According to the latest Gallup poll, only 38% of U.S. adults have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. One of the Gallup experts told Fox News that one of the key reasons for the continued slide in public trust is “the perception that there’s a political agenda being taught.” That perception is well documented after most departments purged their ranks of any republican, conservative, or libertarian faculty members. At the same time, many faculty oppose the long-standing principle of institutional neutrality for universities, the subject of a recent debate that I had with the President of the American Association of University Professors.
Gallup’s expert added that there is also a view that we are “not teaching people the right kinds of things they need to succeed in the job once they finish.”
As I have previously written, this generation of administrators and faculty has destroyed not just public trust in our institutions but their financial viability. Colleges are closing at an alarming rate as both tuition and revenue fall. Yet, faculty members would prefer to lose their jobs than their bias in hiring and teaching.
According to Gallup, roughly a third of polled individuals cited partisan bias or indoctrination on college campuses. Bias was the leading reason for given for the lack of trust, ahead of tuition costs. That is a large chunk of potential applicants and their families. Worse yet, they are not wrong.
Our campuses have been ideological echo chambers where collective orthodoxy is more prominent than academic inquiry. This group think has created an overtly hostile environment for more than half of this country that consider themselves conservatives or libertarians. As schools struggle to maintain financial stability, they are literally cutting away half of their potential applicant pool.
Currently, only 37% of Americans report having “some” confidence in the institution. In any other industry or area, that record of alienation and mistrust would prompt massive changes in management. In higher education, however, colleges and universities remain captive to administrators and faculty members who replicate their views and values to the exclusion of many others.
The result is evident in multiple surveys which reveal widespread self-censorship among students, particularly conservative students. When I confronted a Harvard Law professor in a debate at Harvard Law School with those surveys, he responded by calling these students “conservative snowflakes.”
It did not matter that only a third of Harvard students felt comfortable expressing their views in classes or on campus. Since Harvard has also shown the same bias in admissions, only roughly nine percent of the students identify as conservative. Thus, the vast majority of the students who are saying that they self-censor are liberals. This is the environment that the current generation of administrators and faculty have created.
As I have previously written, parents and students who value free speech must increasingly look to public universities where faculty are subject to constitutional guarantees. Public universities may be the final line of defense for free-speech advocates.
We now largely have two systems of higher education for those seeking education with a diversity of opinions and viewpoints. Except for outliers like the University of Chicago and other private universities holding the line on free speech, the orthodoxy found at private universities remains a barrier to many conservative and independent thinkers.
If we are to protect these bastions of free speech, legislatures will need to play a more active role in addressing the exclusion of both faculty candidates and speakers on public campuses. Too many faculty members continue to take the view that citizens are a captive audience expected to continue funding their departments, while excluding conservative or dissenting views held by many, if not most, citizens in a given state.
If faculty members want to continue maintaining echo chambers for their own viewpoints, they should have to seek private donors to sustain such intolerance and orthodoxy.
Legislatures can demand evidence that schools are maintaining intellectually diverse faculties in determining the level of continued support from citizens.
When some of us have argued for such campaigns, academics hypocritically claim that we are calling for political litmus tests or hiring based on political parties. It is an absurd argument that I have previously addressed, including in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
The call is for donors and legislators to withhold funding until they see real reforms, including greater diversity on faculties. They are not directing the hiring but looking at the results. The faculty members objecting to such calls have watched passively (or actively supported) the purging of conservative or libertarian faculty from universities and colleges.
When confronted by their own obvious ideological litmus tests, they shrug. Some acknowledge that their departments are overwhelmingly liberal, but insist that they just cannot find “competent” or “intellectually promising” conservatives. A few will admit that they do not believe that conservative views have a place in their departments.
It is impossible to deny the purging of faculties to create an academic echo chamber. If a large corporation effectively eliminated women or minorities while claiming no conscious discrimination, they would be trounced in court.
For years, I have raised concerns about the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculty members replicate their own views and values. There is no evidence that any faculty members (including those acknowledging the loss of virtually all faculty from the right of center) are honestly willing to reform their schools.
That ideological echo chamber is hardly an enticement for many facing rising tuition costs and relatively little hope of being taught by faculty with opposing views.
A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.
We are watching the demise of American higher education by its own hand. It will be up to legislators and donors to save these institutions from themselves.
