From Icon to Just a Con

Graduated in ‘65. Student population was about 4000. Out of that there was only one long haired maggot infested hippy freak. Three years later they were everywhere and the 60 year old ROTC program had been canceled. The long slide into oblivion had begun.

Thanks, professor, for depressing the hell out of me as I watch my kid go off to university.

Must read please, Lucianne! Grateful for my State university experience, a degree completed in 4 years with zero debt (working part time), and for the 30-plus year career that it trained me to build, one brick at a time.

Great article, by the way.

This is perhaps the most important article to appear here in a very long time. The problem that he describes is at the root of much else that threatens our country.

The state creates the education system. The state regulates the education system. The state produces the graduates it wants. The state says the people are too stupid to govern themselves. The state says the people need a mega-state to govern them. Can you see the problem?

Must Read! Scathing and brilliant. The disaster in a nutshell.

Read it. Read it all, every word and to the very end. Many of us here are part of the generation that can attest to the before and after of the changes that have occurred. He has said what many of us have wanted to say, but (in my case) were not eloquent enough.

Were not the Classics, Greek and Latin originally wed to Theology? I notice after rejecting anything to do with God (of the Bible), they still manage to hold onto the principle of Shabbat, and demand to their sabbatical. "No God, no sabbatical!"

Hey kids, skip college, drop your walky-talkies, and read books. Best way to learn. MAGA

If, as Victor claims, there is no chance for redemption or reform, then what? Does the new think system simply declare an university education moratorium for six or ten ears until things can be straightened out, as the old soviets did in 1920-26? Or does the system stagger onward, continuing to crank out thousands and thousands of more useful idiots until it becomes nothing but a human robot-manufactury - ad nauseum? Is there an end to it? Yes, I suggest there really is.

Leftist universities can help solve the economic inequality problem by curtailing, or even eliminating, advanced degree programs. Graduates completing advanced degrees tend to become 'rich,' furthering such inequality. Somehow, I don't see that happening!

I entered a State college at age 32, paid in part by the GI Bill. The BA (in Psychology) almost tripled my income immediately upon graduation. An MS in Rehabilitation Counseling provided an entry to almost all of the 50 states as a professional. The schooling FOR ME was goal oriented, and I NEVER consulted a school counselor about what to take. I simply read the catalogue and counted the accumulating units [some of the unit were courtesy of the Navy and some courtesy of my age + placement testing]. It worked ..but I have seen it not work too. It is good for a man to seek that work goal. I borrowed a total of $1,000 in the school process and paid it back (I still have the receipts). College, like many things, is a TOOL with which to build.

I graduated HS in '72 and was accepted at the (Jesuit) University of San Diego, but the yearly $3,000 tuition, room & board was too much for my cop dad and secretary mom. The school offered student loans and my parents wisely refused, explaining to me the burden of long-term debt undertaken when just starting life. I lived at home and went to Cal State Northridge (CSUN) full-time for the first two years. At 20 I wanted my own apartment and a new car. I worked full-time, continuing my education on a part-time basis for two more years completing junior year. I was exhausted and quit for "one semester", that turned into three. My blessed parents offered to let me live at home and finish my senior year full-time. They would pay the tuition and books. I leaped at the opportunity and got a Saturday job for pocket money. It was during the gas crisis and I would study while sitting in the gas lines filling up my parents’ cars. I think I got a better education at my state university (20,000 then) than I would have at a fancy college. My professors were all WWII vets and demanded scholarship and discipline in class. They all lived in the same middle-class neighborhoods that their students did, shopped at the same stores and went to the same movie theaters. I got in during the last of "the good old days" and saw the beginnings of race and gender studies. I thought they were a fad and paid no attention. I cherish my BA in History because I worked hard for it. VDH is so right to note that half of the kids in college would be better served learning a trade.

When I went off to college in 1967 the cost of a class was $10/semester hour -- books, which could be purchased used for several years -- were typically the same cost as your course. When I returned to school 13 years later, 1980, the cost had gone up to $13/semester hour - that's about a 30% increase over 13 years (could be wrong, I'm not a math major!). Then when I sarted working at a major state-supposed university in Texas I considered returning to finish my Masters in 2010 I looked into the cost, and discovered the cost had gone up exponentially to $260/semester hour! That is a 1900% increase over the intervening 15 years! A huge difference from the previous 13 year difference! What caused this huge leap in higher education I wondered -- research brought me to the very conclusion Professor Hanson writes about. And what I found very disturbing was the revolving doors of multi-PhD's graduating from one university with an esoteric degree and getting an esoteric administrative position job at another university -- what else can one do in the real world with an advanced degree in gender studies and the like? Even more disturbing these people were in management positions that required real people skills, of which they had none. This process of obtaining government loans has resulted in a college "education" that is worthless and the colleges are the ones who profit. I've seen them encourage students that are not graduate material to go ahead and apply to graduate school, all for the money. It's a sad racket, schools need to be on the hook for these loans. And sadly, it's made an undergraduate degree in today's world worth nothing.