Why college?

What has mass higher education done for us? The standards at
universities have slipped
to lower and lower levels, as shown by a new Roper survey of the top 55
schools. One
hundred percent of seniors can identify "Snoop Doggy Dogg" as a rap
singer, but only a third could name George Washington as commander at
Valley Forge. Not even a majority knew anything about Valley Forge or
the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution. In general, 81 percent
of the college seniors surveyed last December received a grade of D or F
on history questions drawn from a dumbed-down high-school curriculum.

Fortunately the news arrives during times of dramatic technological
change, when the
central myth of mass higher education is finally being exposed. For
generations, parents have been fooled by the "experts" into thinking
that higher education leads to higher incomes -- when, in fact, the
causation tends to run the other way. In market-driven professions,
smarts are what lead to higher incomes -- not for everyone, but most of
the time -- and the brainy can choose from a wide range of occupations,
as the ranks of dot-com millionaires demonstrate.

Not understanding the basic statistical fallacy, parents have shelled
out tens of thousands every year in the belief that their children are
guaranteed success so long
as they have a degree in hand. As a result, and for several generations,
the prime
productive years between 18 and 22 have been spent trapped in the
clutches of an increasingly left-wing professorate devoted to falsifying
history and rubbing out common sense, excelling in mind control, and
bent on destruction of bourgeois institutions.

If you've read "The Shadow University" by Alan Kors and Harvey
Silverglate, you know what I'm talking about. Campuses today offer a
bitter brew of ideological
regimentation and moral libertinism, with the two bleeding into each
other in arbitrary and unpredictable ways. The main goal seems to be to
tear down millennia of good sense and replace it with outlandishly
egalitarian systems of thought control
dictated by grasping pressure groups.

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The practical effect of this appears in the weekly "Chronicle of
Higher Education," which runs many inadvertently hilarious stories in
every issue. For example, this
week we discover that a women's studies class at Wesleyan entitled
"Pornography:
Writing of Prostitutes" required students to make a pornographic movie
as a final class
project. One student followed through this year and solicited actors for
his new movie,
"Wesporn." But instead of being heralded, he was denounced as an enemy
of women and a proponent of violence. As part of his punishment, he was
forced to listen to a tape of (allegedly) women being beaten on campus
by men.

What does this have to do with traditional higher education, with
Cardinal Newman's
"Idea of a University"? Nothing, of course, so why is the university
wasting kids' time and parents' money with this nonsense? Because
curriculum and discipline are determined by the lobbying of interest
groups, not the wisdom of the ages. Matters are
particularly insane in areas like race and gender studies, but it is
increasingly difficult to find areas of campus life that aren't at least
a little crazy.

Another item from today's academic news: a Yale geology professor --
and head of one of the university's undergraduate colleges -- just
pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography. This isn't one of those
cases where the feds overreach to nab someone with bathtub photos of
their children. Two videos of children engaged in sex acts were filmed
right in a certain geology lab on campus. Yes, what wonderful mentors
youth have these days.

The same issue of the "Chronicle" that reported the porn stories also
relays this gem:
Duke University is no longer concealing the fact that a student who died
in November
was a victim of bacterial lung poisoning -- a direct result of inhaling
vomit induced by
excessive drinking. What made the university come clean? Another student
just barely
survived a similar case of poisoning.

But, you say, young men do crazy things. Why should universities be
blamed? Because
it's hardly an isolated case. Students don't tell Mom and Dad, but
everyone knows that
heavy drinking is endemic on campus. The real question isn't why
universities aren't able to control their student populations, but why
students feel they have the luxury to major in booze. The sad reality is
that for most students today, study and scholarship play very little
role in their college years.

The final example of revolting campus news comes from the University
of Wisconsin, Indiana University and the University of Michigan, which
have bowed to protests to join the Fair Labor Association. And what
idiotic cause does the Fair Labor Association support? Banning the sale
of campus clothing made with "child labor" in the Third World. This is
what passes for moral indignation on campus.

Now, if these protesters and cowering administrators knew anything
about economics, they would know that "child labor" is the best thing
that ever happened to
the Third World. It is a necessary step on the way to economic
development, and
rescues the children and their moms from lives of prostitution and
begging. The peasants of the Third World cheer when the multinationals
come to town. They don't need privileged leftist demonstrators in the
developed world denying them lifesaving work.

Here again, you have to ask: what has this mindless protest to do
with education? Well, when the only "education" consists of heralding
anti-capitalistic social movements throughout history, students may be
tempted to join one. And they
might be deluded enough to think they are doing the world some good.
Sure, there are students who ignore the circus around them, latch on to
a good professor or two, and, through discipline and guidance, educate
themselves in the older tradition. Most likely, these are the sort of
students who would have attended college before the Second World War:
they are there to prepare for a demanding profession, or to become real
scholars. The mystery is why the rest are there, and why prestigious
universities court them.

In the midst of it all, the mass media have finally discovered a
campus situation they find disgraceful and, indeed, intolerable: Bob
Jones University. Now, by reputation, its
academic standards are high (its accounting school turns out some of the
best in the
business), but its courses are mixed with old-line Protestant standards
of ethics. For
example, strict rules govern dating, and mixed-race dating is prohibited
in particular.

Naturally, George W. has been castigated for speaking there, while
the academic cesspool gets high grades from the PC police. Most
absurdly, we are supposed to hate
Bob Jones University because an official statement calls Catholicism a
cult. Speaking as a Catholic, I don't believe it should be considered a
hate crime to sympathize with the Protestant Reformation. Are we now
supposed to hate and attack any sect that regards itself as uniquely
free of error? Whatever happened to that line from Voltaire about
"defending to the death" your right to say something I disagree with?

Here are some questions for anyone who attacks Bob Jones. What have
you done to
decry the legions of socialist and black-power intellectuals teaching at
prestigious schools in the northeast? In what way have you denounced
anti-Christianism in philosophy and ethics courses around the country?
If we are to oppose anti-Catholicism, are we also to oppose anything
that reeks of anti-evangelicalism? In that case, a number of media
outlets would be in big trouble.

Now, for good or ill, it is the academy that nurtures the ideas that
determine the future course of civilization. But the ideal university
should recruit and cultivate only a select group to its ranks. Probably
no more than 10 percent of the present college population belongs there.
The idea of mass university education -- of democratizing enrollment
regardless of intellectual capacity -- is only about 50 years old, and
was made possible only through massive government subsidies.

The answer isn't to have better history instructors or to change the
policy on 78 percent of American campuses that require no American
history classes. Far better just to cut the public subsidies that keep
people in school when they should be getting
practical experience in the workplace.

Thanks to the high-tech boom, young people have the option of
bypassing the entire
morass and still succeeding in business. It is innovation and the
service ethic that business pays for. The hottest labor commodities
right now are not newly minted MBAs, but kids who spent the last three
years building websites and programs and
are thereby up to speed with the latest programming techniques.

Instead of spending their formative years learning how to drink,
sleep around, and spout back left-wing drivel, kids not cut out to be
scholars or professionals can learn something about individual
responsibility and the work ethic. And be far better off in
the long run.