Colleges Ignored Their Prophets—Now They Pay the Price

For more than six months, higher education leaders, most notably Ivy League presidents, have bemoaned what they view as threats to their very existence by the Trump Administration. Federal research grants have been reduced or even suspended. Students dependent on federal loans have been told that the terms of the loans are being tightened: for example, limits are being placed on the amounts of some borrowing. Hefty fines are being imposed on schools like Columbia because of alleged complicity in, or at least tacit acceptance of, abhorrent anti-Semitic behavior on campus. The non-approval of visa applications threatens foreign prospective students. The Feds—and many state governments as well—have essentially outlawed “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) offices and initiatives on campuses. War has seemingly been declared against universities, and they have felt relatively defenseless, forced into accepting painful and costly adjustments.

Yet, colleges had been warned, repeatedly, by some of their most respected leaders that this would happen if the schools became dependent on the federal government for resources. The New York Times proclaimed in a headline on February 9, 1950, over 75 years ago: “Yale Head Warns of Federal Gifts.” Charles Seymour, longtime Yale president, had announced his plans to retire and said if colleges—specifically private schools—wished to control their own destiny, they needed to be wary of federal financial support. Seymour was following up on earlier concerns, expressed by two titans of higher education—Harvard President James Conant and University of Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins—about the negative long-term effects of federal aid under the GI Bill of 1944.

As the Wall Street Journal has pointed out, these concerns persisted into the late 20^th century. Derek Bok, longtime Harvard president, in April 1991 presciently observed that “universities can hardly claim the right to be free from external pressure if they insist on launching campaigns to force outside organizations to behave as their students or faculties think best … universities will learn to their dismay that they stand to lose far more than they can gain from trying to joust with the outside world.”

Yet, the universities have ignored all of that. The deemphasis within the academy of a respect for and even veneration of the wisdom of our ancestors has imposed a high price on the academy at a time when universities are already facing two forthcoming grave threats.

[RELATED: Vedder’s Case for Creative Destruction]

First, technological advances since the Industrial Revolution until now have always favored the highly educated: new machines arising out of inventions replaced workers performing manual labor, relatively unskilled tasks like spinning or weaving cloth, or harvesting crops. Now, artificial intelligence has led to inventions that intend to replace human thinking and brain-related skills with machines that can outthink humans. Already, there are press reports of reductions in the need for some skills typically requiring college-educated workers.

Second, the extraordinary worldwide reduction in fertility means the number of students at universities is stagnant, even shrinking. And all of that is in an environment where respect for universities has already plummeted, with enrollments today lower than they were 15 years ago.

Empirically reinforcing this already highly pessimistic op-ed is the fact that people are fleeing close association with highly educated Americans, as I pointed out recently in the American Spectator. Specifically, native born Americans on net are moving out of states with high proportions of college-educated adults, like New York, California, Illinois, and Massachusetts, and moving to states with fewer college-educated inhabitants. For example, West Virginia, with the lowest proportion of college-educated adults, has net in-migration.

Seemingly, on average, Americans seem to prefer neighbors that are, for example, plumbers or welders with a high school diploma and maybe a little non-degree additional training to a brainy physicist or a wonkish gender studies or sociology college major.

In short, “creative destruction” is underway in American universities, hopefully creating a new generation of entrepreneurial educational leaders navigating the challenge. The whole higher education model is ripe for major changes. One caveat, however: attending college is more than what economists call “investing in human capital.” To many affluent persons, college is a pleasant gap period between adolescence and adult life, as much about making new friends, exploring heretofore forbidden pleasures, and enjoying life to its fullest before engaging in the lifelong task of raising a family and caring for elderly relatives. Colleges are for 18-22-year-old individuals from moderately to highly affluent families, what country clubs or lengthy cruises are for their parents.

For whom does the bell toll? Time will tell.

Image: “Harvard University” by Scarlet Sappho on Flickr