Andrea Widburg
America's thinkers should keep colleges and universities on their radar—they're actively undermining the nation.Over 400,000 illegal migrants are enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions, many receiving benefits unavailable to American citizens. Alongside them are waves of foreign students—predominantly from India—buying their way to earning credentials that enable them to undercut American graduates in the job market.
Chinese students raise concerns over intellectual property theft, with some allegedly reporting back to the Chinese Communist Party. U.S. research funding has undoubtedly fueled China’s technological and military advancements.
Meanwhile, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies have elevated race above merit. DEI statements act as political litmus tests, with universities requiring applicants to pledge allegiance to a host of draconian orthodoxies, including “anti-racism.” Faculty have also been hired to fulfill DEI mandates, with administrators at colleges and universities hiring on the basis of race.
Grade inflation and social promotion have greased the wheels further, allowing underqualified students ostensibly to succeed but graduate knowing nothing. Today’s Ivy League students can’t read entire books. And academic rigor has been sacrificed for a curriculum that panders to leftist ideology. An English major can now graduate without ever encountering Shakespeare but will have read Marx, mastered spotting microaggressions, and become fluent in quantifying privilege.
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Image by Andrea Widburg.
And many students know very little about their own civilization. They can’t articulate what makes Western civilization unique because they’ve never been taught. What they can do is tell you, with confidence, that believing in American exceptionalism is ethnocentric. You deserve to be canceled for holding such a view.
Unsurprisingly, many college graduates make terrible coworkers. They lack practical skills and did not develop work ethics when gaming academic accommodations to avoid deadlines and extend test dates they didn’t need or deserve. It’s no surprise that many recent grads are being fired in droves.
This is doubly devastating because they’re buried in student loan debt. The federal government’s unchecked student loan program allowed universities to hike tuition—and universities have used the surplus to bloat campuses with bureaucrats who add no real educational value.
It’s tempting to think this decline is limited to the liberal arts and humanities, but no higher education sector has been spared. The sciences are in crisis, grappling with irreproducibility and high-profile researchers caught falsifying data or plagiarizing. Climate research, in particular, has become a black hole for taxpayer dollars.
Even museums have fallen victim to the rot. Woke directors, in their zeal for what I call “Indigenous worship,” have removed Native artifacts from public view and barred women—though they can’t even define the term—from accessing exhibits when tribal leaders object.
Actual civil rights violations—like blatant racial discrimination—run rampant on campuses as well. But students, ignorant of the Constitution, are unaware their rights are being trampled, let alone how to defend them. Anti-Semitism is on the rise, too. Last year, anti-Israel protests erupted on campuses nationwide. Stunningly, anti-Israel demonstrators branded themselves as anti-Nazi—you can’t make this stuff up.
College sports have become such a massive enterprise that academics have taken a backseat for athletes. And taxpayers and students don’t just fund money-losing athletic programs while coaches rake in outrageous salaries—they’re also forced to watch as distinctions between men and women are erased. Female athletes are now sharing locker rooms with men—and losing to them in competition.
And this madness isn’t confined to the U.S. Higher education in Canada and Europe is drowning in the same swamp.
Is it any wonder so few believe a college degree is worth the paper it’s printed on?
Only cynics would stand by and watch as universities continue their decline, however. As the Managing Editor of Minding the Campus, I try not to be a cynic. Dozens of other authors and I have spent considerable time shining a light on higher education’s decline, but we have also been driving the conversation around reform.
While we don’t have direct influence over legislation, we certainly aim to create ripple effects. We can get vital information onto the desks of state and federal legislators, provide a voice for professors silenced by a system that stifles heterodox views, and hold institutions accountable. And sometimes, we see tangible wins.
The Trump administration has already arrested and deported hundreds of individuals living here illegally, and now colleges and universities may finally be held accountable for their role in harboring and supporting illegal students. Minding the Campus will be sure to track these developments closely.
Moreover, this week, Richard Vedder, an Ohio academic, attorney, and board member of the National Association of Scholars, reported that Senate Bill 1 is on track for passage. This bill tackles bloated DEI bureaucracies, among other needed reforms.
Adam Kissel celebrated a victory when he filed an Office for Civil Rights complaint against Sarah Lawrence College, which had initially restricted a mentorship program to students of color, blatantly violating the law. The program is now open to all students.
We also document and support reforms on student loans, continuing to call on Congress to get the feds’ hands out of the business of loans. And we call out the absurdities of changes to Title IX—that no, men do not belong in women’s sports.
We’ve also launched an American Revolution series to remind students and citizens of the core reasons behind the Revolutionary War and also tell readers about civics. And with Minding the Sciences, we critically examine the rise of wokeism in STEM, the erosion of scientific ethics, the politicization of research funding, and the effect of these trends on scientific progress.
Internationally, we amplify the fight for academic freedom through Minding the World, with academics from Canada, France, the United Kingdom—and more countries to come—sharing insights on threats to academic freedom worldwide.
As for foreign students, illegal immigration, and the workforce, I cover these topics and more every week.
The reform conversation has been building for years, but we’re on the brink of actually accomplishing it—something countless state and federal leaders have failed to deliver for decades. The path to America’s intellectual and cultural revival runs through higher education, and charting that path requires shining a much-needed spotlight on this conversation.
And American thinkers, then, would do well to mind the campus.
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