The end of education: How American colleges succeed and fail

Comment published on New York Times blog, in response to opinion essay by Times columnist, Frank Bruni, “What did college turn sour?” September 3, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/opinion/college-graduates.html#commentsContainer&permid=102347429:102347429:

Our system, with its great institutions of learning, is warped by its almost uniquely capitalist, neoliberal character. The system was privatized beginning in the 70s, as even state schools shifted from public funding to financing through debt. Students no longer get an education, they buy one. And that has meant that it is reduced to career and job preparation.

The idea of a liberal education centered in the humanities vanishes. Schools offer facilities and services instead, and the administration flourishes. Anxious about uncertain success, students become mean-spiritedly focused on complaints linked to insults and identities, fueling our resentment-based politics.

The excellence of American colleges is the broad and open way at least members of the dominant professional class are able to learn and grow intellectually, personally, and morally, in a climate of opennes and curiosity, exposed to new ideas and thinking for themselves. High school does not teach that, as it is about acquiring society's dominant values, and non-professional work opportunities cannot provide it and are tied to enforcing them those values.

Education depends on the figure of the citizen, and so is dangerous. A good education opens onto life-long learning. Without it, an authoritarian society falls back on religion alone, or a secular equivalent like New Age therapeutic spiritualities. How to live you life? Stop asking and buy and eat the answers. Or start thinking and...