At American Greatness, David Randall asks "can America’s colleges and universities be saved?"
American colleges and universities continue to lose students steadily.
The latest statistics confirm their continuing decline. . . .
* * *
In other words, the structural crisis in higher education that the National Association of Scholars (NAS) diagnosed early in the COVID pandemic, in our Critical Care recommendations, continues to afflict American higher education. America’s colleges and universities cannot staunch their bleeding, no matter how many transfusions of taxpayer dollars they receive from the federal and state governments.
The higher education establishment and its political allies recommend different “reforms” that boil down to increasing government subsidies for American higher education. No-strings debt forgiveness is the most popular such reform in 2022—and it is especially popular with colleges and universities because it means they can continue to produce college graduates who cannot hope to pay back their college debts, and stick the taxpayer with the tab. When you’re in a hole, you’re supposed to stop digging; the current debt-relief plans are jackhammer shovels.
America’s current model of higher education cannot be sustained. Woke seminaries, made even more repellent to students of all races by the current determination to impose loyalty tests to the so-called “anti-racism” ideology, provide at best a hollow credential for a white-collar job. They simply aren’t worth the money—and ever-increasing numbers of Americans realize that. Students and parents are voting with their pocketbooks and their feet.