As time goes by, The Atlantic seems to be getting less and less woke and more and more sensible. Who would have guessed that it published an article not only highlighting the problems of higher education, but saying that perhaps Trump’s intervention has called these to our attention? At any rate, if you click on the title below, you’ll go to the archived version of the article written by E. Thomas Finan, author and professor of humanities at Boston University.
There’s not a lot new here beyond the well-known fact that all Americans (Republicans more than Democrats) are losing faith in colleges and universities, and we hear some familiar prescriptions, like stopping self-censorship. (A lot of this was already given in Steve Pinker’s Boston Globe article, “A five-point plan to save Harvard from itself,” an article fleshed out and expanded in the new anthology edited by Lawrence Krauss.
First, the unpleasant facts:
The Trump administration and its allies are upending American higher education: freezing funding, launching investigations, ratcheting up taxes, and threatening to do much more. Not so long ago this would have been political poison. But in the last decade, Americans’ faith in colleges and universities has plummeted. In 2015, 57 percent had either a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, according to Gallup. As of last year, that group had shrunk to 36 percent, only a few points larger than the share who have “very little” confidence or none at all.
Universities should see the White House’s campaign as a wake-up call rather than the root of their troubles—a warning that they have to rebuild trust among not just prospective students, parents, and donors, but also voters and elected officials across party lines. America’s higher education has always depended to some degree on the patronage of its elected leaders, an arrangement that has often been a civic boon, encouraging schools to respond to public needs and serve the common good. Today, universities have to prove that they can uphold their end of the deal.
. . . .Today, the American university system continues to receive massive amounts of public funding, Trump’s cuts notwithstanding. According to the Urban Center, state and local governments spent $311 billion on higher education in 2021. The federal government spent almost $60 billion on research at colleges and universities in 2023, and the Federal Student Aid office spends an estimated $120 billion each year to fund work-study programs, grants, and loans for postsecondary education.
These commitments are the result of a long-held democratic consensus that promoting higher education pays off for the whole country. Now that consensus is fracturing, on both sides of the political spectrum. In 2015, Gallup found that a majority of Republicans had high confidence in America’s universities; by 2024, a majority of Republicans had almost none. Some on the left blame this loss of faith on the GOP’s supposed anti-intellectualism. At best, that’s a comforting illusion for the academy: The same polls also revealed slipping trust among Democrats and independents. This year, polling does show a slight rebound in public support for universities, perhaps in response to the Trump administration’s interventions. The overall trajectory, though, remains negative.
Universities can begin to assuage this skepticism by committing to addressing America’s biggest problems, starting with polarization. American colleges must become a venue for the frank but charitable exchange of ideas. College is not simply a debating society, yet many schools risk stifling dialogue, even if unintentionally. A recent study of University of Michigan and Northwestern University students by the psychology researchers Kevin Waldman and Forest Romm found that 72 percent reported self-censoring their political beliefs. Perhaps more troubling, 82 percent had turned in work that misrepresented their beliefs “to align with a professor’s expectations.” Such pervasive self-censorship not only undercuts universities’ academic mission—it also validates the widespread suspicion that campuses replicate bias instead of challenging it.
Here’s the Gallup Poll giving those results, and note that the “rise” is over only one year. Instead, note the overall fall from nearly 60% to less than 40% in those having a lot of confidence in higher education. And this between 2015 and 2024!. The phenomenon of self-censorship is also well known.
And here are the remedies (bold headings are mine; quotes from the Atlantic article are indented):
Institutionalize free speech:
American colleges must become a venue for the frank but charitable exchange of ideas. College is not simply a debating society, yet many schools risk stifling dialogue, even if unintentionally. A recent study of University of Michigan and Northwestern University students by the psychology researchers Kevin Waldman and Forest Romm found that 72 percent reported self-censoring their political beliefs. Perhaps more troubling, 82 percent had turned in work that misrepresented their beliefs “to align with a professor’s expectations.” Such pervasive self-censorship not only undercuts universities’ academic mission—it also validates the widespread suspicion that campuses replicate bias instead of challenging it.
