The Outlaw Campus: Universities have become a rogue institution in need of root-and-branch reform.

National Review ^ | 01/07/2014 | Victor Davis Hanson

[SeekAndFind]

Two factors have so far shielded the American university from the sort of criticism that it so freely levels against almost every other institution in American life. (1) For decades a college education has been considered the key to an ascendant middle-class existence. (2) Until recently a college degree was not tantamount to lifelong debt. In other words, American society put up with a lot of arcane things from academia, given that it offered something

[allendale]

First step. Abolish taxpayer supported tenure.

[Gaffer]

For the big Ivy League Rabid Liberal Factories, I don’t think taxpayer funding is a real issue save for the inherent greed of liberals. IIRC, Harvard has BILLIONS in endowments - if they wanted to, they could survive on that alone.

[onedoug]

During the Manhattan Project, several of Leslie Groves’ security people advised him against obtaining scientists from universities, to which Groves growled, “Where am I supposed to get scientists from if not from the universities?”

Some things, it seems, never change.

[Nevadan]

Excellent article. I would add #11 to the list: The textbook racket whereby professors demand their students buy the overpriced latest edition of the textbook instead of an older but cheaper version that usually differs in only trivial ways from the newest edition. Often the schools & the professors who wrote the books are receiving huge kickbacks.

[ealgeone]

A lot of the cost in colleges can be attributed to the rise of lotteries and “scholarships” “supporting” education.

Most of these scholarship lotteries give students money to go to college who aren’t, shall we say, college material.

A friend of mine was the comptroller at a college. He noted that close to 70% of the freshmen wouldn’t complete their sophomore year. They simply weren’t ready for the work.

High school teachers are under pressure to inflate the grades of kids so they can qualify for the scholarship.

The whole thing, like most government programs, is backwards.

We should be paying the tuitiion after the kid completes the year in school. This could be done on a percentage basis. Ex: Make an A, 100% reimbursement. Make a B, 85%. Make a C; 40%. Anything below that, 0%.

Or depending on the year.
Freshmen: 0%, prove to the taxpayer you belong in college
Sophomore: 25% ok, you’ve proved you can do some work...keep going
Junior: 50%
Senior: 1005

Or depending on the major.
Engineering, medicine, accounting, etc.

I wouldn’t reward anything in gender/orientation studies. These are useless and contribute nothing to society.

This gives the kids incentive to study. It takes away the pressure on the high school teachers. It gives the kid incentive to take some tougher classes they might not otherwise take that would hurt the GPA.

[ealgeone]

I had a professor who made us buy his book. The 4th edition only differed from the 3rd by a few extra pictures and some updated text. No substantial changes.

[warchild9]

And what sort of educational institution did the staff of this magazine attend to acquire their present fat jobs?

Oh, yeah.

Kettle, meet pot.

/that book learnin’ is really scary!

[nathanbedford]

A brilliant and searing indictment of higher education which is only now beginning to crumble of its own weight.

I would add that the American University is another institution used by leftists for propaganda purposes with the cost dumped onto the taxpayer. Universities are the beneficiaries of tax laws and federal grant programs as well as federal loans mentioned by Victor David Hanson. The institutions themselves too often have become nothing more than think tanks for the Democrat party.

As such, they show all the arrogance and disregard for the very values they were instituted to nurture, a characteristic now so manifest in the Democrat party. We see the same tendencies toward distorting the purpose and values of an institution to advance liberalism on the taxpayers dime, for example, in our eleemosynary institutions like our famous multibillion dollar tax free foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford etc.

A second example of the taxpayer funding leftism in opposition to conservatives can be found in the public service unions which wash public money for leftist politicians and return it to them as campaign contributions.

Victor David Hanson has brilliantly put it together as to the corruption inside the campus it now remains for us to show how that corruption leeches into the body politic at our expense.

[Ouderkirk]

Most of the Ivy League schools do have very large endowments.(full disclosure: I am an Ivy graduate and former Ivy employee)

However, there are two different types of employees. There are the “endowed employees” who are paid through the endowment, and their activities are funded similarly. These are the Colleges of Arts and Sciences (medical/law/engineering/hard sciences), and statutory employees who are funded by state and federal grant monies these are typically agricultural/veterinary/and “soft sciences” like communications and the various “studies” programs.

It is typically the statutory colleges which are the academic ghetto’s save for Vet. and Ag.

Ask Keith Olberman...he went to Cornell, except he didn’t. He was part of the statutory college (communications), he is not an endowment graduate. Bill Mahr is an endowed graduate. And yes, there is a social caste from the endowed to statutory graduates as well. Did you ever notice Bill Mahr on Olberman’s show or vice versa?

So these institutions could easily support themselves if they needed to...and all of those garbage “studies” would be out the door in a New York minute if the Board of Trustee’s actually had to pay for it from the endowment.

[CaptainAmiigaf]

From what I have just read regarding the current state of “Higher Ejucashun” I now believe that Mr. Bernie Maddof is in truth an amateur piker when it comes to theft.
Scamming the young and putting them into lifelong debt as they seek a piece of paper that leads to absolutely nothing at all is really what I call Grand Larceny.
The real world has learned that the possession of that “piece of paper” is no indication of the level of the holder’s ejucashun.

[ZULU]

Absolutely good ideas. I think the cost of tuition and administrative and professorial salaries should be tied some way to the average salary of American workers.

[nascarnation]

Big Education

Another branch of the Democrat funding enterprise.

[sauropod]

good article. thx for posting.

[indthkr]

US University System obsolescence bump for later....

[Stosh]

Endowments are one of the few areas that VDH doesn’t really address.

All the Ivies have endowments in the billions, and for the big three, those endowments get into the tens of billions (if memory serves, for Harvard it’s over 30 billion). And the earnings from those endowments are tax free, since the schools are “non-profits”.

As long as the market isn’t tanking, even the lamest investment advisor can earn a couple of percent on a sizable hunk of cash - for many of the prestige schools in the nation, in most years, earnings on their investments could fully compensate for undergraduate tuition costs - yet tuitions shoot up each year.

Thus one ends up in a scenario where some hard-working entrepreneur, who’s spent all his life building up his business and pays some 50% of his earnings in taxes ends up going into 6-figure debt to put his kid through a college that’s earning millions in tax-free dividends from their investments.

Colleges are non-profits not because they don’t make a profit, but because they don’t split those profits with share-holders; the administrators (college presidents, deans, sub-deans and the like) don’t take a vow of poverty when they work for these non-profits - they actually get paid as well or better than executives at the average for-profit enterprises that actually turn out products with tangible value.

[oh8eleven]

the American University is another institution used by leftists for propaganda purposes with the cost dumped onto the taxpayer.

True enough, however, no larger group has paid more than the young skulls full of mush, who took out student loans to pay for outrageous tuition, room & board.
After being duped that their French Art History degrees were meaningful and in demand, the fools blamed everyone but the schools that took all their money when they couldn't find jobs.
Then they had the hutzpah to demand the US taxpayer give them a refund!

[Mears]

After The Duke 88 abomination I have lost all faith in institutes of higher learning.

Seeing my grandchildren heading off to these places saddens me.

.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Seeing my grandchildren heading off to these places saddens me.

Did you try to convince them to consider more “conservative” schools?

[Old Yeller]

Take away college football, basketball and bars and there wouldn’t be a need for college campuses. People could learn online.