Higher Education, Higher Bankruptcy

                      Higher Education, Higher Bankruptcy

             Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 10/7/18

Six weeks after turning 20, I walked onto the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.  Somehow I sensed that I had found myself.  Not that the junior college I had attended had failed to stretch or inspire me.  It, too, was a remarkable place.  East Central Jr. College in Decatur, Mississippi had reminded me of Daniel Webster’s remark about his beloved Dartmouth, “She may be small, but there are those of us who love her.”

            Southern Miss, though, was a growing university, already bigger than Ole Miss or Mississippi State.  I had never seen a village, as it were, known for the splendor of Greek architecture, whether in its classroom buildings, the dome-clad administrative building, the president’s home, or even student dorms.  The buildings seemingly pointed to high purpose.  Their columns pointed you to things beyond your present world, things like a better world.

            Ninety miles to the north where I had grown up, one rarely saw resplendent buildings.  Our glory was mostly futuristic: the fresh meat we would enjoy for a few months after killing hogs or the beautiful sight of the garden and the fields after all the crops were “laid by,” left to grow while we anticipated harvest.

            There was present glory, of course.  We had neighbors up and down the road who cared for each other, and plenty of food although almost everything else was always in short supply.  As for architecture, even the smallest country churches had steeples that pointed gloriously upward, a reality that had an unrealized effect on us. 

            Entering the university campus was a life-changing experience. The buildings and grounds around me held promise.  They would deepen my understanding of history and of the importance of beauty.  They would remind me that someone had the vision and foresight to build fair gardens like this campus in order for youths to prepare themselves to do their part in advancing civilization.  They would deepen my respect for my father who was so smart, so well read, and so interested in the world, yet so bound by responsibilities that he would never have dreamed of walking onto a university campus.

             I know, these are all high-flung thoughts.  Today, that American institution called the university cares little for high-flung thoughts or tradition.  To the modern university, tradition is a shackle, certainly not an inspiration.  Not so in European nations.  For all their wrongheadedness (globalism, incurable love for monarchy’s remnants, the near expulsion of Christianity), at least they don’t tear down buildings just because they are 15 years old.  Not ruled by total pragmatism, their appreciation of landmarks and of history exceeds that of America by light years.

            One wonders if there’s any easy cure for what’s wrong with the university.  Serious students will excel in spite of the university’s weaknesses, but what about the masses, those students who are there without any future vision, who have no sense of anything transcendent, and are therefore drawn to the protest movements, the party scene, and the outlandish “new way of viewing life” such as transgenderism, “fluidity,” and other “alternative life styles.”  There was a time when professors and administrators held students to tough standards.  Get your tails to the library or go back home.  We’re here not just for you but also for the future of the nation and of civilization.

            Universities are now in an intellectual crisis.  Having essentially abandoned their original purpose of liberal education and of becoming an enlightened “friend of man” as Aquinas put it, they are stuck in career ed (for which few people need a university), in sanctuary from the outer world, and in sports mania.  Families go into debt for this?  Examine the course offerings of a major university.  Compare the direction of academia today to the vision of the great Catholic theologian and educator, Cardinal John Henry Newman.

            The university is being replaced by “university life.”  Scholarship is being replaced by the indoctrination of equality, diversity, social justice, and cultural cleansing.  The therapeutic turn of higher education has led to the infantilization of university students.  Across the country there is a head-spinning array of practices intended to make university students feel “safe.”  Many universities are providing chill-out rooms.  Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School allow therapy dogs in their libraries.  Emotional fragility is the order of the day.  Universities are teaching fear, not courage.

            Droll thoughts, I realize.  But ask university students if their thought world is being challenged, or if their love for life or for anything outside of themselves is being deepened.  Financial bankruptcy is one thing, but intellectual/spiritual bankruptcy is quite another and is much sadder.

Roger Hines

10/3/18