", including much touted Columbia,  and it will force most of them to re-evaluate who the professors are and what they teach. In short, make all colleges and universities privately owned and self funding, and effective, if they are capable of it!  And if they're not, just like all private businesses that fail to perform, they'll go out of business.

But here's the most important thing.  All of the problems we see people complaining about will go away naturally.

Wow! Now that is a shocker isn’t it. But that is what it will take. If universities are allowed to set all their own standards will some institutions attempt to keep blacks out? Yes. Will there will be some that will keep Jews out?  Yes!  Will there be some that will keep Asians out?  Yes! Will there be some who will keep whites out.  Yes!  So what?

Let them function as they please and suffer the consequences, or reap the rewards for their decisions. This would be the perfect opportunity for every group that is being unfairly excluded based on race,  ethnicity, or even religion to form their own universities with their own standards. Hopefully higher standards. Setting higher academic standards would almost be an automatic since the standard is so low they're fairly meaningless now. 

If they are unable for financial reasons, or there aren't sufficient numbers of a particular group to form their own institutions, then that will be an incentive to explore other opportunities. 

• They can decide to come together and form as a group totally devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion if they choose.  
• They can come together form an institution that has no exclusionary standards, of any kind, including academic standards if they choose. 
• They can can come together and choose to keep out all those who are academically unworthy if they choose and make merit their standard.
  

Regarding all the issues surrounding education, none of this is as it appears.  We assume public education was to teach reading, writing and arithmetic.  Right? Wrong! That was a byproduct! The goal of public education was to “make sure the apple fell as far away for the tree as possible”!  The goal of the socialist movement is now and has always been (ever since the French Revolution) to undermine any moral authority other than the moral authority of the state. 

As far as I've been able to discover public education as we know it was started in Scotland in the 1600's with the goal of creating good Christian citizens.  Now, one might think that's a good thing, but let's define this properly.  Whether you agree with that goal or not, that's called social engineering, and what happens when socialists, who are opposed to "good Christian citizens" take control of public education?   

Public education as we know it in America was organized in the late 19th century by socialists who called themselves progressives in order to hide who they really were and what their goal really was, and that was to deliberately undermine the moral authority of parents and the churches.

If you take a look at these institutions and what they teach you begin to realize that they aren’t teaching our kids, they are indoctrinating them with Marxist philosophy. These kids come out over educated, under smart, ignorant and arrogant in their ignorance, and just like their professors, as equally incapable of running a business or understanding what sacrifices it takes to become successful, because all they focus on is how unfair American capitalism is, in spite of the fact American capitalism has brought more people out of poverty, misery, and suffering than any system in the history of the world.. 

They constantly fail to get that history right. As Obama said to the real creators of jobs, aka, businessmen:

"If you've got a business, you didn't build that!"

They later claimed that this was taken out of context, but this is the theme of socialism, and nitwits like Obama who never ran anything successfully, other that creating a destructive, treasonous, tyrannous Deep State.  And that's what's being taught and promoted in the universities. 

The very definition of marriage as the bonding of a man and a woman is called into question, and is being tyrannically promoted at all levels of education in America.  In the various psychology and social services courses within academia, any who have difficulty accepting those concepts have been pushed out of those courses, and even fired.

When that becomes accepted by society the very foundation of a stable society, the nuclear family, is subject to disintegration. If the definition of a nuclear family as a man, a woman and their children is no longer accepted then that stable foundation will disintegrate naturally, and the state then becomes the moral arbiter of all values. 

Then, that which has always been the real target of the socialists, Judaic/Christian principles, will cease to exist within society. That has been the focus of public education, especially higher education, going back to Margaret Mead, the Frankfurt School people and others. Once the state has destroyed every vestige of Judaic/Christian principles they can get society to do anything. I would like to draw attention to my article, Let Me Tell You about Trofim Denisovich Lysenko which discusses some of what happens in a society that has become a moral vacuum.  Once we understand all of that everything else falls into place.   

You may also wish to view my article; Pathways of the Past are the Stepping Stones to the Future! 

Do you want to end the insanity?  End the funding! Once again, reality will force the price down, and will force professors to actually teach their classes, it will drop class size, it will put some universities and colleges out of business.   It will force most of them to re-evaluate who the professors are and what they teach. In short, ending all funding and making all colleges and universities privately owned and self funding will allow all of these problems to go away naturally. 

Most importantly, we won’t have a bunch of socialists ensconced in university ivory towers undermining the very system that supports them, and far fewer of the young will be coming out of the universities as socialists, greenies, racists, leftists, over educated, under smart, ignorant, and arrogant in their ignorance.

Inside Stanford’s disgrace: Judge Duncan speaks

March 18, 2023 by Scott Johnson  @ Powerline

Judge Michael McConnell to the contrary notwithstanding, we seek to publicize the ringleaders, perpetrators, and administrators involved in the shout down of Kyle Duncan at the March 9 Stanford Law School event sponsored by the school’s Federalist Society chapter. To borrow a phrase from Bob Dylan, we seek to tear the rag away from their face. Judge Duncan himself is not inclined to let it ride. The Wall Street Journal has published his first-person account as “My struggle session at Stanford Law School” (behind the Journal’s paywall). The headline of course alludes to the Maoist practice of denunciation and humiliation of “class enemies.” See also the “Two Minutes Hate” depicted by George Orwell in 1984.

What is it like to be the object of a “struggle session”? Judge Duncan recounts:

When I arrived, the walls were festooned with posters denouncing me for crimes against women, gays, blacks and “trans people.” Plastered everywhere were photos of the students who had invited me and fliers declaring “You should be ASHAMED,” with the last word in large red capital letters and a horror-movie font. This didn’t seem “collegial.” Walking to the building where I would deliver my talk, I could hear loud chanting a good 50 yards away, reminiscent of a tent revival in its intensity. Some 100 students were massed outside the classroom as I entered, faces painted every color of the rainbow, waving signs and banners, jeering and stamping and howling. As I entered the classroom, one protester screamed: “We hope your daughters get raped!”

I had been warned a few days before about a possible protest. But Stanford administrators assured me they were “on top of it,” that Stanford’s policies permitted “protest but not disruption.” They weren’t “on top of it.” Before my talk started, the mob flooded the room. Banners unfurled. Signs brandished: “FED SUCK,” “Trans Lives Matter” (this one upside down), and others that can’t be quoted in a family newspaper. A nervous dog—literally, a canine—was in the front row, fur striped with paint. A man with a frozen smile approached me, identified himself as the “dean of student engagement,” and asked, “You doing OK?” I don’t remember what I said.

The protesters weren’t upset by the subject of my talk—a rather dry discourse on how circuit courts interact with the Supreme Court in times of doctrinal flux. Rather, I was their target. While in practice, I represented clients and advanced arguments the protesters hate—for instance, I defended Louisiana’s traditional marriage laws. As for my judicial decisions, among the several hundred I’ve written, the protesters were especially vexed by U.S. v. Varner. A federal prisoner serving a term for attempted receipt of child pornography (and with a previous state conviction for possession of child porn) petitioned our court to order that he be called by feminine pronouns. As my opinion explained, federal courts can’t control what pronouns people use. The Stanford protesters saw it differently: My opinion had “denied a transwoman’s existence.”

When the Federalist Society president [Tim Rosenberger] tried to introduce me, the heckling began. “The Federalist Society (You suck!) is pleased to welcome Judge Kyle Duncan (You’re not welcome here, we hate you!). . . . He was appointed by President Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (Embarrassing!).” And so on. As I began, the heckling continued. Try delivering a speech while being jeered at every third word. This was an utter farce, a staged public shaming. I stopped, pleaded with the students to stop the stream of insults (which only made them louder), and asked if administrators were present.

Enter Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion. Ms. Steinbach and (I later learned) other administrators were watching from the periphery. She hadn’t introduced herself to me. She asked to address the students.

Something felt off. I asked her to tell the students their infantile behavior was inappropriate. She insisted she wanted to talk to all of us. Students began screaming, and I reluctantly gave way. Whereupon Ms. Steinbach opened a folio, took out a printed sheaf of papers, and delivered a six-minute speech addressing the question: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

What could that mean? While the students rhythmically snapped, Ms. Steinbach attempted to explain. My “work,” she said, “has caused harm.” It “feels abhorrent” and “literally denies the humanity of people.” My presence put Ms. Steinbach in a tough spot, she said, because her job “is to create a space of belonging for all people” at Stanford. She assured me I was “absolutely welcome in this space” because “me and many people in this administration do absolutely believe in free speech.” I didn’t feel welcome—who would? And she repeated the cryptic question: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

I asked again what she meant, and she finally put the question plainly: Was my talk “worth the pain that this causes and the division that this causes?” Again she asserted her belief in free speech before equivocating: “I understand why people feel like the harm is so great that we might need to reconsider those policies, and luckily, they’re in a school where they can learn the advocacy skills to advocate for those changes.” Then she turned the floor back over to me, while hoping I could “learn too” and “listen through your partisan lens, the hyperpolitical lens.” In closing, she said: “I look out and I don’t ask, ‘What’s going on here?’ I look out and I say, ‘I’m glad this is going on here.’ ” This is on video, and the entire event is on audio, in case you’re wondering.

• Twitter Files reveal government-sponsored suppression of the truth with the help of Stanford University March 19, 2023 When the powers that be deem it necessary to suppress what they themselves acknowledge is “truthful” information, a Rubicon has been crossed from which it is well-nigh impossible to return. ...............
• Let’s talk about Stanford’s law students, March 18, 2023  By Andrea Widburg - I was on vacation when Judge Stuart Duncan appeared at Stanford Law School at the invitation of the Federalist Society. As you all know, he was greeted with strident, often obscene slogans and personal invective, all of which culminated with the “associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion” joining with the students to say that Duncan was so hate-filled that, while theory dictated he should be heard, in fact, he wasn’t worth it. Afterward, the students harassed the dean who eventually apologized to Judge Duncan, only for them to become hysterical and paranoid when their names became public. Stanford is training its students to be members of Mao’s Red Guard, rather than lawyers in a representative, constitutional democracy.............