Enforce institutional neutrality:
Colleges and universities should also consider remaining neutral on more political issues: Constant interventions can sap the academy’s credibility and make students who take opposing views feel unwelcome.
This was a major point of Pinker’s article, and it shouldn’t be “considered,” it should immediately be adopted. Yet far fewer colleges have adopted institutional neutrality (embodied in Chicago’s Kalven Report) than have adopted free-speech policies. Universities and departments just can’t seem to be able to pass judgement on political and ideological issues, as they’re determined to parade their virtue at the expense of chilling free speech. Only 33 universities, in fact, have adopted a version of Kalven, while 113 or more have adopted free speech.
More “heterodox” universities:
A promising set of entrants could help the academic sector branch out. For instance, the new University of Austin has enshrined diversity of thought and open debate as its founding principles. Elsewhere, state legislatures have recently established schools—such as the Hamilton School at the University of Florida and the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina—that prioritize civics, intellectual pluralism, and the American political tradition. The Florida legislation that established the Hamilton School included a charge to educate students “in core texts and great debates of Western civilization,” recognizing the role that shared cultural knowledge plays in creating an informed citizenship. To live up to their stated ideals, these institutions will have to resist the temptations of tribalism. If they’re successful, they can help counter allegations that American higher education is an ideological monolith.
I’m reserving judgement on this suggestion. What I’ve heard, at least about the University of Austin, is that it’s seems designed to promulgate “antiwoke” views, which of course gives it an ideological leaning—just in the opposite direction. But I admit that I know little about these schools.
Confront AI, using it for educational benefit:
To demonstrate their value to the public, universities also need to confront the rapid technological changes of recent years, particularly the rise of artificial intelligence. The digital revolution has great promise, but it risks fragmenting our attention, replacing human interaction with digital stimulation, and numbing introspection. Recent studies by researchers at MIT and Microsoft suggest that prolonged use of AI can potentially dull a person’s critical-thinking skills.
But schools need to ensure that students are doing their own thinking, rather than relying on the polished vacuity of chatbots. That might mean incorporating more in-class writing and exams, prioritizing small seminars over lectures, or experimenting with a wider variety of assignments. In the courses I teach at Boston University, I recently began having my students memorize poetry and recite it in front of the class—an exercise that I know ChatGPT can’t do for them, and that helped them develop a better understanding of the texts.
I really haven’t seen any positive use of AI for undergraduate education; it seems to be used mostly for either cheating or avoiding doing academic legwork, Although it seems to be of immense value in professional (post-school) venues, all the suggestions above are simply ways to curb cheating, not using AI for educational benefit. Which leads us to the last suggestion:
.A general education that includes the humanities will give students skills with greater longevity.
We all know that humanities, as part of a good liberal education, is circling the drain. This is a great pity, and may derive simply from students thinking (probably correctly) that a degree in English Literature or Art History won’t help them get a job. And that is the unfortunate result of colleges becoming “degree mills to help you get jobs” instead of places to spark intellectual curiosity and learning.
While the article briefly mentions the promulgation of viewpoint diversity, this diversity, for reasons I’ve mentioned before, is hard to create without discriminating against faculty and prospective students. One way to do it would be for woke humanities departments to stop hiring faculty that agree with all the other faculty. But they won’t, and this has plagued my own university.
Notably, the Atlantic doesn’t mention Pinker’s recommendation for “disempowering DEI”, especially because DEI is a major reason why Americans are losing respect for their colleges and universities. It creates uniformity of opinion, not diversity, demotes merit in its drive for equity, and is certainly not inclusive for many, like Asians and Jews.
h/t: Mike
I get the print version of the Atlantic, which also comes with access to their many web-only contributions. They’ve published quite a number of pieces over the past couple of years that go against the woke cultural grain and have given me a modicum of hope.
Regarding the humanities as part of a ‘general education:’ it is now very difficult to convince a student to read a book, any book. At best, students look for ‘content;’ at worst they don’t look at all. In literature, thus, they miss both the obvious point and its deeper reverberations. To read a novel, say, is but the necessary condition for studying the text. In no way sufficient. That requires living inside the pages, for a novel is a constructed possible world, one with an articulated, dramatized ‘ethical universe.’ This is its educational value: comparing a fictional world with that of the students’ own ‘lived experience.’
