Those paying attention over, say, the previous 40 years know that American colleges and universities long ago departed from their core mission, which is to provide undergraduates a liberal education and to foster scholarship driven by the disinterested pursuit of the truth. The public, however, has been inclined to downplay reports of faculty and administration misconduct: censorship; kangaroo courts for those accused of sexual misconduct; progressive indoctrination laced throughout the humanities and social sciences; and abandonment of basic courses in American ideas and institutions, Western civilization, and non-Western peoples and nations. For decades, parents, alumni, wealthy donors, the media, and government officials assured themselves that matters could not be as bad as critics, mostly conservatives, contended. Besides, a selective college or university degree conferred social status and provided access to the top echelons of law, medicine, finance, corporate management, the media, entertainment, and government.
Since Iran-backed Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacres in Israel, university dysfunction has captured headlines. Countless videos displayed the lawlessness of pro-Hamas campus protestors threatening Jews while trespassing, erecting encampments, and taking over buildings. And House hearings exposed the public to university administrators’ indulgence of protesters’ intimidation and harassment of Jewish students. As the price of annual tuition, room, and board at selective schools approaches $100,000, reasonable people wonder whether the costs of elite education exceed the benefits.
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