What do Bill Maher and Charlie Kirk have in common?
Not much, it’s true. But in one important regard they agree completely. Both Maher and Kirk believe that college is a scam. How many of us can agree? Not many, given the size of academia. But after reading Kirk’s new book, The College Scam: How America’s Universities are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America’s Youth, readers will find it hard to disagree.
I opened the book—his ten counts against college—with some trepidation. Not because I thought I would disagree, I don’t, but because I thought I would agree—I was predisposed to agree because of what I have seen and heard. Yet, because I have spent the bulk of my career working in higher education, it is not easy to say that I have been participating in a scam.
In some ways, anyone who works in academia, despite her own teaching practices, is complicit. Kirk has written a damning book for a college professor to read.
Among Kirk’s ten counts, the most troubling for me are the following: Count 4: “Colleges Do Not Educate Anymore”; Count 5: “College Ruins the Ability to Think and Reason”; and Count 6: “College Indoctrinates Students and Represses Speech”—the heart of his case.
Of course, running throughout the book is his indictment that college costs too much money for what you don’t get. No one today would argue with those claims. But the others? Colleges teach students to hate; they teach violence. They teach woke ideology. Even those few of us college professors who try every day to fight against these realities must admit, after reading Kirk’s book, that we are fighting a losing battle. What can one or two professors on a campus do to teach students to think, to teach them facts, to lead them to wisdom, to maintain high standards, to allow free speech? How do we hold out against the rest of a faculty who rejects these as the purpose of a college education? Or fight the woke culture on nearly every college and university campus? Every day we hear of yet another tenured professor who could not do it.
Kirk lays out his case chapter by chapter. Does he overstate his case? Let’s look at Counts 4-6 to get an idea of the claims, evidence, and analysis Kirk uses—the standard academic formula. Under Count 4, Kirk cites the shrinking number of days students must attend college for their degree; the lack of challenging courses; and the number of students who “attend” phantom classes and receive phantom grades, as has happened at the academically “elite” universities, such as University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (see pages 66-68), among others. He quotes one student as saying, “we just watched videos and documentaries… it wasn’t all that challenging” (71).
Far too many students make no progress in learning after two years; Kirk cites a University of Chicago Study, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” (68) and reinforces it with a 2017 story in The Wall Street Journal that cites similar results. Kirk also cites the views of several CEOs who claim they can no longer find recent graduates to recruit because “they can’t do the job” (67).
Kirk does admit that certain professions, like those in STEM, require a college degree and most likely graduate work. Though, needing higher education can also be true for those in the humanities, which is something Kirk doesn’t consider. I asked a former student who just graduated from Medill School of Journalism if college was worth the cost, and she said “Yes. I wouldn’t have gotten into Medill without my degree.” Another student who graduated with her said, “Yes and no… No, because not enough professors pushed us to think outside” the cultural narratives. And a third said, categorically, “No. It was not worth it.” All are currently working.
Now let’s turn to Count 5, the chapter Kirk entitles “The Lunacy of College.” Do colleges teach students to think and reason? If we believe my students cited above, the answer is no. Most professors today are driven by ideology, not curiosity. Kirk claims that “no idea is too radical, irrational, or downright insane for academia to disseminate” (82). In support, he retells the story of fake, peer-reviewed journal articles that made preposterous arguments—accepted for publication, but utter nonsense. Later in the chapter, he cites an actual peer-reviewed article that argued against American apple pie, in the academic’s view a symbol of racism and oppression.
Kirk talks about biology and science generally trying to deny the difference between men and women and the danger to premed students and future patients this holds. Kirk cites the following medical differences: “in kidney function… in heart attacks… In other words, biological sex is a hugely important factor in knowing what ails patients and how to properly treat them” (87).
Kirk also cites the kinds of classes universities and colleges offer today (and I would add their reading lists, or lack thereof, along with the number of writing assignments). You can find a partial list in the section, “A Lunatic Course Catalog” (94-97). I agree with his list, with one exception—a course from the University of Wisconsin at Madison called “Elvish,” J.R.R. Tolkien’s language. To study Elvish is to study Norse languages, Old English, and how languages function—indeed, challenging. Sometimes it pays to have a graduate degree in Applied Linguistics; Tolkien was a philologist and the best translator still of Gawain and the Green Knight. Students would indeed have to be able to think and reason and write and read in order to succeed in such a course.
Count 6, “How They Try to Shut Us Up,” considers our First Amendment right of free speech. Kirk offers a list of faculty with free speech violations, among other evidence, and, as I have covered this issue elsewhere for The Daily Wire, I won’t go into further detail. Of all the counts in Kirk’s book, this subject has received some of the most media coverage. (Witness Newt Gingrich’s recent podcast, “Newt’s World,” on the free speech problems confronting legal scholar and Penn professor, Amy Wax.) Hardly a week goes by without yet another tenured, popular, and accomplished professor being hounded by students and administration for some alleged free speech infraction.
Once Kirk concludes his first ten chapters, he then turns to the practical: what to do if a student decides against college—from “build your skills,” which involves taking classes from a variety of venues, to “find a mentor” and “volunteer” or “get on a payroll.” He also provides numerous famous examples of those who succeeded without a college degree; he himself is an example. And he values what he calls “the muscular class.”
Lest anyone misunderstand, Charlie Kirk is not against education. He’s against the traditional way of getting one for many people. For instance, Kirk has enrolled in almost all of Hillsdale College’s online courses – a college he recommends without reservation. As I’ve written elsewhere, you do not need to go to college to become educated; you just need to become a reader. Kirk investigates; he reads. Make curiosity your middle name, as it is his. Kirk also claims that the greatest skill anyone can learn is how to write. Kirk believes that if you know how to write you can always get a job. As a writing teacher, I agree.
Kirk’s advice is not for everyone, and, to be selfish, if fewer and fewer students refuse to attend college, I’d be out of the job I love. But as I’ve written, many college students would have been better off following Kirk. Is College a scam? Not always. But often? Yes, which makes Charlie Kirk’s book a welcome antidote.
Cheryl Forbes is Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. She is the author of eight books on theology, philosophy, science, and memoir.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.