Nine years ago, the Ivies might have been able to get away with their foolishness, while
institutions not so venerated bore the consequences of breaking the social contract.
That's long been a theme of mine. "We find ourselves in a situation where universities are failing at their mission, and the People's representatives are questioning our efforts." The Pope Center's Jenna Robinson now asserts, "All over the country, university campuses are out of touch with American culture." She goes on to list ten ways in which higher education breaks the social contract. The root causes include higher education admitting unprepared people and calling it access, and fostering a self-despising multiculturalism that denigrates the very institutions and traditions that make skeptical inquiry, including self-despising multiculturalism, possible, while celebrating all sorts of transgressions against mainstream America. And yet ... it's more of the politically correct atrocities at the institutions that have the U.S. News problem. Until people figure out that it's the interaction of the ambitious students at those institutions that provides the value added, trendy curricula or not, though, there's precious little incentive for the curriculum committees and the administrators to do anything differently.
Those politically correct atrocities have accumulated, though, in such a way that the Ivies might have piddled away their primary selling point. Four essays raising that possibility came to my attention last week. In chronological order,
first came Nate Silver. "The Ivy League and other elite private colleges are losing esteem — and they deserve it." That's got Friday short take written all over it,
but for his elaborations.
Just go to a state school. The premium you're paying for elite private colleges vs. the better public schools is for social clout and not the quality of the education. And that's worth a lot less now that people have figured out that elite higher ed is cringe.
Put another way, the Ivies have undermined
the case for U.S. News selling those rating guides.
I've long maintained that those U.S. News guides exist because so much of higher education has gone down the rat-holes of access, assessment, remediation, and retention, and kids with ambition (or pushy parents?) buy those guides in order to identify institutions where students might pick up a respectable education (or at least validate their ability with a signal.) "The issue, however, is precisely that the U.S. News rankings exist because at the margin, many parents and students seek an experience more like Harvard (or Wisconsin before it went sports-mad) and less like a diploma mill. Institutions of higher education that fail to grasp this point may be reinforcing social stratification."
That post continued with an observation on the state of higher education that neither Nate Silver nor the others who made similar points, with or without building on his post missed.
The U.S. News problem exists, though, partly because potential students understand that having a soul to sell might still be a better circle of hell than dealing with people having so much fun with beer-'n-circus that the notion of a soul never occurs to them. In addition, Professor Deresiewicz suggests students avoid the Ivies and the soulless students by considering ... the hundred or so private liberal arts colleges that are out of the top twenty?? That's clearly the upscale audience that has sent their spawn to Harvard Prep Day Care in the first place, and scant consolation for the parents of promising kids from the wrong zip codes.
It might be that for the moment going to a state flagship university with aspirations is an improvement over Woke Catechism at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, or Oberlin. Mr Silver is for the moment of that mind.
Yeah, probably go with the top-flight state school — especially if she’s in a state with a very good in-state public school where the cost savings are much greater. Better that than to emerge with a mountain of debt and a degree from an institution that is likely to be viewed as highly polarizing. Public perceptions of higher education have declined rapidly, and I expect the problems to get worse.
In principle, that's valid. In practice,
bailing on the Ivies involves risks. "Now, if we could get the land-grants and mid-majors to recognize that they are in the same business as the Ivies, and
turf out all the irksome special education impedimenta that keep
U.S. News selling those ratings ..."
Here's the problem: George Will wrote a dyspeptic column, "
The leakage of universities’ prestige amid protests is most welcome," in which the prestige dissipates all at once.
Still, suppose you want to hire a recent college graduate for your business. Suppose one of your applicants attended Harvard while it was becoming an incubator of antisemitic educations. And suppose the other applicant attended a large public university. The public-university graduate is at least marginally less apt to be enthusiastic about Hamas, which aspires to complete the Holocaust.
Or suppose you seek a young doctor to join your medical practice. You might reasonably hesitate before hiring someone from UCLA’s medical school. There a recent pro-Hamas guest lecturer in a mandatory course on “Structural Racism and Health Equity” led students in a “Free Palestine” chant, directed them to get on their knees and touch the floor in a “prayer” to “mama earth,” and warned the future doctors against the “crapitalist lie” of “private property.”
The leakage of prestige from politicized universities is overdue and wholesome. Those schools that once were preeminent and now are punchlines might soon have a bruising rendezvous with real politics, which, unlike the sandbox radicalism of campus playgrounds, can be serious.
He's pushing things too soon. We've replaced hereditary aristocracies with
credentialed meritocracies. Over time, the institutions that have the
U.S. News problem have
evolved into tack-rooms from which a few people can draw the boots, spurs, and saddles to ride mankind; and that evolution is in part perceived quality, with Mr Will suggesting that perception is slipping, and part an abdication of the "higher" part of higher education by institutions including that "large public university," where the graduate might hold the degree, but might not have been held to any sort of rigorous standards. That, dear reader, is why
U.S. News sells those guides.
Consider also
Joanne Jacobs's reaction to Nate Silver. "I'd imagine that Wall Street firms would be wary of hiring students who hate capitalism." And yet, will they come recruiting at Iowa or Northern Illinois or Marquette? If not, why not? Regular readers will recognize the answer, it follows at length below the jump.
