Academics Have Noticed that the Value of Higher Education Is Falling

Campus Reform brings us some observations from Rob Jenkins, who is a Higher Education Fellow with Campus Reform and a tenured associate professor of English at Georgia State University - Perimeter College. Dear Academe: You have done that yourself

After a bit of reminiscing about Star Wars, as it was before it was destroyed by Disney, we get to the heart of the matter.

I think about that scene every time I hear academics complaining about the current state of higher education—the fact that trust in the institution has plummeted and the value of a degree isn’t what it used to be. “It’s your own fault,” I want to tell them (perhaps a bit less stoically than ObiWan). “You have done that yourself!”

Apparently, I am not alone. A recent report from Yale University, of all places, reached much the same conclusion. According to Campus Reform, the report blames the ongoing erosion of trust in higher ed on lack of intellectual diversity and political conformity, among other things.

I would say that the lack of rigor in various studies, and the wildly increasing costs of an education relative to the salaries that graduates can command isn't helping.

I have a degree in mathematics, but I attended a Great Books college. We read Plato, and Plutarch. We studied the history of the Roman Empire, and the founding of the Soviet Union, with all of the atrocities that involved. We read Alexis de Tocqueville and Descartes. We studied both Marx and Adam Smith. I am no opposed to higher education that includes things like literature, and philosophy, and history. But the current state of higher education is almost completely worthless.

Read the whole thing.