Higher Education? Higher than What?

                    Higher Education? Higher than What?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 7/29/18

            The American university is beset with problems.  You wouldn’t know it by looking at its resplendent buildings, lawns, labs, and endowment. Sadly ironic, it isn’t the university that suffers from the problems; it’s the public that funds it.

            Before highlighting some of higher education’s shortcomings, let’s be fair.  Centuries hence, it will be said of Americans, “They tried to educate everybody.  They advanced literacy and became a world power in less than two centuries of existence.  Instead of letting poverty slide, they attacked it governmentally and privately.”

            Americans are still performing these tasks, and higher education has played an important role in them.  However, we have elevated the university to a status it doesn’t deserve.  In doing so we have forgotten that much of America’s greatness was brought about by private, non-degreed individuals who took advantage of our free enterprise system and either started a business, invented something, floated an idea, or built a non-profit organization that alleviated  suffering.  For every college graduate, there are thousands of non-college graduates who pursued a dream and positively affected other people’s lives.

            What are some problems the university has heaped on us?  One is the big lie that one’s success or failure depends on whether or not we avail ourselves of the university’s offerings.  The university holds over the public an aura of self-importance.  “You need me but you must pay the price,” it chortles.  “I am the standard bearer of all things intellectual,” it beams.

            Hogwash!  Let’s take these last two claims one at a time.  Standard bearer of all things intellectual?  Then how do we explain Eric Hoffer, the “uneducated” San Francisco longshoreman who wrote books such as “The Ordeal of Change” in which he illustrated that knowledge can be had and communicated without a university education?  Hoffer was no outlier.  Like many others, he educated both his head and hands, though not with a university degree.

            Suffice it to say it’s time to rethink higher education.  Time to break loose from its grip and acknowledge that the university is adrift.  It is adrift practically and ideologically.

            Practically, the college degree has run into the law of diminishing returns.  The Center for College Affordability and Productivity reports that the earning differential between high school and college graduates fell from $32,900 in 2000 to $29,867 in 2015.  Those who are going to college for money, instead of for expanding their general knowledge, might be better off avoiding college.

            As for ideological drift, Penn State law professor Amy Wax made the mistake of authoring an article in which she called for the re-instatement of the “cultural script” that prevailed in the 1950s.  In Wax’s words, the “cultural script” or norm for the 50s was “Marry before you have children, strive to stay married, get enough schooling to get employment, work hard, and avoid drugs and crime.”

            Professor Wax’s department colleagues and the law school dean hit the ceiling.  Said Dean Ted Ruger, “As an educator I reject emphatically that any single cultural tradition is better than all others.”

             What?  Constitutionalism – the bedrock of our political tradition – isn’t any better than dictatorships?  Religious freedom is no better than a church state as in Iran where religion and state are inexorably linked?  A unified nuclear family is not preferable over a single-parent culture?

            Let’s give the Dean this: he accurately represented the mindset of the university, particularly its passion for cultural equivalency, inclusivity, and total tolerance of all cultures.  Should someone seek out his opinion of cannibalism and female genital mutilation?

            The university bids us to keep an open mind about all things.  But writer Ravi Zacharias says, “An open mind is like an open mouth.  Sooner or later it must close on something, else it will accept everything, reject nothing, and become an open sewer.”

            Today’s reigning ideology is that of the university, certainly not that of hearth and home.  Today we are to believe that any style of family will do, which is actually a stupid notion since everybody knows that everybody has a mother and a father.  “Higher” typically means better, but is it better to neglect or demean manual skills and point all youths to the university?

            Today the 1950s norms are precisely what America needs.  No, no, not racial segregation, but marrying before having children, staying married, working hard, and avoiding wrong and unwise behavior.  The fact that a law professor was ostracized for saying so is absolutely depressing and scary.

Roger Hines

7/25/18