Derek Burney: We need more academics willing to stand up to the woke establishment

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Americans are increasingly skeptical about the value of post-secondary education. Canadians should be similarly concerned.

A university degree was long seen as an essential ticket to success, but that is no longer the case. The expense of a college education has increased in inverse proportion to the quality of education. Massive student debt, increasing numbers of under-employed degree holders and the intolerance for basic freedoms on campus combine to degrade the system.

The embarrassing and morally inept testimony before the United States Congress by three Ivy League presidents, two of whom have since resigned, accentuated this downward trend. Their inability to articulate why antisemitic protests on campus were left unchecked highlighted much of what has gone wrong. Many university leaders have become sycophants to prevailing trends guided by neither ethical nor academic compasses.

Emphasizing money-raising rather than bolstering basic academic principles, many have become limp stewards adopting woke concepts like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), which stifle free speech and thought. Many humanities courses indoctrinate students with leftist articles of faith and reject contrary views. Instructors too often prefer to teach students what, rather than how, to learn.

Academic standards are diluted as courses expand willy-nilly into esoteric, irrelevant disciplines. When I served as chancellor at Lakehead University, I was struck by the number of sociology graduates, compared to engineering and computer science graduates, and wondered about what job opportunities would be available to them.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, a Gallup poll released last summer revealed that Americans expressing a good deal of confidence in higher education fell to 36 per cent, from 57 per cent in 2015. A growing number of parents question the value of post-secondary education. Many high school students share the same skepticism.

The problems are profound. University governance has become a recipe for stagnation and deep-seated resistance to change. Professors prioritize tenure over teaching and spend more time on research projects that can lead to publication than with students. More and more classes are now taught by non-tenured and less expansive adjunct professors. As tuition rises dramatically, students pay more for less. Higher costs prompt universities to treat students more as consumers for credentials than as scholars seeking an education.

Students on average now spend less time studying and attending class, yet earn ever-inflating grades for their effort. What they lack most are basic skills in mathematics and literacy. When I taught a graduate course in trade policy, I was cautioned by the administration not to give any student a grade lower than a B. Tuition fees trump scholarship.

Bryan Caplan, author of “The Case Against Education,” contends that not many students are getting much value out of their education. This can be seen in the statistics: four out of five U.S. students enrolled in four-year degree programs will likely not find jobs in their chosen fields.

Writing in Forbes, Brandon Busteed suggests that “to make education more engaging and relevant,” more emphasis is needed “on the integration of learning and work.”

In Canada, community colleges often do a better job equipping students with practical training — e.g., on operating heavy equipment, aircraft maintenance and on culinary skills needed in restaurant management.

There were some repercussions to the pathetic congressional testimony in December on the part of the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT. Several major donors suspended funding and some firms chose not to recruit grads from Harvard, but those in the ivory towers remain enamoured with their self-image, impervious to the qualitative decline of the education they dispense.

One beacon of reason in the U.S. is University of Florida president, and former senator, Ben Sasse. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he denounced former Harvard president Claudine Gay’s appeal to free speech as “laughable.” Sasse rejects the spread of “illiberalism, anti-intellectualism and identity politics” that have transformed more recently into “open and pervasive antisemitism.”

Sasse is a conservative Republican and a respected academic in his own right, with a history doctorate from Yale. He was known in the Senate as an independent thinker who was not always beholden to partisan strictures.

He believes that the teaching of classical liberalism is the best antidote to the pervasive leftist, victim-oriented teaching philosophy that holds sway at prominent universities. “If we’re going to pass on the meaning of America to the next generation, it doesn’t happen in the bloodstream,” he said. “You actually have to teach what America is to the next generation.”

The liberal arts are central to Sasse’s vision. He wants to transform the humanities curriculum, so that it gives greater breadth and depth to what students are taught. He proposes requiring humanities majors to take courses in science, technology, engineering and math.

Exhausted by curriculum debates in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war and other social convulsions, the American public was assured that the experts had everything under control. Sasse objects: “Well, the experts, if they’re people like President Gay, they don’t deserve us to defer to the claims of ‘my truth.’ ”

In Florida, Sasse has a receptive political climate and a relatively open field to run in, but prevailing trends in academia will not go quietly into the night. Conservative voices and attitudes are a distinct minority in American universities — and even more so in Canada, where the notion of a “conservative academic” is almost an oxymoron.

Sasse’s determination to introduce profound changes to higher education is commendable and warrants support from employers and others who rely on bright, ambitious university graduates. Is any Canadian academic leader emulating Sasse’s invigorating approach to higher learning? If so, they should boldly pursue change with a healthy focus on practicality and critical thinking.

National Post

Derek H. Burney is a former, 30-year career diplomat who served as ambassador to the United States of America from 1989-1993.