According to the latest Gallup poll, only 38% of U.S. adults have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. One of the Gallup experts told Fox News that one of the key reasons for the continued slide in public trust is “the perception that there’s a political agenda being taught.” That perception is well documented after most departments purged their ranks of any republican, conservative, or libertarian faculty members. At the same time, many faculty oppose the long-standing principle of institutional neutrality for universities, the subject of a recent debate that I had with the President of the American Association of University Professors.
I disagree with the good professor about using the legislature to “save” higher education.
Let it die. By it’s own hand of course.
Create a new system of paid internships with book work that streamlines the process to only things directly related to the career. Get rid of all those useless General Education Requirements and DEI garbage.
Does a engineering student really need a class in Art Appreciation or LBGT+ 17th Century French Literature?
Does a med student really need a class in the History of Chinese Tea Cups or Underwater Basket Weaving?
Streamline it, reduce the time and money spent to reduce student debt and focus on producing a person who is ready to enter the workplace with the skills to do the job.
OT but related, Bosses are firing Gen Z workers in record time: ‘Yeah, checks out’
However, HR consultant Bryan Driscoll argues that it is not just young employees presenting a problem, but the education system itself which is not preparing its graduates for the working world.
‘As someone who went through years of education, including law school, I can tell you this: colleges are not preparing students for real-world work,’ Driscoll told Newsweek.
‘Education today emphasizes theory over practice. Sure, learning Greek mythology is fascinating, but unless you’re teaching it, how does that prepare you to communicate effectively in a corporate meeting or demonstrate professionalism? It doesn’t.’
UF
The understanding of the failures of our education is near universal.
We are in disagrement about fixing it.
We are also to some extent in disagreement about its purpose.
Colleges are not to train you for specific real world jobs.
They are to teach you how to critically think.
While badly taught courses that are just ruses for ideology not only do not do that – they actively destroy that.
I expect a diverse education from a college grad. Engineers should be exposed to Nietzsche and Plato, and …
The core problem with electives and the humanities today is not that they are unnecescary it si that they are the most steeped in
indoctrination and the most at odds with the actual purpose of electives and humanities.
Next, The LAST thing I want is Government stepping in to FIX things.
We play into the hands of the left when we see government as the solution to problems.
Government that can provide what we want, can also take it away and make things much worse.
And that is a part of how we got here.
Turley notes the declining trust in Colleges.
That is the solution.
We do not engage with those we do not trust.
The BIG problem we should fix is government subsidies for education. That isolates colleges from the markets.
Entirely eliminate government guaranteed student loans. Lock stock and barrel.
While that actually frees universities to be more biased and more woke – it also subjects them to the demand of those paying for the education, to deliver value for value.
If it is actually true that students and parents want this nonsense – then so be it.
But the low level of trust tells us that students and parents do NOT want this.
Less Government not more,
You claim the low level of trust proves parents don’t want “woke” ideas. But the data says otherwise. Gallup’s actual numbers show that the primary reasons people are losing trust are skyrocketing tuition costs (30%) and poor workforce preparation (25%). The market isn’t rejecting critical thinking; it is rejecting the absolute financial exploitation of student debt.
You stated that the last thing we want is the government stepping in to fix things. Yet, that is exactly what Turley demands at the end of his article. He explicitly calls for state legislatures to step in and weaponize public funding to force ideological hiring quotas.
“Colleges are not to train you for specific real world jobs. They are to teach you how to critically think.”
John, I seldom fundamentally disagree with you, but this may be the exception. A typical bachelors degree requires ~120 hours of classroom instruction, usually supplemented by like amount of self-study. Are you seriously proposing that it should require 240 hours of intense effort for an 18 year old young adult to develop the ability to think critically? That seems absurd to me. If public schools did their jobs properly, nearly every high school graduate should already have that ability. Maybe some additional study is necessary to learn how to apply already developed thinking skills to some disciplines that have an esoteric body of knowledge, but requiring 240 hours even to acquire that knowledge that seems extreme.
@Upstate
I agree, let it die. But then what? We still have to do something with the people in question. Seems like a Gordian Knot to me. No way to win but change course and do better in the future. And in the meantime we do have to deal with the fallout.
“We still have to do something with the people in question. ”
Why are we required to “do something”, other than allow them to succeed or fail on their own merit? And there is the prime shortcoming of many or most of those who claim themselves to be realistic and objective. We very simply need to allow people to fail. The refusal to do so is the very foundation and failure of every collectivist philosophy.
@Wannutono
This is not that world anymore. The rest of us will be carrying the burden, and consequences for malfeasance are disappearing. There is no imaginary barrier known as ‘the real world’. And merits? Did you read both articles today? Forget people being fired – eventually there will simply be no one to hire. In an extreme scenario, there could also be no one to hire them.
