In the left’s “long march” through our institutions, perhaps the one it has most completely conquered is education. To an alarming degree, our colleges and universities propagandize for left-wing activism rather than teach useful knowledge and skills — and rather than helping young Americans mature, they keep them in a state of childhood.

In today’s Martin Center article, Graham Hillard looks at this depressing scene. Schools educate too little and cost far too much. He argues that we must find ways to revive our higher education system.

He writes:

For decades, colleges and universities have allowed tuition to creep skyward, outpacing both inflation and the rise in instructional spending(i.e., the money devoted to actual teaching and learning). Small armies of administrators now roam most campuses, occasionally making trouble but largely shuffling paperwork and plotting to expand their ranks still further.

As for academic standards, at many schools, they are just a memory. Students coast along having AI do their work, getting high grades, and enjoying campus life.

What to do?

Hillard continues:

Two things are worth insisting upon in the future. First, if an institution of higher learning accepts federal dollars, it must submit to public oversight. This means opening admissions “black boxes” so that taxpayers can see who gets to enroll and why. It means ending illegal preferences for all time, not only among student applicants but on the faculty-hiring end, as well. Most pressingly at the moment, it means ridding campuses of those whose illiberalism extends not just to mean tweets but to the unblushing celebration of murder — just as we might, after due process, declare a faculty member in a Klan hood unfit to teach.

Second, schools must return to teaching and stop allowing professors to propagandize.

Higher ed — Don’t end it; mend it.