Remember when Americans thought that college was a place to mature? That is another thing that has changed over the last couple of decades (along with escalating expense and decreasing standards), as schools are now inclined to treat students as children and foster a mindset of dependency in them.

So argues Elizabeth Weiss in today’s Martin Center article.

She writes, “It seems to me, after nearly 20 years teaching at San José State University (SJSU), including living on campus for two years as a faculty-in-residence, that universities are creating a dependency on government systems.”

How so? Schools now have activities that are suited to kids, such as showing cartoons on Saturday mornings, along with serving cereal. They also cave to demands for “safe spaces” where students won’t have to confront ideas that upset them.

Weiss’s big point, however, is this: “The most harmful tactic universities employ to ensure a government-dependent generation is the constant poverty narrative students are surrounded by. Nearly everyone you ask about the price of American higher education will claim it’s too expensive and leads students into unrepayable debts. University education could be made less costly, of course, but there is a frequent exaggeration of the costs and a misleading narrative by professors, administrators, politicians, and the media about student lifestyles. The narrative is that students are poverty-stricken, and, thus, the government should step in to make education ‘free.’”

Of course. The Left always wants people to look to government for things. It’s no surprise that the leftists who run our colleges and universities should get on board with that.