The American university is in trouble. The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted the struggles of one of the large and reputable American universities, Syracuse. Its feature notes in somewhat staggering detail just how much the institution is suffering, further arguing that what many thought would only hit small private schools has now hit major centers of learning. (Let me note here that I use “centers of learning” advisedly.)
To be sure, the crisis is real, and it speaks volumes about the current state of culture in Western civilization. If estimates are to be believed, roughly 300 institutions of higher learning have become defunct since the 2008 financial collapse. Further, as the Huron Consulting Group claims, another 370 schools may close over the next decade, with many of the surviving institutions being hit hard financially and struggling. The hardest hit have been private liberal arts colleges. In 1960, they numbered nearly 570 in the U.S. Today, there are only around 200. While not all 200 will close, of course, the next decade will see dramatic changes in these institutions, even for those that survive the coming years.
What went wrong
There are, naturally, several causes of this decline. First, beginning in the 1960s, large state schools and systems intentionally created immense numbers of smaller regional campuses with the intention of driving private schools out of business.
Second, many schools have become too dependent upon tuition and federal funding (especially federal funding of student loans), and prices have been driven up artificially because of public interference in the marketplace. Many colleges have shot themselves in the foot, pricing themselves out of the market.
Third, something that few like to talk about in polite society: We face a demographic crisis not only because of falling birth rates, but, especially, because of legalized abortion since 1973. While no one knows for sure, abortions probably account for the loss of about 66 million Americans, with nearly one out of four women under the age of 50 having had at least one abortion. Putting aside the question of abortion’s morality, these numbers are staggering and telling, and we’re simply not replacing population like we once did through procreation.
Fourth, all institutions of higher learning should be mission-driven, and almost none are; thus each one becomes essentially replaceable by every other college. Small private schools have especially become part of a vanilla tapioca over the last 50 years, bowing only to the heretical gods of race, class, and gender.
Fifth, liberal arts schools, especially, have forgotten the meaning of the liberal arts, substituting a serious education in the classics for ridiculous novelty classes and courses driven only by hateful ideologies.
Not surprisingly, those claiming to be the most anti-racist are, indeed, the most racist and hostile to majorities of student bodies. All of this results from the very crafty and insidious New Left playing the long game in the late 1960s, and entering in mass numbers the field of education and the institutions of culture. Unlike their parents, the Old Left, who embraced an economic form of Marxism, their children — red diaper babies — stood firm on a cultural form of Marxism. What was essentially Maoist in 1968 became political correctness in the early 1990s, and wokeness and DEI over the last 20 years.
Most colleges hold a freshman orientation that serves as nothing more than a reworked consciousness-raising session and a left-wing struggle session. The radical Left seeks nothing less than the eradication of individuality. Though more gentle in their implementation, these college introductory sessions closely resemble China during the Cultural Revolution or Cambodia under Pol Pot. Further, some schools also have sexual exploration tents, introducing many students to the most depraved things possible.
In other words, many colleges subvert everything noble about Western civilization and human dignity and deserve a quick death.
So, how can we recover one of the most important institutions of our civilization and prevent an even further decline into a moral and ethical dark age (even as our technology advances beyond our wildest imaginations)? To be sure, several institutions will fail, and given their own leanings toward totalitarian and inhumane ideologies — in thought and in practice — they deserve to die. But those that might return to first principles should have a fighting chance. How to give them one?
The better vision
First, we need to have more babies. Lots and lots of babies. As the economist Julian Simon so brilliantly noted, they are our ultimate resource. Not only are we missing 66 million Americans, but we’re also missing their creativity, their uniqueness, their talents, their personalities, and their artistry. We need stable families, too.
Second, colleges absolutely must return to first principles, especially in exploring and promoting their individual missions. It is impossible to attract students and donors without a comprehensive, telling, and fetching mission. Whether that mission is intellectual or religious or artistic, or some combination of all three, it is the only way an institution can weather the storms of society. A mission statement not only gives coherence to the college or university, but it also allows for distinctive and deep fundraising, and, equally important, it ties all students of a particular institution together across the generations. Otherwise, one institution easily blends into another institution, all a form of conformist homogeneity, conducive neither to excellence nor virtue.
Third, we must return to the proper understanding of education. For centuries over the course of Western civilization, education meant one thing: a proper understanding of the seven liberal arts, an understanding of the classical languages, with either philosophy or theology holding it all together. In other words, all education was liberal education, and everything else was a form of training. It was liberal in the sense of being “liberated from the immediate cares of the world.” It focused on man, God, and man’s relationship to God. Its most important question was, “What is man?”
There’s nothing wrong with training, of course. Indeed, it’s extremely important in a complex society — such as with law and engineering — but it’s not the same thing as education. While it would be absurd and unrealistic for us to expect that major research universities will suddenly embrace the primacy of the liberal arts, we have every right to expect our major institutions to treat education and liberal education seriously. Before we do anything, we must first learn what it means to be human. After all, if we’re searching for profit in the business school or seeking the newest research on genetic modifications, we need an ethical and moral basis by which to decide such things, exaggerate our excellences, and temper our failings. We learn such things from Socrates, Cicero, St. Augustine, and Sir Thomas More.
