Families saving for college and encouraging their kids to aim for the top are getting scammed by the left-wing college industrial complex. Colleges distort and outright lie about who gets accepted, education quality, and what it costs. They’d be in jail if they were selling auto loans and used the same deceptive tactics.
Columbia University announced last Wednesday that it is permanently eliminating SAT and ACT test scores as part of the undergraduate admissions process — the first Ivy League school to go permanently test-optional. Columbia issued a slippery statement about making admissions “nuanced” and “respecting varied backgrounds, voices, and experiences.” Truth is, Columbia is ditching merit for diversity. Without admitting it, Columbia has replaced an academic mission — providing a rigorous education to a group of prepared students — with a new one: social engineering.
Expect other colleges to follow. Elon Musk commented Saturday that “very few Americans seem to realize the severity of the situation.”
President Joe Biden made equity the mission of all federal agencies. On March 1, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona blasted the higher education industry’s “unhealthy obsession with selectivity” and urged a focus on “upward mobility.”
That’s politics. But parents making the most significant investment of their lives, except buying a home, ought to know what they’re paying for: a rigorous classroom experience for their youngster or a bit part in a social experiment.
SAT and ACT Tests
Colleges don’t want the public to discern what’s going on, and that’s why they’re railing against U.S. News & World Report rankings, published annually. The rankings factor in, among other things, test scores, graduation rates (after six years), how much debt students have when they leave, class size, and faculty credentials — precisely the facts families need.
Nearly all colleges made SAT and ACT tests optional during the pandemic. And most institutions are sticking with that temporary policy for the current year. Not the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which already reinstated testing. Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill explains that it’s “not all about who comes in the door but also who goes out.” A quarter of students admitted to MIT in the fall of 2020 scored a perfect 800 on the math SAT, and none scored below 700. Schmill recalled that a decade earlier when MIT admitted students with a wider range of scores, fewer made it to graduation.
The American Civil Liberties Union slams ACT and SAT tests as “unjustifiable barriers for historically underrepresented students of color.” The issue is more complicated. The tests are screened to prevent bias. But high schools in areas serving Black and Hispanic students tend to be lower quality and offer fewer advanced placement courses, leaving students unprepared.
Sadly, most colleges are more interested in being politically correct than ensuring their student body can do the work.
Race in Admissions
They’re also apprehensive about a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, due in June, that is expected to curtail or outlaw considering race in admissions. In lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, test scores were used to show how these universities rejected high-scoring Asian and white applicants to promote diversity. After the June ruling, many institutions will likely eliminate testing to get rid of any evidence of racial favoritism. Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law predicts that institutions will find ways to prefer minorities “that can’t be documented as violating the Constitution.”
A majority of Americans consider it wrong to favor any racial group in admissions. But right versus wrong be damned. The left-wing higher education establishment will likely find ways to do it and worse, cover it up.
Race isn’t the only thing colleges lie about.
The U.S. Education Department’s College Scoreboard lists colleges’ graduation rates. But check the fine print. Graduation is defined as earning a diploma within eight years. Who has time or money for that?
A staggering 91% of colleges misrepresent their costs, according to a Government Accountability Office investigation.
Columbia confessed it falsified class sizes and faculty credentials to U.S. News & World Report.
Despite nonstop virtue signaling, the higher education establishment is anything but virtuous. Americans need to stand up to these liars.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To learn more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website.
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM
Colleges and universities are PATHETIC.
I feel for those that want an Actual Education from college but that won’t happen.
Students will be in DEBT for being BRAINWASHED for FASCIST liberal propaganda and the only thing they learn are what skin color they are and hate America and hate each other.
That’s what FASCIST liberals want at your expense and Freedom.
So if you’re smart, you won’t waste your time and money on Communist colleges and universities.
There are other ways to learn and be successful.
Don’t let the FASCIST colleges and universities keep you from learning.
Your education depends on you. Not them.
May I suggest considering smaller, less “woke” schools, especially those affiliated with Christian organizations. Many of those schools have overall lower costs and higher academic standards, and their graduates are more sought-after in the business and scientific worlds.