What you’ve said illustrates that many have not seen the gravity of what is upon us nor its future implications. We are talking about mental instability and lawlessness that would be impossible to contain. It’s becoming clear that is likely, in part, the point. We have not yet crossed the Rubicon, but we are close.
I think this may begin to sort itself out as more HS grads opt for trade schools and lucrative careers in the trades. Once the colleges and universities begin losing students changes will be made or the institutions will suffer economic death.
“Higher” education? University of Pennsylvania hired Professor Joe Biden. Harvard president advocated repeal of Glass-Steagall leading to Great Recession. Princeton economics professor and Nobel laureate taught that Trump will crash the stock market. Howard professor teaches the 1619 Project. Safe spaces? Codes of Conduct that permit violent mobs to call for the genocidal extermination of the Jewish people? “Higher” education, really? Consider some who rejected it: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks …
The repeal of Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with the great recession.
Mispriced risk in the housing market – driven by both government policies and by Fed interest rates too low too long caused the great recession .
Every depression and recession in history has bad monetary policy at the top of its causes.
Further it is self evident Congress KNEW this. The legislation that passed after the financial crisis did absolutely nothing to address the things that were CLAIMED to be the causes. Politicians used the great recession as an excuse to do more stupid things – not to fix any of the real or supposed stupid things that were alleged to be the causes.
Otherwise I agree.
You are completely rewriting history to fit a specific economic narrative. While monetary policy and mispriced housing risk were huge catalysts, claiming the 1999 partial repeal of Glass-Steagall had “nothing to do” with the Great Recession is factually incorrect.
The 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act tore down the firewall between traditional, consumer-deposit banks and high-risk investment banks. This allowed institutions like Citigroup to use federally insured consumer deposits to fund and back incredibly speculative mortgage-backed securities. Without that repeal, the toxic housing assets would not have been directly hardwired into the foundational plumbing of commercial banking. When the housing market collapsed, it dragged the entire global banking system down with it.
Your claim that post-crisis laws “did absolutely nothing” to address the root causes is completely false.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act directly attacked the structural vulnerabilities caused by the Glass-Steagall repeal:
The Volcker Rule: Effectively a partial restoration of Glass-Steagall, it specifically banned commercial banks from using their own money for speculative proprietary trading.
Higher Capital Requirements: Mandated that large megabanks hold significantly more cash in reserve to ensure they could survive toxic asset write-downs without taxpayer bailouts.
The CFPB:Created a dedicated consumer watchdog to specifically police and eliminate the predatory, subprime mortgage lending practices that fueled the mispriced housing risk in the first place.
Blaming monetary policy alone lets Wall Street off the hook for taking highly leveraged, systemically dangerous gambles using ordinary citizens’ savings. Congress knew exactly what went wrong, and they passed sweeping structural regulations to keep it from happening again. Now banks want too tear down those safeguards because they are ‘too onerous’ and stymie profitability. It’s that greed that led to the crisis in the first place.
Thank you for your insight Professor Turley.I was in college in the mid ’70’s..I remember one adjunct professor invited a group of our class to his home one evening, to talk about a recent trip to Greenland and a book he was writing,a class mate wanted to go. I went along.The discussion of the trip never took place.His wife had some food and drinks for us and the topic of socialism came up,I was shocked, really.He asked our political views and questioned our reasoning .As the evening went on it became uncomfortable and my friend and I felt the need to leave..So even back then a 30 yr old was trying to indoctrinate 18 yr olds ..It changed how I felt about him and was glad the class was finishing soon..
“So even back then a 30 yr old was trying to indoctrinate 18 yr olds”
In my English class during my sophomore year in high school, which would have been 1964 – 1965, I had a young woman instructor (22 yo, maybe) who had recently graduated from a state teachers’ college. She spent much more time incessantly and passionately preaching to the class about how they should seriously consider becoming teachers because of relatively high salary and benefits, easy work, and tenure (not one word did she utter about the satisfaction of improving young minds) than she did teaching anything about the English language or literature. So concerted attempts by “educators” to inculcate the virtues of socialism on vulnerable students go back at least that far.
Professor Turley is once again selecting data to fit a premeditated narrative, choosing to hide the source material rather than let readers examine it. A look at the actual June 2026 Lumina-Gallup survey completely deconstructs his claims:
He hides who is actually driving the decline. Turley implies that universities are bleeding support because they alienate the right. In reality, Republican confidence only shifted 3 points (from 26% to 23%). The entire 2026 drop was driven by Democrats, whose high confidence cratered by 11 points (from 61% down to a historic low of 50%).
