SOME CREATIVE THINKING – OVERNIGHT:   It is no secret to readers that we take a very dim view of the quality of American higher education.  Much of the mediocrity and anti-Americanism that we,see in our colleges is actually financed, or at least partially financed, by taxpayer funds, as well as the savings of students' families.   Can those funds be used as an effective lever for reform?  Maybe so.  Ideas are being put forward.  From College Fix:   

“When enough parents and students decide that colleges are no longer worth it, campuses will start to fail.”

So said John Ellis, chairman of the California Association of Scholars and distinguished professor emeritus of German literature at UC Santa Cruz.

“The most useful thing that critics of higher education can do is to get the public to understand what’s really happening on the campuses,” Ellis said during a Feb. 11 online Heritage Foundation panel discussion titled “University Indoctrination: How it Started and How to Stop it.”

During the hour-long event, the scholars said to prompt higher education reform, a two-fold approach includes informing the public of the leftist indoctrination on campuses and urging parents, lawmakers and stakeholders not to support such institutions or send their kids there.

They also talked about partnering with sympathetic legislatures, mostly in red states, and calling on them to withhold funding until social justice or critical race theory curriculums and programs are eliminated.

Ellis said college campuses are basically irredeemable in their current form, for one because their leaders and scholars don’t see the need for reform.

“It’s very doubtful that you can regulate them into doing their proper job,” he said, “because that won’t change who they are.”

Fellow panelist Katharine Gorka of the Heritage Foundation said higher education has changed for the worse over the decades.

“Throughout my whole undergraduate and graduate experience,” she said, “I never knew any of my professors’ politics. It was considered unprofessional, even unscholarly, for professors to bring their politics into the classroom.”

“I am shocked by the stories I hear from our young interns about professors who talk openly about the idiocy, or the racism, or the white supremacy of conservatives.”

But they cannot challenge those assertions or they themselves will be labeled white supremacists, she said, adding she wonders why parents would allow — and even pay for — such an education.

“For what? To be taught to hate our country? To be taught critical race theory? This must change.”

COMMENT:  Amen.  The market can work in higher education, but many parents and professors are reluctant to challenge the powers that be.  The punishment for speaking out against the deterioration in colleges is being labeled a racist.  Most people fear that price.

Read the whole thing.

February 19, 2021