Colleges should be helping students develop a sense of purpose in life, and a code of conduct as well. Respect for truth would be an essential part of that mission. If the foundation of the system disregards the value of truth , then it is time to build another foundation that respects truth. Victory for truth helps in the defense of liberty. This is a very important matter. You presented facts very well Betsy. The standards of the country’s education system have much to do with how the citizenry will react to things that are vital to maintaining freedom , how emergencies are dealt with, how the economy functions . Hillsdale College has an outlook that respects the will of God, that respects the values that were part of the formation of the United States of America in the 1700’s and I believe that institution and any others like it should be looked to as the way to go for the future of education.
Colleges are responsible for indoctrinating students with anti-family socialism undoing years of sound upbringing and replacing it with leftist social agendas. No longer do they provide an education to make individuals thrive in a world driven by commerce. Useless degrees are handed out which provide little intrinsic value, but a mountain of debt to the benefit of institutions and student loan mills. This wake is the culmination of decades producing un-employable misfit degreed people who cannot apply their education to work in the field they’ve invested in. Instead, they’re waiting tables and maybe trying to work off the debt from the worthless bill of goods passed off as higher education. Relaxing minimum standards has added its own form of inflated watered-down educational excellence, making the coveted college degree ever so useless.
Education in america has become a fail-ure and the list of reasons and causal factors is long, and distingushed. What’s worse, it has become politicized and wouldn’t you know it you start kicking ovr rocks and you find a nest of democrats. Shock and awe, there. LOL To learn, to be a professional student, to seek information and higher truths and so on, is to eventually become aware of the imperfections and failings of any system of education you might examine. Also understand that at the college level your path of study will become independent meaning you will do your own homework and make your own discoveries unpleasant though they may be. Treat that diploma as a license to keep learning.
Mike Rowe has set up programs for the young to obtain certifications in the trades. There are also many trade schools. Graduates who move up the chain to become “Master” plumbers, electricians, wielders. can earn incomes similar to many professionals such as doctors and lawyers. Considering what colleges are teaching, in all too many cases, today, I would strongly consider a trade. The other option is to go to one of the “conservative” colleges out there such as Hillsdale or Liberty Universities.
Equity replacing equality and merit will bring down this country faster than a bomb. I now do not believe this nation can be saved. There are too many Leftists taking over the powers that used to be tradition, Constitution and morality. I feel for the generation now being born. They will not be free or even know what it’s like to be free.
If colleges want us to pay off student loans then we get to decide college pay and costs.
I demand an immediate cut of 60% for all employee paid of all colleges that want student loans cancelled.
I want a 70% cut in extra curricular activities.
I want a 100% cut in all degrees that have a history of less then 60% graduates finding jobs in the field following graduation.
reduce cost first then ask for help
Why bother Just give everyone piece of worthless piece of paper stating the holder graduated with honors a nd be done with the farce Oh I forgot mega bucks to colleges and tenures of all the professors Am talking of those who graduate from courses that leave them unemployable
Send your kids to trade schools or get them into union apprenticeship programs!
It costs little & the payback is awesome! Your kids just might make more than you after 4-5 years in either of these programs!
2 + 2 = 4 is objective education. 2 + 2 = 5 is subjective indoctrination. That’s all you need to know to understand what’s going on, and it’s going to end up killing us as a nation!
The commie/marxist/anti-American “woke” traitors are social engineering our youth, via indoctrination public schools.
No longer educating, now it’s indoctrinating our youth into stupid, depraved, pukeified useful idiots. Can’t do it without the MSM, 95+% owned by insane, evil Commie/Globalist traitors using their lying propaganda spewing “talent” to deliberately, and with extreme malice, indoctrinate viewers/readers. It’s the dumbing down of America, and now warp speed creep of Marxism, with the outcome of totalitarian tyranny for anyone not in the traitor’s club.
For anyone not understanding how we are almost there: Totalitarian states included complete control of the media, centralized power, strict cultural rules, limited individual freedoms, planned economies, and mass propaganda.
It’s a bit like the kids sports. Just show up and you get a medal. Thinking down chain, what incentive does a high schooler have to work hard if in the end they find themselves with the kids who just partied through high school in the same college class? And as noted below, why aren’t they talking to kids about tech or 2 year colleges. A friend went to school for auto repair, and now makes north of $100,000 a year. Compare that to the college grad who’s making $50,000 and owes a ton of debt. Or, worse yet, the 57% that have the party, have debt, but DO NOT graduate and work at a $28,000 a year job. Our kids were able to attend private colleges and get a great education by working hard in high school, doing well on their entrance exams, and receiving grants that made the cost about the same as the lousy public colleges.
