5 Comments
User's avatar
Fabius Minarchus's avatar

Get rid of all federal student aid save for ROTC. Give every natural born citizen some startup capital upon reaching age of majority. Let them use it to start a business, start a family, get an education or buy a bitchin sports car. Call it a universal inheritance. Call it Reparations. Call it true equality of opportunity. Call it a Pay it Forward Society.

Note how I just went hard Left and hard Traditional at the same time.

Make universities compete fairly against other uses of startup capital.

Expand full comment
Gwyneth's avatar

"A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another: and the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body."

- John Stuart Mill

Expand full comment
Crixcyon's avatar

Who will define academic excellence? A gang of overly-administrative administrative thugs? Except for specialized learning, higher ed is a waste of time. You do not learn practical skills and well over half the junk they teach is totally useless in the real world or non-essential. Oh I know, we have to keep up with China lest they trample us with their presumed superiority.

Expand full comment
Gunther Heinz's avatar

That one big fellow has an ass under his shirt. Odd.

Expand full comment
Robin B.'s avatar

This essay presents an even-handed diagnosis of the observed pathology: https://boomerdammerung.substack.com/p/why-nothing-works-anymore

Expand full comment