Consider what most gets in the way of this: social media.
Sure, grade inflation; granted, sports mania; and the reality of every pupil getting a ‘certificate of participation’ rather than a Bachelor of Arts diploma. But the cell phone with all its prestidigitations is perhaps the worst offender. . . because it never stops its nattering and uses up more than all the brain power a typical student has.
Thank you for bringing the Atlantic article to our attention and for your excellent analysis of it.
I’ll try to find Nial Ferguson’s recent talk at Austin U/Tx which is co-founded that addresses AI challenges. Something called “The cloister” – a computerless block of time for all students…or something. I’ll put it here later if I can. Very innovative.
D.A.
NYC
This might be the one: Niall Ferguson–What Technophiles Should Learn from Medieval Universities. YouTube, 2 months ago.
In response to my comment a few days ago about another academic topic (grade inflation), a reader called me “part of the problem.” It’s true: faculty members like me ignored it or downplayed woke excess until progressive politics and social justice goals became deeply embedded in the institutions.
Story time. In a policy working group I tried to gently push back on one social justice proposal by saying that I thought many faculty members would not support it. The associate dean leading the group called such colleagues dead branches, and said “I learned long ago not to water the dead branches in my garden.”
There is no evidence that such folks will change their minds about antiracism, indigenization, Gaza, or “trans” rights. And I don’t think everyone else (like me) in the university will become less sensitive to their bullying and shaming tactics. So I can’t easily see how the observations of Pinker and Finan made from inside the institution will translate into institutional neutrality and a focus on the academic mission. I can’t see how the university could transform itself merely by motivating its members to change their behaviour (the bullying by its activist minority, or the passive indifference of the majority like me who just want to teach and do research and wish the activists would shut up).
That seems to leave only outside political intervention – like the ham-fisted and idiotic efforts of Trump 2.0 – as a mechanism to reverse woke excess. And from that specific point of view, I don’t think they work. The grant cancellations etc. address only patterns in university behaviour but not the root cause: the individuals who are committed to progressive politics as the university’s telos and who have a “dead branches” view of everyone else both inside and outside the university.
Fixing that would require mass firings of tenured faculty members for their political views. And that’s a step I hope neither your government nor mine would ever remotely contemplate.
This leaves me bearish on universities. I think only generational turnover will rid my university of the “dead branches” folks. I’d be very happy to be proved wrong.
Interesting related thread: https://x.com/gen0m1cs/status/1962571500424466845?s=61&t=f3tfa_dRLrupkxoDqTq45g
Well, I think it wasn’t outside politics that made all those schools adopt free-speech and even Kalven policies. To my mind, it was a combination of knowing what was the right thing to do as well as pressure from regular people who wanted their colleges to have freedom of speech.
But things HAVE changed!
I don’t think that faculty should be fired for their political views, but I’m not against firing anyone who has a poor track record of scholarship as a result of having been doing ideological activism rather than proper scholarship. I think we do need mass firings of faculty in some areas (such as “gender studies” and “whiteness studies”), along with most of the staff in HR. And of course anyone with a DEI role (and any DEI recently re-badged as something else). It’ll be hard for things to improve without this.
Very briefly to avoid overcommenting: Ideological activism is scholarship in those departments. They’ve been allowed to define it that way in their hiring and their tenure-and-promotion processes. Here’s an example of someone who has been especially “successful” by that definition
https://www.sfu.ca/gsws/news-events/news/2025/rww-withers.html
A revolution would be required to overturn those policies and expectations. I can’t see it happening. The influence of someone like that will end with they/their retirement but no before. /pessimism
Excellent! Great ideas.
“82 percent had turned in work that misrepresented their beliefs”. Not a good look. But one reason I chose science and math was the feeling that the grade depended more on your mastery of the material and less than whether the teacher liked you.
This looks like a good Atlantic article which is on the right track to reform and improve US universities, which may have “a multitude of warts” but have an important fundamental role in our country.