The “political agenda” cuts both ways. Turley uses the phrase “perceived political agenda” as a blank slate for his personal grievances. But Gallup’s open-ended data reveals that a top political complaint from respondents was actually “Trump administration interference in higher education” (8%). The drop in confidence isn’t a backlash against progressive faculty; it’s a liberal backlash against aggressive state-level mandates and anti-DEI political warfare.
Turley acts as if partisan bias is destroying the financial viability of colleges. Gallup proves otherwise. The top reasons Americans lack confidence are skyrocketing tuition costs (30%) and poor workforce preparation (25%). Families are pulling away over student debt and economic utility, not faculty hiring ratios.
Despite the headlines, a combined 75% of U.S. adults still report having “a great deal,” “quite a lot,” or “some” confidence in higher education. It is hardly the industry collapse Turley claims.
Weaponizing an objective study about multifaceted institutional distrust to peddle a repetitive talking point isn’t media critique—it’s standard disinformation. If you want the unvarnished facts, read the actual poll for yourself:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/712322/confidence-higher-education-slips-back-slightly.aspx
“Professor Turley is once again selecting data to fit a premeditated narrative.”
Exactly what we have long been accusing X of doing. NOt an original thought or “argument’ in his head.
X never finished grade schools thus his 5th grade level writing. That he lives off of social security disability tells us why he can troll on this blog day after day after day from 6 am through 3:30 am non-stop, and all this from California, the land of fruits and nuts
X – once again spouting this arguement that indoctrination is what students and parents and future employers want, and what colleges should deliver.
While I disagree – on the most important point we DO agree – Colleges should deliver what those paying for them want.
So Get Government out ENTIRELY – No government guaranteed student loans. Not government subsidies for colleges.
No Obama and Biden coercing colleges into left wing nut nonsense – no Trump coercing them out of it.
Restore truly free markets in education – and if the ideologically warped education that Turley is objecting to and that YOU think is appropriate survives and thrives – so be it.
Free people acting on their own, weighing their own values have chosen for themselves – that is how the free market works.
You get to do what YOU choose – so long as you do not actually harm others. You get to pay for your own choices – and you get the benefits and consequences of your choices.
You are completely misrepresenting my point. At no point did I argue that indoctrination is what parents or employers want. My argument is about basic economic data vs. culture-war myths.
If we are talking about what the market actually wants, let’s look at the real-world demand:
The market wants affordability, not a culture war: Gallup’s data proves that the primary drivers destroying higher education’s financial viability are skyrocketing tuition costs (30%) and poor workforce preparation (25%). The free market is reacting to student debt and economic utility, not Turley’s obsession with faculty hiring ratios.
The market isn’t boycotting universities over ideology: Turley claims colleges are losing their potential applicant pool by alienating conservatives. In reality, young demographics lean overwhelmingly independent or progressive. Higher education is not facing an enrollment crisis because 18-year-old conservatives are executing a coordinated free-market boycott.
Government meddling is already driving down demand: If you want government coercion out of higher education, then you should be furious with the current administration’s actions. The Gallup poll explicitly shows that “Trump administration interference in higher education” (8%)is actively destroying public confidence, particularly among Democrats who drove the entire 11-point crash in trust this year.
We actually agree on the free market: let people choose. But right now, the free market is rejecting colleges because they cost too much and fail to guarantee good jobs—not because Jonathan Turley can’t find enough conservative colleagues to agree with him.
John your idea of taking government out entirely sounds nice on paper, but in reality it produces big serious problems.
The free market works well for consumer goods, but it struggles to fund long-term societal infrastructure.
Training a doctor, a civil engineer, or a nuclear physicist requires massive upfront capital for advanced laboratories, research facilities, and medical equipment.
If you eliminate all government research grants and subsidies, universities would have to pass 100% of those massive operational costs onto students. Tuition for essential STEM fields would skyrocket into millions of dollars per degree.
The free market would simply stop producing enough doctors, engineers, and scientists because almost no one could afford the upfront cost of training.
The U.S. government does not subsidize university research out of charity; it does so to maintain global competitiveness and national security.
Private corporations rarely fund long-term, high-risk foundational scientific research because it doesn’t yield an immediate quarterly profIt.
Landmark American innovations—from the internet and GPS to advanced cancer therapies—began as government-funded university research grants.
Cutting government subsidies entirely would hand the global lead in technological, military, and medical innovation directly to state-funded competitors like China.
