The Real World Confronts the Ivory Tower. Campus ideology can go only so far before the public pushes back.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | November 29, 2023 | Richard K. Vedder

[karpov]

For years, there has been an ever-widening gap between the values and behaviors of contemporary America (“the Real World”) and those on college campuses (“the Ivory Tower”). Since, ultimately, the Ivory Tower is dependent on the Real World for the resources necessary to conduct its operations, whenever universities engage in behaviors that are perceived as outrageously inappropriate, they jeopardize their special status as highly subsidized academic villages.

Virtually every university in the United States is dependent on the broader public for the money needed to pay the bills. Yet polling has demonstrated a sharp decline in public support for universities. A Wall Street Journal/NORC poll reported in March that only 42 percent of Americans say that colleges are worth the cost, down from 49 percent in 2017 and a 53-percent majority in 2013.

This steady erosion in positive feelings for colleges seems to have sharply accelerated recently with the seeming indifference of some university presidents to the brutal attack by Hamas on Israelis. Billionaires like Jon Huntsman, Les Wexner, Bill Ackman, Marc Rowan, and Idan Ofer have announced they are cutting funding to prestigious schools like Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

At least one prestigious law firm, Winston & Strawn, has signaled it will not be hiring as attorneys soon-to-be-graduating students who praised the brutal murder of innocents in Israel.

Behavior that is accepted in the Ivory Tower but viewed as outrageous in the Real World is increasingly having adverse consequences for universities. The support our colleges and universities have always taken for granted has sharply eroded and will continue to do so unless the public can be convinced that our higher-education system is working in their interest.

[IamConservative]

I’ve read many universities will be offering courses next studying Taylor Swift’s music and career.

How can you not succeed in the real world without this knowledge?

[no-to-illegals]

Ship each university 140 bus loads of illegals and tell the university “you have some new students”

[rottndog]

Let Universities teach whatever they want...with their own money. There’s no reason taxpayers should fund the garbage that’s going on today.

[9YearLurker]

Colleges are already adept at filling their classrooms with illegals.

[CIB-173RDABN]

Off topic - but I sort of like the UK approach to higher education. First students can drop out of school at 16. Right there would solve a lot of discipline problems in our schools.

Next not every one is allowed to go to college. You must take higher classes in preparation and then take test to get in.

The idea that every student should get a degree is wrong.

[T.B. Yoits]

Who are the authors kidding? The Ivory Tower has been the darling incubator of the Left for more than a century. This attack on the Ivory Tower is only because some of the monsters from Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory turned on Dr. Frankenstein.

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[webheart]

People don’t like what universities are peddling but they keep paying to send their kids. Saving for college for 20 years means they are in deep and not willing to turn around.

[Old Grumpy]

>>> The support our colleges and universities have always taken for granted has sharply eroded and will continue to do so unless the public can be convinced that our higher-education system is working in their interest.<<<

THIS IS LONG OVERDUE. Should have started in the 60s.

[wrcase]

They also don’t bring in functionally illiterate “students” just because they can run fast.

[CIB-173RDABN]

They also don’t bring in functionally illiterate “students” just because they can run fast.

---

There is that.

[Billthedrill]

It takes a strong and well-supported administrator to buck the bullying on campus and at some point the radicals can be, or threaten to become, disruptive enough to shut the institution down. Many of those radicals have found a sinecure within the faculty, which makes it all the more difficult. It's a fight that can be fought, however, as those old enough to remember a fellow named S. I. Hayakawa can attest.

This particular facet of the discussion, however, is one of the few actually available to non-members of faculty and administration, funding. Public funding has for far too long been regarded as free money taken by force of state from the very taxpayers whose access to the institution has been sharply curtailed and interests held in contempt by the recipients of this largesse. What we see from far too many administrations is the grins of greedy children convinced that the system is a result of their own cleverness instead of the patient generosity of their sources. "Hey hey, ho ho, western culture's gotta go" is seldom appended by the truth, "but first we demand free tuition."

The scam is fraying one seam at a time by now. When it becomes clear to graduates that placing the load on taxpayers for the inimitable value they receive from matriculants shows its less attractive face when they become the taxpayers themselves we see a growing grumble of dissatisfaction. Too late, in most cases.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

The Leftist revolutions start in the universities. But, the revolutionaries always eat their own. They have won every battle and they thought only the Right wingers were their foes—But in truth, the radials will eat them alive. The Hamas wing is powerful and will start the Anti-Jewish program that will see an upswing in violence. Remember the Nazis were Socialists—so were the Soviets and Pol Pot.