Posted on 09/14/2023 8:53:10 AM PDT by SJackson
Are our secular universities, especially those leaning most radically left, soon to collapse – or at least, soon to lose their current positions of power and influence? A good case can be made that the answer could well be yes.
First, there has been a serious dip in enrollment in our colleges and universities across the nation. As noted in a March 9, 2023 headline on the Fortune website, “The labor shortage is pushing American colleges into crisis, with the plunge in enrollment the worst ever recorded.”
Yes, “What first looked like a pandemic blip has turned into a crisis. Nationwide, undergraduate college enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022, with declines even after returning to in-person classes, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse. The slide in the college-going rate since 2018 is the steepest on record, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Economists say the impact could be dire.”
Already in May 2022, US News reported that, “College Enrollment Declines Are Here to Stay. The enrollment data comes as a growing number of students consider alternatives to higher education – both as a result of tuition costs and data highlighting earnings potential without a degree.”
Is a college degree really that important for life and success, especially in light of today’s sky-high tuition?
Second, declining birth rates are contributing to lower enrollments. As the Hechinger Report explained, “focusing only on the effects of Covid on enrollment obscures that a demographic downturn has already been squeezing colleges and universities for a decade during which the number of students has declined by an unprecedented 2.6 million, or 13 percent.
“Because of a falloff in the number of births during the last recession, another drop of from 11 to 15 percent is projected beginning in the mid-2020s in the number of prospective college students graduating from high schools.”
But it is here that a separation could be coming, as Christian conservatives have more children than do liberals and the non-religious.
As a July 2021 headline in the Western Journal announced, “Birth Rates Are the Right’s Secret Weapon as Liberal Values Backfire.”
The article by Miska Salleman stated that, “Data from the General Social Survey indicates that in the 1970s ‘there was little or no difference in fertility rates between liberal and conservative women,’ according to the Institute for Family Studies.”
Over time, though, that statistic has changed dramatically, and Salleman reports, “As of 2018, the gap had widened markedly, with conservative women between the ages of 30-44 averaging near 2.5 children and liberal women just over 1.5.” She continues, “To approach the data another way, the survey also shows that a random sample of 100 conservative adults will raise 208 children. One hundred liberal adults will raise only 147 kids, according to Fatherly.”
And what does this mean in practical terms? “That gap means that conservatives could hold a political edge, as the size of liberal families continues to dwindle. The evidence that supports this idea is overwhelming,” and it is only logical to assume that it will affect college enrollments too.
It is true, of course, that not all of these children of Christian conservatives will go to Christian schools, and it is also true that there has been a problem of retention. (In other words, a sizable minority of these young people will leave the faith.) But the more extreme the secular universities become, the more likely it is that they will lose more and more Christian conservatives.
Take Harvard University as a case in point. Its prestige and influence are hard to exaggerate. Yet in a recent report, Harvard was rated as the worst school in the nation when it came to free speech. The worst!
But that’s only the beginning of the story. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Harvard scored a zero out of 100 possible points, with the next worst school scoring at 11 out of 100. In fact, according to FIRE, Harvard’s score of “0.00 is generous” because its “actual score is -10.69.” So, on a scale of 1 to 100, Harvard scored a minus 10.69.
Will Harvard, along with other hyper-woke schools, continue to draw students into such an oppressive atmosphere? Perhaps at a certain point the risk will outweigh the reward.
And how long will Christian parents continue to send their kids to these elite schools where their faith will come under constant attack?
Third, the more these schools embrace radical Marxism, the less students will receive a practical education and the less equipped they will be for the real world. (If you have any doubt about the Marxist ideological takeover of many of our schools, see Christopher Rufo’s America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.)
The Fortune article referenced, “hundreds of thousands of young people who came of age during the pandemic but didn’t go to college. Many have turned to hourly jobs or careers that don’t require a degree, while others have been deterred by high tuition and the prospect of student debt.” Add to this the simple fact that Marxism doesn’t work and you have a further recipe for disaster.
Contrast this with a February 7, 2023 article in the Daily Caller that stated, “Christian colleges and universities are seeing an increase in enrollment despite the national enrollment rate of college students being on a decline, higher education experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The national undergraduate enrollment rate dropped 1.1% during the fall 2022 semester while the rate declined a total of 4.2% since 2020, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Many faith-based institutions, however, saw an increase in enrollment which higher education experts claim is because of these institutions’ commitment to their roots.”
Could a major shift be underway?
When a college degree has become synonymous with ignorance then colleges have become irrelevant.
We need to find a way to tap the university endowment funds to relieve student debt (instead of using taxpayer funds) while they still have endowment funds.
They need to be defunded and restored to their original purposes.
What exists now has organizational continuity with the past, but only in the way a dead body does.
The rest is mere pretense, but still quite profitable.
Learn to code … and weld.
We really need a collapse of all “colleges” and “universities” in this banana republic today. At least fire all of the communist and racist propagandists and replace them with real teachers. They are costing the American taxpayers a hell of a lot more than they are worth. We need places for Americans to go to learn to get their hands dirty again. Colleges are for retarded jerks. There are way too many participation diplomas floating around out there these days. A lot of employers don’t even ask for them anymore.
Now that they all have cellphones, they don't need college anymore. The pizza joints do all their math for them.
My wife and daughter teach at a Christian School. They teach their students in subjects like Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Earth Science. Students need to learn that they need to study hard and make certain that they understand that at that level, they need to learn critical reasoning skills and they need to go to the teachers when they do not understand. The teachers love to help them. My daughter did a small test on corn because many of them had never shucked corn...
Sounds good to me!
There are loads of so-called Christian universities that don’t practice what the New Testament teaches.
There are going to be tares among the wheat, and wolves dressing like sheep for the rest of our lives. Well, until the return of Jesus Christ, I mean.
It’s one of the reasons I’m watching what goes on at my Alma Mater.
I know we didn’t care for Ben Sasse when he was in the Senate, but he is probably the most Conservative President of a major Public University in the country, so if he can clean up UF, that could resonate with other universities.
Wall Street Journal just named UF as the Number One Public University in the country, FWIW.
BTT
Public and many private colleges are a racket. Federal money and grants, state money and grants, many donors, and high tuition are the way they can exist. They need to pay off unionized workers, superfluous administrators, teachers for fringe degrees, generous healthcare and retirement benefits.
Facilities for services that students can and should do on their own.
They make it easier for people to attend, and falsely claim that their degrees make success in life guaranteed. They try and squeeze in DIE ideology to allow as many students as possible.
Everything they do is to increase funding.
The teaching can be done by much less than what they say they need. No SAT or ACT for many schools.
It’s a racket baby.
Wonder how much wsj was paid for that endorsement! UF is probably a fine, fine school. But having attended many colleges( when college meant something), I can attest that there is no way ANY college can be judged fairly much less ranked.
The rankings of private and public schools is a joke as you alluded to with your FWIW comment.
They would have a number of tools at their disposal to make such collections including, but not limited to, the following:
If the degree has enabled the graduate to earn a fair rate of return on their investment, then the very threat of degree revocation would encourage the graduate to honor their payment plan. If not, then the institution in question probably deserves to have the debt defaulted upon.
I graduated from FSU in 1973. I had a good GPA and got into the University of Massachusetts. I did a PH.D. there in Polymer Science. It was a great experience. Our lab group helped helped one another. My faculty advisor, Edwin Thomas, was a young professor had come from Cornell. It was a great experience. I married my wife there. We both had great experiences. The main point is to study hard, help others, and get the job done!
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