The argument assumes that if the government stops guaranteeing student loans, colleges will simply lower their prices to meet what people can pay out of pocket.
Higher education is inherently expensive due to the cost of skilled labor (professors). Prices cannot drop down to zero.
Without government-backed loans, private banks would take over the student lending market. Private banks require collateral (like a house) or a stellar credit score to issue a loan.
Smart, capable students from low-income or middle-class families would be entirely locked out of higher education. College would instantly revert to what it was in the 19th century: an exclusive finishing school for the wealthy elite, completely destroying meritocracy.
Education is a public good with massive economic spillovers. When a student goes to college and becomes a software architect, they pay higher taxes, build companies, and create jobs for others.
Defunding higher education shrinks the entire nation’s GDP, leaving the country economically poorer and less competitive on the world stage.
We would never be able to compete against nations like China, South Korea, Japan, Norway, and many nations in the EU. That’s why they value free government subsidized higher education that is affordable to everyone. Not just an elite few.
You claim that the drop in confidence in Colleges is because Trump is reversing Government policies and stripping government support for left wing lunacy – that the decline is because people actually want that
Unlikely but not impossible.
More likely Trump’s actions and YOUR backlash against them are exposing people to the incredibly left wing nut corruption in education.
That IS what we have seen with Immigration. Left wing nut protests against ICE and deportations have INCREASED support for mass immigration by 6pts in a year
Regardless, we can Test your and Turley’s claims easily.
Get Government out of higher education. No govenrment guarantees for student loans. Not govenrment funded college research. No govenrment meddling in College policies. Not pro-DEI. not Anti-DEI. Not pro-Trans, not anti-trans
Get govenrment out of it entirely.
Let the those who pay for college make their own choices about what they want from college.
I do not beleive as you do that the nonsense you shill is popular outside of a tiny niche.
But I am prepared to give people the freedom to prove me wrong.
That is how free markets work.
As an example the actual data on many of the changes to our food supply – mostly driven by the left, but surprisingly popular with nearly everyone,
is that these things DO NOT WORK. That Organic farming is harder on the land, that it produces worse and less nutritious foods – BTW the studies demonstrating this are from the lefts favorite “socialists” – The Swedes.
But despite the fact that there is no benefit of consequence and that much of it is even harmful ALL the nonsense regarding food is popular – left and right.
And if People want to pay for fair trade, local organic free range, cage free, …… Then that is absolutely fine.
We are free to WANT stupid things.
We are free to have stupid things – so long as WE chose them and WE pay for them.
You are still trying to argue with your feelings instead of looking at the actual data in the Gallup poll.Let’s test both of our claims right now using Gallup’s objective findings, not theories:
The “Exposing Corruption” Theory is False:You claim the public is losing confidence because they are finally seeing “left-wing corruption.” If that were true, Republicans and Independents would be the ones driving the massive drop in trust. But they aren’t. Republican confidence barely budged, moving just 3 points (26% to 23%).
The Drop is a Backlash to Government Meddling: The entire collapse in trust was driven by Democrats, whose high confidence plummeted by 11 points (61% down to 50%). For the first time, respondents explicitly told Gallup they are losing faith due to “Trump administration interference in higher education” (8%). It isn’t a backlash against “woke” colleges; it is a backlash against top-down government mandates over DEI and funding threats.
You keep talking about a free market, but you are ignoring what the consumer is actually screaming for. Gallup proves that the top reasons Americans lack confidence are skyrocketing tuition costs (30%) and poor workforce preparation (25%).
The consumer has already spoken in the free market. They aren’t avoiding college because of trans issues, DEI, or your organic food analogies. They are avoiding college because it costs too much and doesn’t guarantee a job.
Turley hid these numbers because they ruin his culture-war narrative. Stop falling for the rage-bait and read the actual data.
X
We shall see how things play out.
Demographics – declining birth rates, are reducing the number of students going to college each year.
As demand shrinks supply shrinks too.
When supply outstrips demand – people get to be much more choosy.
So lets see how that plays out.
Who knows – you may be right, the decline in confidence in colleges might be a backlash against Trump’s war on DEI and men in womens sports.
Or it might be a growing discontent as we learn even more about the stupidity the left is subjecting our children too.
Regardless lets get government out of it – not just Trump, but all future presidents.
Lets preclude government from pushing ANY political agenda – and to absolutely ensure that,
Lets entirely end the financial entanglements of colleges and universities and government.