Fourth, colleges and universities must absolutely wean themselves from federal and state monies. With such strings come too many obligations that, again, drive us toward a reckless conformity. Our institutions, while rooted in the true, the good, and the beautiful, must be allowed to explore the limits of human creativity, tempered only by our ethics and morality. Governments can and do provide nothing healthy for a society of learning. While it is obvious that Harvard, with a $57 billion endowment, has absolutely no business taking public monies, it is equally important for smaller institutions to find alternative ways to pay for their campuses than by taking public monies. Such monies are healthy neither for the institution nor for the public.
A model institution
In all four of these things, my own institution, Hillsdale College, has led the way. Our acceptance rate is around 20%, and we can compete — in terms of standardized testing and scores — with the Ivy League.
First, we love life. Everywhere around town, around campus, and in my local Catholic parish, there are kids and kids and more kids. We seem to be having — and have had ever since I arrived in 1999 — a major baby boom. Yeah, it’s loud, and it’s messy, but it’s also brilliant and beautiful. That love of life extends to the way we treat our students and to the ways in which we treat our colleagues. We truly love one another.
Second, our mission statement defines every single thing we do at the college. Since our founding in 1844 by abolitionists, we have been absolutely and utterly colorblind. As such, we were the first college to integrate those of European and those of African descent. We were also the second college to allow women to study, though we were the first college to allow them to earn a liberal arts degree. During the American Civil War, we sent more men to the Union army than any other Northern college, and our men sacrificed themselves in vast numbers in the 24th Michigan infantry Regiment on the first day of Gettysburg, and in the 4th Michigan on the second day of Gettysburg.
In other words, we defied American culture and certainly governmental and political norms long before anyone else. Our mission statement notes that we are custodians of the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian inheritance and that we see America as an experiment of liberty under law. While I would exaggerate to claim that I remind myself of these things before every single class I teach, I wouldn’t be exaggerating by much. I have no problem reminding students, my colleagues, visitors, and donors of our mission. I am immensely proud to teach at such an institution. Frankly, every professor in America should feel such pride in their respective institutions. That can only happen with a distinctive mission statement.
Third, half of our courses are core courses at Hillsdale. In this, we are not alone. Christendom, Wyoming Catholic, and the University of Dallas are similar, as are programs at the University of Notre Dame, Faulkner University, and the University of Louisville (McConnell Center). St. John’s College and Thomas Aquinas College have even stricter core requirements. At Hillsdale, on day one of Western Heritage, required of all incoming freshmen, I have the grand privilege of teaching them Socrates and the Socratic ethic of never doing evil, even in the name of good. It is always challenging. At Hillsdale, we teach them not only Socrates, but also Cicero, St. John the Beloved, St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Petrarch, Martin Luther, and Sir Thomas More. We teach Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolkien, and Dostoevsky as well as Strauss, Jaffa, Voegelin, Hayek, Kirk, and Solzhenitsyn.
Fourth, we take absolutely no federal funding, either through direct aid or indirect student loans. Yet, we keep our tuition very low, and last academic year, fewer than 10 students (not 10% but 10 total students) paid full tuition at the college. Few students pay much at all, as our donors cover their expenses. Almost all the credit for this goes to President Larry Arnn for his extraordinary vision, though it has been the tradition of the college going back to the earliest years to refuse government funding. We are fiercely independent, and we are financially very solid because of our independence. And it should be remembered, we were colorblind decades and decades before the government became so. It have nothing to teach us, nor should the government be in the position to teach anything to any institution of higher learning.
As we contemplate the future of higher education, we could do no better than to turn to the excellent advice of the late Russell Kirk, the founder of post-war conservatism and a wonderfully humane man, as well as a Hillsdale College professor.
“To what truths, then, ought the Academy to be dedicated? To the proposition that the end of education is the elevation of reason of the human person, for the human person’s own sake. To the proposition that the higher imagination is better than the sensate triumph. To the proposition that the fear of God, and not the mastery over man and nature, is the object of learning. To the proposition that equality is worth more than quantity. To the proposition that justice takes precedence over power. To the proposition that order is more lovable than egoism. To the proposition that to believe all things, if the choice must be made, is nobler than to doubt all things. To the proposition that honor outweighs success. To the proposition that tolerance is wiser than ideology. To the proposition, Socratic and Christian, that the unexamined life is not worth living. If the Academy holds by these propositions, not all the force of Caesar can break down its walls; but if the Academy is bent upon sneering at everything in heaven and earth, or upon reforming itself after the model of the market-place, not all the eloquence of the prophets can save it.”
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Bradley J. Birzer is the Russell Amos Kirk chair in American studies and a professor of history at Hillsdale College. He is the author of 13 books, including his most recent book, “The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty.”
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