The Bates Motel of Higher Education

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | September 18, 2026 | George Leef

[karpov]

For decades, serious scholars of all races have been saying that the obsession with diversity, equity, and inclusion that grips so many of our colleges has adverse consequences. Although it seems benign and helpful to insist on hiring and promoting people from certain backgrounds—the so-called marginalized groups—doing so has unintended and harmful consequences. To cite just one example, that is Thomas Sowell’s argument in his 1991 book Preferential Policies.

Adverse consequences usually cause people to stop and reconsider their actions when they directly suffer those consequences. In non-profit organizations, however, the leaders rarely feel any harm from having made poor decisions. There is no “bottom line” as in a business enterprise, and this lack of pressure allows non-profit leaders to manage the organization largely for their own satisfaction.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the decision making of college officials. They can happily indulge in ideological zealotry even though doing so degrades the quality of the school’s education. A recent article published in The Atlantic, “Why I Quit the Tenure Track,” by Tyler Austin Harper, shows how college leaders can become so wrapped up in a political agenda that they can’t see the damage they’re doing.

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TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: academia; batescollege; college

[rdcbn1]

DEI and the dropping of standardized testing and general ideological drop in academic standards has been ruinous to higher education and even more so for K-12 public schools

You have functionally illiterate students being accepted to Stanford and Harvard and the rest of the self proclaimed “elite” Ivy schools

To its credit, Stanford quickly reimposed standardized testing on its own initiative but the Ivy schools had to be forced to walk back their DEI insanity

If this is happening at our top schools it must be grim at other lower tier schools similarly infected by the woke mind virus

[Flaming Conservative]

Of course, they’re NOT top schools, and haven’t been for a long time. They are frauds, as are their graduates.