The Marist Mindset List is a project of Marist College — or a few members of its faculty, anyway. It purports to inform America about the things that are foremost on the minds of incoming college students.

In today’s Martin Center article, Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars takes a look at the new list and finds it pretty disturbing. He begins: “Marist College for the last few years has carried forward a project originally conducted by Beloit College in 1998. The idea was to create a profile of topics of concern and cultural benchmarks for students entering their first year of college.”

The List has been compiled by exactly three professors at the school, one in English, one in criminal justice, and one in arts and digital media. You were expecting more diversity? Nope. Not one voice that might be rooted in reality.

According to The List, inflation, crime, and border porosity are not matters of concern to students, but the environment, race, and “global citizenship” are.

According to the Marist trio, the debate about the environment is over and students understand that it’s up to them to battle to save the planet. Wood writes, “If the mindset of this year’s freshmen is that the ‘debate’ is over, they have an immensity of un-learning ahead of them. Unfortunately, few of their colleges are equipped for that task. Most of American higher education has been Thunbergized. Physicists, climatologists, and physical scientists of all sorts who know better are keeping their lips stitched, knowing the career price to be paid if they are tagged as ‘deniers.’”

He’s correct. Students will hear constantly that “dramatic” action on climate is imperative from people like the compilers of The List, who no doubt believe it.

Then there is the predictable hysteria over race. According to The List, incoming students know that America is regressing in this regard. Supposedly, they grasp the need for endless “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs and initiatives to turn the country around. Wood comments, “DEI is now a centerpiece of most colleges, instantiated in student admissions, faculty hiring and promotion, campus life, permitted speech, and high-profile incidents of punishing dissenters. What will the freshmen learn? They will learn that their colleges are eager to affirm their worst instincts and prejudices.”

Read the whole, troubling thing. It reveals much about what college has become.