John Say, You are correct about the demographics and shrinking demand, but that completely destroys Jonathan Turley’s entire thesis.
As you noted, the shrinking number of college students is driven by declining birth rates (the well-documented “demographic cliff”). Turley claims schools are losing applicants because they “purge conservatives” and alienate half the country. The actual data shows schools are losing applicants simply because fewer young people exist.
You are correct that as supply outstrips demand, consumers get choosy. But Gallup’s data tells us exactly what those choosy consumers are prioritizing. They are looking at the price tag. 30% cite skyrocketing tuitionand 25% cite poor job preparation as their reason for losing faith.
We do not have to “see how things play out” regarding the drop in confidence. Gallup already measured it. The 11-point drop was driven entirely by Democrats reacting to “Trump administration interference” (8%).It is an empirical fact in the data, not a guess.
If you want to get the government entirely out of higher education funding to let the free market dictate survival, that is a legitimate libertarian economic position. But do not confuse a structural crisis of affordability and demographic shifts with Turley’s fabricated narrative about a war on conservative faculty. The consumer is voting with their wallet over student debt, not culture wars.
“Institutional bias” is bad in the abstract, but the consequential incompetence and abject failure to instill actual real world skills and knowledge in graduates is what is truly fatal.
Yesterday the US House Committee on Education and Workforce held a hearing on “The Impact of DEI on Medical Schools”. Among others the deans of UCLA and UCSF medical schools testified. Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill. got into it with them on course materials on biological sex, who can have a baby and transgender sexual identity. Both mentally made the sign of the cross at the Dracula idea that only a biological woman can have a baby. As did the course materials. That’s my take. I encourage you to read the Committee Repository. These are public universities. On the Left Coast. My takeaway is that Johnathan’s column is a call for balance in both private and public higher education. When the Framers were drafting the Constitution, medical science was prescribing not to go out into the miasma of the night air. The Gallup poll catches a symptom that the people do not relish medical science retreating back to miasma days.
This is the reason I contribute only to Hillsdale College, and not to the schools I attended.
Whaaaaat? You mean the bastion of illuminati production and those who would guide the Everyday Swine of America are now thought of as Idiot Self-Absorbed Garbage? Well looks like the haute-taute Enlightened have arrived at their destination – Despised by most Americans. Congrats you pointy headed nit-wits!
Well, I like Prof Turley’s assessment. But this is not new. Depending on which part of the country you live in, the State Supported Universities do maKe a difference. However there is a difference looking for conservative or non partisan university in Indiana and finding the same thing in Illinois. You simply have to pick and choose and really research where you want to go. I know that Purdue University near me is literally bursting at the seams with massive building projects for housing as year by year they set new records for admissions. Main apparent cause is more conservative principles but still with a wide range of thought right and left. Also a nearly 10 year freeze on tuition.
Purdue, although primarily an engineering school, does have a very large core curriculum in liberal arts. So students go on to advanced degrees in engineering and liberal arts. The state administration and legislature provides the leadership.
It can be done.
But you cannot be asleep at the wheel. I don’t want to see only conservative thought but I think all students need exposure to all views but self censoring is not useful to anyone especially at college level. It you cannot question then how do you learn?
That was very apparent at the above mentioned appearance in congress recently when university leaders looked like fools when they tried to espouse their nonsensical views outside of their cloistered halls of education.
“State Supported Universities” is not capitalized. Obviously you have no education .
Another brain dead GEB comment.
People Who Constantly Point Out Grammar Mistakes Are Pretty Much Jerks, Scientists Find
Scientists have found that people who constantly get bothered by grammatical errors online have “less agreeable” personalities than those who just let them slide. – sciencealert.
Wow. Who would have thought that the MAGA relentless unfounded bashing of education would affect poll numbers.
“Who would have thought that [academia’s] relentless unfounded bashing of” America would give rise to socialists and communists?
Now your statement is accurate and relevant.
We did not do anything.
Higher education did it all to itself.
We just point out the obvious.
Apparently lots and lots of people who are not MAGA beleive MAGA. Or possibly worse still MAGA is growing.
The left spent the past year relentlessly bashing mass deportations and ICE – and none other than Harvard Harrise found that INCREASED support for mass deportations by 6% in the past year. OOPS.
Regardless we can just remove Government from education entirely – Let colleges have DEI programs and Men in Womens sports and then left those who are paying for college decide what they want.
Do you trust that your left wing nut ideology can actually survive without steep subsidies from government ?