I suppose smartphones, social media, and so on are proximate causes of the decline of reading among contemporary students. But I wonder how much the so-called Humanities in academia have contributed to this decline— by creating a cultural atmosphere that is simply hostile to Literature. Over the last 40 years, a big segment of the Humanities has been busy “deconsructing” Literature and the very idea of literary aesthetics. Maybe the doctrine that literature is just a facade of heteropatriarchy, colonialism, and “systems of oppression” filtered down to the popular level, and led students to the logical corollary that nothing found between the covers of a book is worth looking at.
When literature becomes a launching pad for whatever “ism” the professor holds, then students are better off reading on their own.
Gary Saul Morson at Northwestern has for decades taught Introduction to Russian Literature, which is one of the most heavily enrolled elective classes on campus. One can still attract students with engaging presentations, appreciation of literary merit, and a willingness to learn from the perspectives of earlier generations of writers whose ideas often come into conflict with our own. How terribly old fashioned! As you note, many of the modern-day intelligentsia prefer “interrogating” literature for oppressive structures so that they can condemn the past and build our glorious future. Where might we have seen that before?
Slavic Studies retained an emphasis on literary appreciation and close reading while staving off the decline into ideology and propaganda longer than did other literary fields. But, alas, the scholars that came of age at the ideological and oppressive heights of that “galaxy far, far away” and escaped into the former freedom of our academic establishments are now retired or deceased. And even the students who studied under them are moving into retirement.
It may be the case that the typical 18-22 year old cannot handle rigorous academic work. Academic work requires a lot of reading and concentration. Both of these things are hard for most people…very few adults actually read books on a regular basis.
I would estimate that only the top 20% of the population is willing and able to handle a rigorous university level curriculum. Extending the University to the next 20% has necessitated a lowering of standards to the point that the undergraduate degree is a bit of a farce.
I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that a) IQ is a decent predictor of academic performance and b) only 16% of the population has an IQ 1 standard deviation or higher above the median. Or, 84% of the population is below 115.
Indeed, until I retired from academia recently I saw a steady decline in student quality and engagement. It was as though students were becoming less and less mature and less and less curious compared to those of, say, two decades ago. I wonder what accounts for this change.
Neither of my sons even want to go to university. One joined the Marines, the other is becoming a pilot. After seeing the struggles of their friends, my nephews also decided to avoid college and are now electricians. All of my boys applied and were accepted at various schools, but none have opted to go (or stay).
They and their friends have lost faith in our system; they do not believe that an education is worth it; a lifetime of debt for a mountain of work that can have dubious value, all the while being be told that you are the cause of all the world’s problems (they are all white men). My nieces have sure enjoyed school! The schools made it clear that although they are white, their lack of dangly bits means they are worthy.
Well, that’s a bit overstated, but the fact remains that many young men I know are foregoing college. I used to argue that even though you’ll be saddled with debt for most of your life and you’ll get taught a pile of garbage (while being told you are garbage), in the long run a college education pays off. I think stats still support that, on average. I even tried the gambit that even if it doesn’t wind up being successful from a career standpoint, being educated is in itself worthy. I am, like many WEIT readers, olde and I remember a time when one of the big excitements about going to college was that you’d become educated. It didn’t matter if your degree didn’t make you wealthy; being educated is what mattered.
They’re not buying it any more. College may still be able to enrich lives beyond “job training”, but enrichment like that isn’t valued in the modern world.
I know my sons and nephews will have to work hard to make it without a degree, most who have one will struggle too, but in the end I think they’ll have a happier life.
Years ago when I used to go to trivia night in a bar, there was a guy who regularly cleaned everyone’s clock. He was…a plumber. High school education only. A couple of times I sat at his table in teams events but I and the other team mates were useless appendages save the odd music question (his one area of weakness).
American history was his best subject and would be great to see him demolish people with actual degrees in the subject. They’d assume he was a scholar and ask him where he taught or studied, and it was wonderful to see their faces when he told them he never went to college and was a C student in high school. School was torture to him, he’d say.
Moral of the story…there are many men out there with brain power to spare who got extremely disillusioned with the mediocrity and utter dross that is the American public school system.