Peak Higher Education
Issue #170
You can get too much of a good thing. Especially when the federal government thinks it's a good thing and has spent many hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing it for decades. A good rule of thumb is that whenever you see a surplus (or a shortage) of something, the government is involved somehow. At some point, however, even the seemingly limitless fiscal capacity of the government is exhausted and/or it has become painfully obvious that due to the Law of Diminishing Returns, the return on investment has become negative. That point marks the peak.
This is the time of year when families send out graduation announcements and college-bound seniors decide which school they'll attend. I recently heard about a post on Facebook that seemed indicative of a peak in higher education.
First of all, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to this family, especially since I know virtually nothing about them. It sounds like they had a challenging year. They are obviously very proud of their daughter, and for all I know, she could be an academic superstar and a great person. However, I do have some questions.
Forget about the lack of self-awareness. America has a self-awareness crisis, so that's par for the course. Also, I was unaware that there is a national record for the number of university acceptances. Who maintains that record? Where is it published? Who aspires to break it, and for what purpose? What does holding the record say about you?
Why would you apply to hundreds of colleges that you know little about and have virtually no intention of attending? Do they even offer a program in what you want to study? How many would you have to apply to to get accepted by 231? At least 400? How many other applicants were denied or wait-listed because you were accepted by a school that you have no intention of attending? Should they be proud of your achievement?
Logistically, how did this endeavor work? How much time, effort and money did they spend on this? Surely they had to use a massive spreadsheet to keep track of all of the requirements, deadlines, etc.? What was the volume of her mail and email like?
Maybe I'm just ignorant of today's higher education (or don't recognize the school's logo), but I've heard of about ten of these 231 colleges. (Full disclosure: One of them is one of my alma maters.) Apparently all of them are what the book Who Gets In and Why calls Sellers, which are less prestigious and thus receive fewer applications (vs. Buyers, which are more prestigious and receive a large number of applications). But I'm going to assume that High Point U. is a great school, and I wish this girl every future success.
The sky may not be the limit for Madison, but there is a limit to how much higher education America needs. After decades of the federal government throwing money at colleges to make higher education more affordable, it's more expensive than ever. And given what most of them are teaching—the results of which are currently evident on campuses and the streets—I would argue that the benefit/cost ratio of higher education has never been lower.
Yes, you can still obtain a useful education at many colleges that you can use to meet a need of your fellow man and thus earn a living. But since the 1960s, universities have been dominated by left-wing professors who in recent years have become increasingly strident and agitative, some of whom now openly support political violence.
After the Left's bombing campaign in the late '60s and early '70s failed to garner popular support, they adopted a new strategy to subvert America, as this article describes: “Having failed to foment change through terror, Dutschke proposed a new strategy for social upheaval: The 'long march through the established institutions' — a direct allusion to Mao’s military campaign. [He] encouraged student radicals to put down their arms and burrow themselves in the universities, schools, media, and social services, capturing the means of knowledge production in order to subvert them — or, in Marcuse’s words, 'working against the established institutions while working in them'.”
“Marcuse encouraged the young radicals to create a series of 'counter-institutions' that could serve as a new apparatus for social change. He thought that the New Left, using the university as its starting point, should 'break the information monopoly of the establishment.' Through these new bases of support...the young radicals could launch their 'cultural revolution' and usher in 'a transformation of values which strikes at the entirety of the established culture'.”
“Race politics, women’s liberation, radical environmentalism — all could be harnessed for the process of the disintegration of the cultural status quo. Marcuse implored the students to do this work slowly, patiently, and methodically. It would take time, but they would eventually be able to take the theoretical knowledge they developed in the universities and spread it by 'contagion' through society, undermining traditional culture and shattering the existing hierarchy of values. The radicals heeded Marcuse’s advice. After graduation, many of the left-wing students cleaned up...and went to work in the institutions.”
Sound familiar? Universities are the perfect safe haven for leftists and breeding ground for their unworkable ideas because they are insulated from being tested in the market. Professors can talk about how socialism hasn't worked yet because the right people weren't in charge, they didn't have enough power, they didn't eliminate enough Enemies of the People, they were never able to get to Year Zero, etc.
So massive federal subsidies have resulted in an artificially high number of colleges, which are producing a product (snowflakes who are incapable of reasoned, independent thought and who have been indoctrinated with ideas that have always resulted in genocide and economic catastrophe for over a century) that society not only doesn't need, but that would destroy it.
I predict that within five to ten years, most of the schools this girl was admitted to will be shuttered and not in use like the millions of foreclosed houses during the last major government-created bust after 2008. Her family's announcement reminds me of the stripper in “The Big Short” who financed five houses and a condo with adjustable rate mortgages. This comically distorted market is simply unsustainable. As Herbert Stein's Law says, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
News You Can Use
Democracy Is at Risk As they say.
New-Onset Psychosis This explains a lot.
It will be interesting to see what happens when these kids need to do a Normandy-style landing on the Crimean Peninsula.
Recommended Books (I receive a commission if you buy a book via this link.)
I would love to hear from you! If you have any comments, suggestions, insight/wisdom, or you'd like to share a great article, please leave a comment.
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