It’s not huge news but following recent content on a potential shift away from four-year schools toward trades and other learning investments, it adds some weight to the argument. What argument? The progressive university laundromat is falling on tough times. Exchanging massive debt for a useless degree and no real-world skills is losing its appeal.
No student loan bailouts are looming; in fact, the Feds are collecting via garnishment. The degree programs are worthless, with “more than 90% of lifeguards, bartenders, cashiers, and postal workers have college degrees.”
- MACDONALD: Hiring managers Losing interest in College Graduates
- Morning Update: “Trade” Schools
- MACDONALD: Another Reason Colleges are Closing
There is presently little to no federal funding if your school is discriminating (see also DEI) or guilty of Title IX violations. Colleges and Universities risk losing money if the DOJ targets them for investigations or lawsuits. Having women’s or queer studies programs or anything like them is akin to begging the feds to sue you.
Win or lose, the process is the punishment, a lesson learned from the progs, libs, and dems, oh my!
Enrollment declines also mean less money, and while not every woke institution will suffer from that, a cultural shift means less money from tuition, fewer dollars from donors, declining grant funds, combined with rising costs, means cuts.
Schools that can’t compete will necessarily close their doors, while others will have to make adjustments.
Penn State might be closing campuses and has announced a plan to cut close to 12% of its degree programs.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. (WJAC) — More cost cutting measures are in the works at Penn State as the university announced that 49 of its nearly 400 undergraduate academic programs may be cut.
Eliminating the majors would impact about 900 students.
The proposal comes amidst an ongoing review of university programs, with a final decision expected in the fall.
In recent months, Penn State began plans to close seven Commonwealth campuses, transferred its public television station to new owners and divested from its ownership at the State College Regional Airport.
I tried to track the customers down, but they have not been formally announced, and there is no guarantee they will be useless degrees. Penn State will chop the programs with lower enrollment and higher costs first. That’s just good business sense. If kiddies want a degree in queer studies, they’ll get one – it’s going to take more than 15 months of threats to stop that societal skid into the midden heap. If the programs exist, the university will try to cram STEM students into them to get butts in the seats, declaring them required. At least one or two.
Keep the nightmare alive, if you like.
And it will stay alive and thrive as long as parents and students choose that, but as we’ve noted, some are looking elsewhere for their learning. Young men, in particular, are increasingly drawn to trades. Lower cost, shorter time, little to no debt, and better income potential. Meaningful work in high demand, and not just an absence of woke class requirements that have nothing to do with your program, no angry feminist harpies bitching about everything, nor their occasional enabling beta male familiars.
You don’t have to worry about what you say, so you’re free to think outside the tiny blue box higher ed is trying to stuff everyone into.
We could accelerate this transition by cutting or eliminating state public funding for higher ed. Absent backstops like your taxd ollars schools of so-called higher learning would have to compete in real terms. What they sell would have to have value. Professors and the classes would be required to produce students who create value in their future workplace.
If the degree isn’t worth the cost to obtain it, the gatekeepers controlling who gets them might go broke. Part of that evolution back to common sense is getting governments out of the business of student loans; the private sector is more than capable of identifying bright minds or true talent in need of scholarships and institutions and programs worthy of their donation.
In that world, banks aren’t going to give you money for something they know you will never make enough for them to get paid back.
Higher Ed could return to its roots. Churn out useful producers instead of cultural and financial parasites. But it won’t do any of that on its own. Parents, students, taxpayers, hiring managers, loan officers, and a change in culture will have to do that.
If you don’t give them a choice, they will change or die, but that won’t happen overnight, nor in just a few years. You must first vote to change the political culture that enabled it, and that means showing up to vote in every election, forever.