Whats needed is to toss out to toss out gramker and high schools ,then start over. Lower schools the basic 3 r’s. Mid high school how to live in todays world. How to buy a car, borrow money for a home, maintaince on it and etc. Todays kids go in it blind. Trade schools are a better option than college. If you got a olumbing leak,who you gonna call , a computer geek. ??? Kyle L.
The fanatic insistence on college degrees is a leftover from the depression. The way up back then was to get into college and graduate. It didnt hurt that the degree and the white collar job that resulted could provide entre into the middle and upper middle class for the kids of immigrants whose dads got dirty at work in mills and mines. I suspect class anxiety still plays a role in parents being willing to shell out crazy money for degrees for which there are no jobs.
Universities are nothing more than paid military schools to indoctrinate your kids into the WEF school of global learning.
Brainwashing with a high price tag where the parents pay for. Our country is being destroyed from within. And the people are doing itself. The vaccin to kill us the education to brainwash us.
Anyone going to college is a foo, unless it is an Evangelical Christian College.They will all be brainwashed with Wokism, Critical Race BS, and Identity lies
Don’t waste your money teach them conservative principles so we can continue this fight to take back America from the Marxist Demonrats that are in charge now!!!!!!!
This woke liberal socialist democ RAT garbage will last as long as a”pissant”in a volcano.These anti AMERICANS that support this bull exhaust really do have a mental deficiency.AMERICA is AMERICA,get over it.
My son’s 4-year education at Savanna actually cost five times what my home cost. He’ll be paying for the rest of his life, and he couldn’t find a job in his field that paid enough to make it practical to relocate. He’s now working a job that requires only a high school diploma.
DEPORT ALL liberals, illegals AND THE ONCE HONORABLE,, fbi, STAT, TO MAGA
Hmmm. I t hink the programs that use Federal loans to students is more of a “windfall” to the Colleges than it is the actual students using Federal loans. It becomes patently obvious that the intention of Federal Student loans is intended to sub rosa support the Academic Institutions than the students who wind up paying the bill. In truth Federal Student Loans is as much or more a promotion to benefit the Educational Institutions than the Students. And one can wonder if that affects the political position of the Academic Institutions???? One can speculate if Student Loans serve the DemocRat Commie political goals and endears Academic Institutions to sway to the DemocRat side of issues??????
Let’s add the corporate medical industrial complex to the list of industrial complexes. Yesterday I had a PET scan and if it weren’t for Medicare it would have cost $6,853. The procedure took grand total of 12 minutes. Eisenhower must be spinning in his grave.
Universities and colleges have become a haven for those who claim to teach but actually don’t. They demand and receive high salaries for doing nothing academically. They are a huge reason for the high cost of education. Publish or perish is no longer their slogan. Greed is. FIRE THEM. Higher education is supposed to be a learning experience, a time of exploration and a time to practice beliefs. Universities/colleges are now money making machines, going with the popular thought so they can continue to exist. They were established and funded by those who believed in God and learning. If firing the nonteachers can’t be done (tenure) my suggestion is quit sending donations to support them. I did. I also quit sending donations to PBS when their liberalism was overwhelming all they do. It’s a small task but effective. I know because they keep sending me requests for money. Maybe that’s what we can do. Stop giving money to these liberal organizations and look in our own community for opportunities to give … food banks?
Jackass Joe Biden is making a college degree just another worthless piece of paper! . . . After all, his degree is just that and he became “President”!
The trend is for colleges and universities to only see students as a source of money and a fertile field for growing more leftists. Whether they really learn anything useful or even graduate doesn’t matter to them which is why they don’t care about high SAT or ACT scores which are a predictor of how prepared one is for higher education.
These policies are “dumbing down” the most intelligent students so all students can get a “degree”. This certainly will not help America compete in the years ahead with the rest of the world.
It was called Afirmative Action back in the 70’s 80’s. I is a college grad that experienced it after looking for work and seeing mostly non-white finding it with California and Federal government employment. Last straw was a red haired Irish friend of mine change his name to Valdez and landing full time job with the state. I became a construction laborer and carpenter while studying on my own to become a radio tech and supervisor. That college degree did not help at all.