In the last decade, a raucous chorus of critics has found common cause taking down the once hallowed American institution of college. Some claim that it’s degenerated into a left-wing brainwashing factory, a right-wing privilege machine, or a cushy jobs program for faculty and staff. Others lament alleged patterns of coddling fragility, conditioning conformity, or locking young people into decades of indebtedness. And then there are the denunciations—heightened since October 7th—that truth, reason, facts, impartiality, and civil dialogue are relics of a bygone time.
While there’s much to discuss and reform, such broadsides all miss one central fact, the proverbial baby in the bathwater, which is that an excellent undergraduate education still provides substantial lifelong benefits.
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