WASHINGTON – I often preach to college students, both at CDN and occasionally on a Q&A website, not to waste their money and incur massive debt to earn useless degrees in the humanities or in anything containing the word ‘Studies.’” All these “disciplines” major in mostly Marxist rot. My observations and comments usually draw vile responses from the standing army of paid trolls who exist to drown out any message that doesn’t actually support some form of Marxist rot in education. But now, evidence is surfacing that coronavirus economics could finally bring a day of reckoning for these worthless programs offered by a majority of US colleges.
Despite negative reactions to my articles and observations, I do get some genuinely sad and moving responses from graduates who earned humanities degrees or degrees ending in the word “Studies.” A few of these unfortunate, hopelessly indebted and underemployed grads are already succumbing to despair. On the other hand, the name callers — assuming they’re actually attending college — are likely on their way to the same fate. But they’re way too smart to know.
Marxist rot in US colleges is producing graduates that employers don’t want to hire
I’ve long based my observations skewering today’s corrupt educational establishment on first hand stories from fearful students and professors and other anecdotal evidence as well. This includes anonymous, off-the-record asides from a variety of employers, large and small. None of these sources currently feel there’s any interest at all in amploying non-STEM degree holders at most corporations, aside from those in the Bizarro World of Silicon Valley. Sane employers rationally fear introducing Marxist rot into their businesses by hiring degreed radicals. Would you?
The notion of employing anyone holding a degree in a “Studies” discipline – and I use the term discipline lightly – literally terrifies many employers large and small. The know the radical intent of these indoctrination programs, and fear an inevitable avalanche of lawyers and lawsuits should they ever employ one of these semi-professional, pro-Marxist grievance machines.
The politicized cone of silence stifling US colleges may soon be shattered by coronavirus economics
But the cone of silence on worthless university degree programs offering only Marxist rot, may finally be giving way — get this — to what I’d call coronavirus economics. New research on this topic appears in a study of the massive threat that the Covid-19 panic and its subsequent politicization pose to the very existence of a growing number of US colleges and universities. This research first caught my eye in an article that recently appeared in The College Fix.
“Duquesne University Professor Antony Davies and University of Arizona Professor James Harrigan draw on research by NYU marketing Professor Scott Galloway, who concluded that up to 20 percent of colleges could close due to coronavirus.
“Galloway made the estimate by calculating the vulnerability of colleges based on several factors.
“The school closures and the related drop in revenue for colleges should spur university officials to reorganize and reevaluate their degree offerings, Davies and Harrigan argue in a recent essay for the Foundation for Economic Education.”
Here are some cold, hard facts on coronavirus economics, according to the Davies and Harrigan
“Just like any other venture, colleges will go out of business when they become insolvent. There is nothing special about a college in this respect. Since 2016, some 52 colleges and universities have closed their doors or merged with other institutions. With the new reality of COVID-19, this trend will accelerate.Big state schools and those in the Ivy League will come out the other side to be sure. But small liberal arts colleges will not be nearly as fortunate.
“But that’s only the beginning of the very bad news for at-risk institutions. The COVID-19 related downturn has caused any number of young people to ask themselves whether they want to go to college at all given the exorbitant costs. For the first time in decades they are asking the right sorts of questions about college. The most important question, of course, is whether college is a good investment.
“They pointed out the wide gap in degrees and earnings. While STEM students can expect career earnings of $3 million, degrees in piano performance or early childhood education have a negative return on investment.
“Most majors ending in the word, ‘studies’ (Film Studies, Organizational Studies, Urban Studies, Liberal Studies) deliver a financial return anywhere from one-third to one-tenth that of the STEM majors,” the professors said.
But wait! There’s more…
“They further elaborated:
“As institutions compromise standards in the name of increasing student numbers, employers will come to realize that, while some college majors remain valuable, a college degree in general isn’t necessarily so. As COVID forces universities to offer classes online, students will come to realize they can attend college from their own homes at significant savings. Either one of these factors would put significant financial pressure on colleges and universities. And as [colleges and universities] tighten their belts, the first programs they’ll eliminate are those for which demand is lowest.”
*(Note:* In the previous excerpts, bolds and underlines appear via The College Fix. I emphasize key findings related to the relative worth of useless degrees in italics. But [the whole article, initially appearing in the Foundation for Economic Education’s (FEE’s) website](https://fee.org/articles/nyu-prof-more-than-20-percent-of-universities-could-fail-because-of-the-lockdowns/) is well worth your time. You simply won’t find this information on the irony of coronavirus economics anywhere else. It doesn’t fit the current Narrative.)
