If you compare higher education in America today with what it was like, say, 50 years ago, the changes are stark. It used to be a reasonably affordable proposition where students studied academic disciplines taught by scholars. Now, we have far more students, college costs much more, and campuses are strife-ridden with ideological protests and politicized courses.
What happened?
In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Robert Weissberg argues that the unhappy transformation was created by “the best of intentions.” He holds the faculty guilty, writing,” Today’s assault on intellectual excellence in the academy will eventually end. Hopefully, an investigation will then commence on its causes, and all the usual suspects will be rounded up. This tribunal will, however, likely ignore one key culprit: ordinary faculty—people like me—who complained about the assault, all while enthusiastically aiding it.”
The origin of the problem, he argues, was the decision to lower academic standards so that more students could succeed in college. Everyone thought that was a path to equality and justice.
Here is one example Weissberg gives:
In a particularly bizarre case, a colleague received a clearly plagiarized paper and, rather than bring expulsion proceedings, offered to forget the matter if the student would submit an original one. The student again plagiarized, and my colleague took the case to the dean of students. He explained that this was the sixth such episode involving the student, but the incidents were ignored since the dean believed that confronting the student might cause him to drop out.
When academic standards collided with affirmative action, academic standards were cast aside.
Weissberg sticks the landing: “At this point, learning a painful lesson is perhaps the best that can be hoped for. The life of the mind is not supposed to be a feel-good experience, in which those uttering absurdities must be thanked for ‘sharing’ their ideas. Rather, people who enter the academy should expect discomfort. Those who refuse to administer it are not doing anybody a favor.”