Is higher education worth it?

All is not well in American colleges and universities.

No doubt you already know this.  Tuition rises at a far higher rate than the cost of living.  Students are taught more about racism, sexism, imperialism, and now so-called homophobia than about the classics of civilization. Administrators and their staffs multiply faster than teachers.  Professors like me teach less and adjuncts (part-timers at low wages and usually without benefits) teach more.

More and more parents decide that their children might not need a college degree anymore.  After all, some of their kids with degrees cannot get a job, while plumbers and electricians make more starting out than I make after twenty-five years as a professor.  Some of the most successful entrepreneurs in our society are college drop-outs or never went.

Now Washington’s Department of Education is imposing on colleges sexual misconduct policies that rob the accused (typically young males) of due process.  Witness the suit at Washington and Lee University recently by the family of a young man who was driven to drop out with no more evidence than “he said/she said.”

Today from Public Discourse comes a piece from a professor who details some of these problems.  Those of you interested in higher education will want to read this.