Samuel J. Abrams
Sapir Journal, Autumn 2024
“Many conventional religious institutions are now rejecting actual Christianity where it conflicts with TWA teachings.”
Higher education is in trouble. More than 800 colleges and 9,000 campuses have closed since 2004. The cost of attending a four-year college has increased by 180 percent between 1980 and 2020, forcing many students to consider alternatives to college. Schools are also facing what’s called a demographic cliff (a decline in the number of college-age students due to decreased fertility). Add to the mix an intense culture of cancellation that has persisted on campus and limited open inquiry and authentic questioning for years, a culture that engenders student self-censorship in the exact spaces where many young people have, in previous generations, first found their voice. We are presiding over the decline of one of our civilization’s most historic innovations: open and accessible higher education. No wonder only 28 percent of Americans today have confidence in colleges and universities.
It is not a coincidence that these grim developments coincided with the academy’s attempt to foster more diverse environments on campus. These efforts at repairing our social fabric may have been inspired by good intentions. But their impact on higher education has been, on the whole, negative. What was intended to bring students together in a close community and promote upward social mobility, empathy, and understanding has managed to silo students into echo chambers and create mistrust, misunderstanding, and division. It has racially balkanized our institutions and politicized every facet of the collegiate experience, even the disciplines one would think are naturally immune: science, math, and engineering. No less a scientific powerhouse than MIT was among the most enthusiastic about instituting changes along DEI lines, releasing a strategic action plan for DEI in 2021 and hiring “six new assistant deans, one in each school and in the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, to serve as DEI professionals.” ….SOURCE
SAMUEL J. ABRAMS is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise