Wednesday, March 03, 2010

What Will Replace Behemoth State University?

by Robert C. Koons
March 2, 2010

New technological developments and pressing national needs suggest that the future of higher education may be one friendlier to the classical tradition of liberal education.
When Russell Kirk wrote about his experiences as a junior professor at Michigan State University, he invariably referred to it as Behemoth State University. Michigan State, my alma mater, was a decent agricultural college grown into a massive research university by a politically adept poultry scientist, John Hannah. Today, I work at a similar institution, the University of Texas at Austin, which recently gave its head football coach a $2 million raise while cutting $8 million from its budget for foreign language instruction. The research university, whether public (like Texas or Michigan State) or private (like Stanford, Duke or Johns Hopkins), represents 20th-century gigantism at its apogee, combining all the virtues of Stalinist central planning, progressivist-utopian fantasy, and industrial mass-production.

On the surface, the Behemoth State Universities appear to be a smashing success, realizing all of the ardent hopes of the egalitarian architects of the G. I. Bill of the 1940’s and the scientific boosters of the Sputnik era. Millions of Americans have dutifully jumped through the hoops and claimed their credentials. Promoters of the system are quick to point out that college graduates earn an additional 60% in income, amounting to a college-education premium of over $1 million on average during the course of a lifetime. However, skeptics have a ready and cogent response: that such an argument is guilty of a crude post hoc fallacy, confusing causation and correlation in a way that would earn no more than an A- in even the most grade-inflated college statistics course. College graduates earn more than those who have not graduated primarily because bright, literate people are more likely to succeed both in college and in life. There is virtually no evidence that success in college yields tangible benefits later in life, in contrast to the very tangible debt typically acquired. the rest image

How Bad Is the Indoctrination in our Colleges?

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