High ranked schools in the northeast are woke disasters with 50% of all spending complete garbage. Having two kids having attended top 10 schools
“High ranked schools in the northeast are woke disasters with 50% of all spending complete garbage.”
I suspect your 50% may be far too low.
End federal aid and backing student loans
“End federal aid and backing student loans”
End all Federal involvement in education, period, end of story. There is absolutely no authorization for any such involvement existent in the enumerated powers.
And it is a bad idea to boot.
Those on the left do not trust that their ideology can survive without govenrment subsidies.
They do not actually beleive that people will choose leftism in any environment where they must compete for peoples hearts and minds
You are confusing basic economic infrastructure with political ideology. The belief that “leftism” is what requires subsidies completely ignores how advanced global markets actually function.
Utopian libertarian theories are consistently debunked by the reality of how human capital and modern economies operate.
The federal government does not subsidize universities to teach gender studies or political science; those humanities courses are incredibly cheap to run. Subsidies and research grants go directly to medical schools, aerospace engineering labs, and advanced physics departments. Without government infrastructure funding, the free market cannot produce enough doctors or engineers because the upfront training costs are too high for individual consumers to bear.
If you want to see what a completely unsubsidized, pure free-market environment looks like, look at Fortune 500 corporations. They have zero government mandates forcing them to adopt DEI policies, yet the vast majority explicitly choose inclusive hiring practices, ESG metrics, and diverse marketing. Why? Because the market demands it. Modern consumers and top-tier global talent lean overwhelmingly progressive.
If conservative or libertarian economic models were inherently superior at winning hearts, minds, and capital, we would see deep-red states leading the nation in innovation and high-wage growth. Instead, the global knowledge economy—biotech, silicon tech, venture capital, and advanced research—is heavily clustered in high-subsidy, heavily educated, progressive-leaning coastal hubs. The market explicitly chooses to invest where the human capital is highest
You claim the left cannot survive without the state, yet it is Jonathan Turley who is explicitly begging state legislatures to step in and use top-down government power to mandate political hiring quotas for conservative faculty. The progressive model is surviving completely on market demand from paying students; it is the right-wing narrative that is demanding government intervention to force its way onto campuses.
The public isn’t losing trust in higher education because it’s too “woke”—they are losing trust because it costs too much and leaves them with student debt.Defunding the talent pipeline won’t make a country freer; it will just make it poorer.
“And it is a bad idea to boot.”
I agree. I would also like to see state governments remove themselves from higher education (and possibly K -12 as well, but that is an issue of larger magnitude). But at the Federal level, the involvement is clearly unconstitutional to anyone with rudimentary reading comprehension.
IMHO, liberals seem to be enthralled with their own view of themselves, as if they’re trying to be “liked” and accepted by their peers in academia. That’s evident in their attendance at their annual gathering of their peers while wearing their “colors” draped around their shoulders showing their pedigree and the universities where they obtained their PhD’s. Yes, it’s a form of pride to show and be accepted by other PhDs which would be proof of their aspiration and achievements in education, but it also shows a disdain to those of us in the real world. My guess is many of them have never looked in the mirror and put aside their individual cultural and political biases. While in college (after four years of voluntary service in the military) I had a very good psychology professor who was a conservative and a paratrooper in World War II. In his opinion, he was there to teach and could care less for the pompous professors who viewed themselves as better than the rest of us.
“the perception that there’s a political agenda being taught.”
Uh . . . that isn’t a perception, it’s a fact, and all these polls do is make the modern left go, ‘Hm. Ok. How can we lie better so they don’t think that?’, *cue cringe inducing research to even further marginalize people into clownish stereotypes*
The modern left are not educated people regardless of what they spent or debt they accrued, and they are not particularly smart people. They certainly aren’t erudite or wise people.
The rest of us are waking up much, much too late. Better late than never, but agan: ‘perception’? This really is the post 100 IQ world. Get off your phones and back into your lives, and these days, that’s advice for adults, not kids. If people paid half as much attention to their surroundings as dumb memes or idiotic gotcha dramas or marijuana, there would not have been any socialists installed in blue metros.
There is no bigger group of intolerant Fascists than university professors and the administrators that hire and coddle them. Their ideological conformity would make Goebbels blush.
“Their ideological conformity would make Goebbels blush.”
And yet the majority of the public seem content to keep drinking the Kool-Aid (lemmingade?) they serve.
“We are watching the demise of American higher education by its own hand.” J. Turley.
Strong opinion. I think he knows what he’s talking about; he is the system.
Demise in the sense as he understands it, its possible. But that has already occurred.
