I am a twenty eight year veteran of teaching at a top fifty national liberal arts college in the Northeast. In spite of the fact that I benefit from the escalating price of higher education in the U.S., I agree with most of Kimball’s article and the angry posts. But a few more points are in order:

A. The Ivy league schools really do get their pick of faculty and students. Gold star professors and students are a dime a dozen there. That is not necessarily to say that the best education is to be had in the Ivy League. But the real payoff is the fact that these schools are a rite of passage where the future members of the top of the power elite network and assume the mantle of the masters of the universe. To a disproportionate degree they will run the country in the next decade or two.

B. Competition among top schools for top talent and big grants is ferocious and very expensive. Administration has ballooned to a ridiculous extent, and the technology explosion and posher than thou accommodations are extremely costly.

C. To a great extent, the humanities and social sciences are a disaster area. The toxic corrosion of the worst of modern culture is entrenched and here to stay, unless hardship supervenes. It would take several generations to flush out in good times. The hard sciences and the arts are less affected. You can’t politicize math or physics and drawing is drawing.

D. The flagship State Universities are a spendid bargain, especially for in-state students. You often get top quality for bargain prices.

F. Political correctness in hiring faculty has been ruinous. Even the brilliant ones are deranged–it’s a professional necessity. Fantasy clones itself.

G. A much better education could be provided for much less. But you would have to break the power of the radicals and the minority mandarins–I think the brutal realities of our financial folly will do the trick.

F. Present trends are unsustainable. Tuition is outstripping the ability of most people to pay, and the country is headed for financially strapped times. In hard times the useful sciences will survive and the malignant fantasies of many of our trends will be starved because they are poisonous frauds. This will be a good thing. Not so good is the fact that the authentic uses of the humanities and social sciences will also suffer. Eating comes before reading Shakespeare or doing sociometrics.

Or so I see it.

Best,

Richard