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What's behind Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats' big plans to shovel pork at higher education?The Democrat party’s craving for power is insatiable so nothing is ever enough.
How else can you explain their infatuation with open borders with quick paths to citizenship, undermining the electoral process with mail-in voting or schemes to re-write the Constitution?
Consider the party’s 2024 party platform. The section “Making Higher Education Accessible and Affordable” advances two aims central to the party’s very existence: promoting political indoctrination and rewarding one of the party’s most crucial allies, college professors.
Today’s college campus is, with scant exception, a key instrument for pushing youngsters leftward so even physics majors must take course in the humanities and social sciences where they will learn how America was built on slavery with land stolen from the noble indigenous people while women continue to be oppressed by the white patriarchy.
Campus propaganda works.
In the 2020 presidential election college graduates favored Biden over Trump 56% to 42% while those with high school or less favored Trump 56% to 41%. Given that historically Republicans did better among college graduates, this reversal is a remarkable event in American electoral history, and it can only be attributed to professors indoctrinating their students. The Democrat party is obviously heavily indebted to college professors.
Unfortunately for Democrats, this pool of supporters may decline since higher education itself is shrinking, and the decline seems inescapable. Between 2010 and 2021 college enrollment dropped by 15%. A report from the National Center for Educational Statistics found that ninety-nine colleges have closed their doors.
Meanwhile, as the population shifted from the Northeast to the South, many small colleges can no longer survive on nearby populations, Americans also increasingly question the value of a college degree. Higher education is an industry in decline.
This decline has been partially mitigated by cutting programs and administrative overheads.
In North Carolina, for example, two public universities have just eliminated more than a dozen programs that range from Mediterranean Studies to physics. Stanford University, one of America’s richest schools just terminated 23 positions in its popular creative writing program.
Particularly hard hit are Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs due to recent court cases. Downsizing is not always obvious since colleges can replace tenured faculty with lowly paid part-time untenured adjuncts who teach multiple courses.
Shifting popularity of college majors may also be hurting Democrats. A recent Forbes study found a sharp increase in practical majors such as computer technology at the expense of majors heavy on PC indoctrination, notably English, the social sciences and history, ethnic studies and philosophy. The sociology professor who insists that sex is not biological may soon be fired for lack of acolytes. All and all, bad news for Democrats.
Fortunately for all those colleges facing bankruptcy and professors pontificating to near empty classrooms, the Democrats promise help to restore the higher education indoctrination industrial complex.
As expressed in their 2024 party platform, the vision is truly lofty: “it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that every child, everywhere, is able to receive a world-class education that enables them to lead meaningful lives, no matter their race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability status, language status, immigration or citizenship status, household income or ZIP code.”
The platform insists that everyone (emphasis added) should earn a degree beyond high school and be tuition-free for family earning less than $125,000 yearly (over 80% of the Amerian public). This include trades schools and community colleges but singled out for extra federal government financial help are the 107 HBCUs that largely serve black students.
If these enrollment-boosting measures fail to revitalize struggling colleges, “Democrats are committed to policies that make the United States welcoming to the more than one million international students, [who will contribute] to our higher education sector and to our nation’s intellectual and cultural vibrancy.”
To ensure that students stay around for as long as possible, there will be funding for child care, buying textbooks and for low-income students programs to combat “food insecurity” since you can’t learn on an empty stomach. Tellingly, federal generosity will reflect a school’s proportion of low-income students,
Predictably, student debt will be minimized, so after 20 years all college debt will be forgiven for those earning less than $125,000, together with all students who have attended HBCUs. Unlike current policy, this debt will also be dischargeable with bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that forgives loans for government employees and those in the non-profit sector will be expanded to cover college students with loan forgiveness up to $10,000 per year. This forgiveness will also, supposedly, help close the racial wealth gap.
Ironically, student debt may actual increase thanks to even more Pell Grants, especially those from under-represented groups, since such grants may be treated as loans that must be repaid.
It remains to be seen if this grandiose scheme becomes a reality, but if it does come to pass, certain outcomes are inevitable.
Clearly, it will cost tens of billions, and it is, however, debatable if this “better credentialed workforce” will improve our economy versus just adding more people with diplomas. It will also likely achieve its twin goals of rescuing countless colleges from bankruptcy and re-energizing the Left’s indoctrination campaign particularly since many of the newly admitted students will be academically “challenged” and thus wisely gravitate to easy courses where embracing wokeness guarantees a decent grade.
On the educational downside, however, is that the huge uptick of ill-prepared, academically weak students invites academic disasters. Guaranteed.
Consider what occurred when the City College of New York City (CCNY), once called “Harvard of the poor,” when faced with mounting racial strife, adopted an “open admission” policy that admitted countless second-rate students, many who could barely read or write. Huge resources were then reallocated to remedial education, for example, 105 sections of remedial English were created staffed with 21 full-time faculty. Indeed, nearly 90% of all students required remediation. All told, some 1,200 faculty were hired for remedial teaching plus countless tutors and counselors together with administrators to oversee these programs.
Entire departments of remedial education were created but to no avail. Everything failed to bring troubled students up to speed and classed were soon dumbed down to hide this shortcoming. Even then, graduation rates were terrible, and the once respected CCNY degree declined in value. CCNY soon ran out of money and had to briefly shut down. Ultimately, open admissions ended and was judged a total failure.
Something more serious informs this ill-advised plan to expand American higher education: an insatiable appetite for political power. This is not just trying to win elections to accomplish a worthy, practical goal. They are chasing the Utopias of egalitarian leveling, and everything will be sacrificed to this end, including American higher education. A parallel exists with eating disorders—technically called polyphagia— where gorging oneself only whets the appetite for yet more gluttony. It is as if the compulsive eater believed that, yet one more chocolate cream pie would finally bring happiness but if the pie fails to deliver, perhaps a gallon of ice cream will do the trick.
The Democrats’ quest for endless power cannot end well.
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