The future of higher ed lies in the spread of their ideology in corporate spheres. The culmination of fascism.
“The future of higher ed lies in the spread of their ideology in corporate spheres. The culmination of fascism.”
“The future of higher ed lies (and lies, and lies some more) in the spread of their ideology in corporate spheres. The culmination of fascism.”
Hopefully that future ends its demise in its present form, which is bankrupted beyond redemption. There do need to be avenues to allow acquisition of advanced and/or specialized knowledge and skills beyond grades K -12, but I think a new paradigm (not necessarily only one) and resulting structure is warranted.
Universities, through their governance, are self-perpetuating institutions. Put simply, likes hire likes. Thus, the only hope for changes is through fiscal measures. However, it is not clear that even this will work. Unless, you’ve been there, you have no idea just how much of a thrill professors get from converting a young student to their way of thinking.
Wrong. You have not and never managed an educational institution. You’re talking nonsense.
Neither have you.
You most definietly have not.
Sad. . .you can’t even spell correctly. . . .maybe you need more education.
Sad… you can’t punctuate correctly. An education is wasted on you.
Far left progressives started going after higher education about one hundred years ago. Unfortunately they have pretty much taken over higher education and have gained a strong foothold in K – 12 education too. The K – 12 public schools have become indoctrination camps. Higher education has gotten so bad that a chancellor of a San Francisco area medical college stated in a committee hearing yesterday that most births are by biological females. Who else besides biological females are giving birth. Im really curious about this one. This person shouldn’t be anywhere near a teaching position let alone run a medical college. This person is mentally ill. Only God can help us now.
A hundred years ago…? ca. 1920. Any idea what took place in the USA at that time? Education was institutionalized. Major revamp of the educational teaching process beginning under Hoover. And it wasn’t started by progressives. It was considered progressive, but it the way you fools here think. If you had an education, you would have known that.
Does anyone know how education looked in the early 1900’s? A mishmash of systems across the US. Disorganized. Incapable. And now look at what it turned into.
The people educated in that era built this nation – won two world wars and made the US a global superpower with the highest standard of living and greatest degree of diversity of any nation with more than 20M people.
Hoover was a progressive.
“Hoover was a progressive.”
With a vacuum between his ears. Sorry, couldn’t resist…
Progressives taking over the faculty lounges is the mechanism, not the root. The better question is: Why was it even possible? Why did an institution that’s supposed to help form citizens capable of self-government put up so little resistance to being captured in the first place?
The answer isn’t just politics. It’s formation. An institution stops defending intellectual diversity once the people running it were never formed to value it. Swap the ideology and you get the same result. Any group that gains control of an institution with weak guardrails and little accountability will tend to consolidate that control. That’s not a left-wing thing. It’s what happens when a culture stops pushing back against conformity.
The chancellor comment is worth flagging, but one statement doesn’t explain the system behind it. The real question is: What kind of selection process puts someone at the podium who can say that with a straight face and receive virtually no pushback from peers? That’s an institution where conformity has replaced independent judgment.
That’s the formation problem. The politics are just whichever ideology happens to be sitting in the driver’s seat at the moment. Healthy institutions don’t need the “right” people in charge. They need people who are willing to challenge orthodoxy, no matter whose orthodoxy it is.
the perception that there’s a political agenda being taught.”
___________________________
Well duh.
Now how in the world would you know that dustoff, you are an uneducated retard. You never got past HS.
Because there are idiots like this on this blog, it will die soon. As they intend.
@Anonymous
It will, and I absolutely think that’s the intention. Not by the useful idiots who think they’re ‘saving’ something (? Such ignorance and delusion), but by their Svengalis. Upheaval and entropy and collapse are the point, replete with the lies of justification. They hope to seize control in the chaos (and are succeeding in uber blue places); this is not even hidden anymore, we cannot let them. Anyone that believes there is anything organic about the DSA are fools when the playbook is literally identical in every Western country on earth.
“They hope to seize control in the chaos (and are succeeding in uber blue places); this is not even hidden anymore”
I’m not even certain that is their ultimate objective in many cases. It is pretty clear to me that many or most of them hate themselves as much as they do the rest of us. Because of some variation on psychological transference, they want us to suffer earlier and more than they do. Many of them may subconsciously want to seize the reins of power for the sole purpose of ensuring that we do not outlast them.
The truth was posted and you are upset.
Typical lib.
DustOff,
Notice how the usual annonys are suddenly back today and X has only made one comment?
Yesterday, it was only after I made an observation, the annonys suddenly returned?
So true upstate.