The Troubling Plight of the Modern University

Townhall.com ^ | June 5, 2014 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Kaslin]

Employment rates for college graduates are dismal. Aggregate student debt is staggering. But university administrative salaries are soaring. The campus climate of tolerance has utterly disappeared. Only the hard sciences and graduate schools have salvaged American universities' international reputations.

For over two centuries, our superb system of American public and private higher education kept pace with radically changing times and so ensured our prosperity and reinforced democratic pluralism.

But a funny thing has happened on the way to the 21st century. Colleges that were once our most enlightened and tolerant institutions became America's dinosaurs.

Start with ossified institutions. Tenure may have been a good idea in the last century to ensure faculty members free expression. But such a spoils system now encourages the opposite result of protecting monotonies of thought.

[a fool in paradise]

Feeding the beast with public loans only insures a hike in tuition. Whatever the market will bear.

[Sir Napsalot]

Sorry to have a dim view, I feel pessimistic in the near future.

America has to “survive” the “Obama”ian years, that it took three decades(?) to recover from Jimmy Carter. And we weren’t as strong as before.

And thus we really need to ‘fundamentally transform’ the current day America. Back to the roots.