Ian Oxnevad
National Association of Scholars, Jan. 20, 2025
“Depriving higher education’s anti-Semitism of financial oxygen is necessary, but the problem is not anti-Semitism alone.”
America’s colleges and universities are going the way of Myspace and Blockbuster. A demographic cliff has led to shrinking demand, while a growing disgust for what higher education offers props up alternatives to college. Anti-Semitism is rendering the business of college into an overpriced hate-fest, and customers are rightfully fleeing. Enrollment is collapsing. Universities need future funding, but donors are turning away. College alumni, such as those at UCLA, are withholding millions in donations over the handling of pro-Palestinian protests. The financial pain is mounting, but stopping higher education from credentialing Jew-haters and funnelling them into the workplace means making the pain matter.
American higher education is reaching a historical turning point. The rapidly approaching enrollment cliff is coming amid a growing disenchantment with higher education among America’s electorate and workers. The cost of a college degree itself makes twenty-nine percent of Americans view higher education as a financial waste. Less than a quarter of Americans view a degree as worthwhile if attending requires student loans.
Cost is not the only deterrent. Colleges produce graduates who are functionally illiterate in civic knowledge. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni released a report finding that only a quarter of U.S. college students know that the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery. According to a 2020 study of Millennials and Generation Z, sixty-three percent of Americans were unaware that Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews. Worse, twenty percent of younger Americans in New York held Jews to be responsible for it. This is not organic ignorance but learned stupidity. For the country’s trajectory, this is not only dangerous but also an opportunity. As bad as those numbers are, two-thirds of American college students have no antipathy to Jews or Israel. ….SOURCE