When the merde hits the fan
The merde is finally hitting the fan with regard to the fraudulence of the current American educational system. That system, from kindergarten to Ph.D. programs, from med school to law school, has morphed into a radical left-wing indoctrination project. Blue state and blue cities are being reduced to rubble. The perps? They’re the empty-brained, S__r__s-funded radicals that US colleges continue to produce.
Davies and Harrigan are more interested in mapping out how bad business practices may drive many small, “liberal arts” colleges out of business. Alternatively, they may be forced into mergers over the next decade. They chose to create and staff useless, under-enrolled academic indoctrination programs. Now, they’re beginning to pay a long overdue price. No one can afford their overstuffed tuition bills any more.
BTW, I don’t hate the arts and the humanities
I actually earned a doctorate in English and American Lit back in the day when grad students still learned to teach and conduct research in actual English and American Lit while also learning to write intelligible papers and articles based on original research. Later in life, I enjoyed a stint as the classical music and opera critic (and sometimes theater critic) for the Washington Times (1995-2010). So I’m not naturally biased against the humanities or the performing arts. Far from it.
But in the main, the kind of genuinely liberal arts education I enjoyed back in the day is no longer available to today’s students. It’s been largely replaced by gutter-level political claptrap, much of it invented in a corrupt, nihilistic post-WW II Europe that long ago decided the only solution to anything was socialism.
Now we watch in fascination and horror as humanities disciplines and “Studies” programs are run by ideologues. These indoctrinated, low-IQ “intellectuals” cared little for literature, history or the arts. Instead, the so-called intellectuals denounced US and Western European arts and culture. They tirelessly worked to alter the curriculum to favor Marxist texts.
Communist “historian,” the late Howard Zinn. See Note below for photo source and permissions.
Marxist rot and the Long March through American institutions, the “US Colleges” edition
This, in turn, enabled them to teach their students a “New American Narrative.” They base their “narrative” on Marxist-spawned “theories.”
These theories include the currently the culturally devastating “critical race theory.”
The educational establishment’s subtle Marxist turn also gave us numerous academic travesties posing as real scholarship. These range from Howard Zinn’s viciously revisionist People’s History of the United States.
The list also includesto the bogus “1619 Project,” published by the openly pro-Communist New York Times.
The intent of both of these patently false, anti-American, Gramscian screeds is to deny today’s students any access whatever to real American history and real American and world history and literature. Instead, today’s educational Marxists want to replace it all with a diabolical, self-loathing mythology. And it’s that mythology that we see burning brightly – and destructively – nearly every night in lost cities like Portland. More Marxist rot.
A silver lining in the Marxist cloud: coronavirus economics and capitalist supply and demand
Davies and Harrigan are optimistic. For them, eliminating marginal colleges and programs offering useless degrees is an economic plus. Who needs overpriced and underpowered institutions offering worthless fake degree programs espousing Marxist nonsense. They’ll now have one of two choices. They can cut this nonsense out and fire the utterly unqualified and overpaid faculties that claim to teach it. Or they’ll go out of business.
The word has finally leaked out. Even to currently rising college students are now avoiding these useless degree programs like the plague they are. And that’s what’s finally happening.
Perhaps supply and demand will finally launch an academic purge. We’ve needed for at least a quarter of a century now. Economic necessity may finally force out some of our nonsensical fake professors. Ditto, in many cases, a growing number grandly overpriced liberal arts colleges and programs as well.
The next time someone starts giving me a raft of you-know-what when I offer an assessment like this, I simply plan to make my case – again – and send them to Davies and Harrigan’s seminal and long-overdue article. Wouldn’t it be ironic that good old capitalist “supply and demand” cycles would finally prevail in the educational establishment. But with an assist from coronavirus economics, of course. I only hope we’re not too late.
– Note: Image of the late Howard Zinn, above. Image appears via Wikipedia article on Zinn,
cropped and altered from Wikipedia version to fit CDN format.
Original via Jim, CC 2.0 attribution, share and share alike license.
*– Headline image: Cartoon by Garrison, via grrraphics.com. Reproduced with permission, slightly resized to fit CDN format.*
