Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
In the last few years, the total US college enrollment has dropped by nearly 1.5 million students, or 7.4%, the largest on record. Students are instead opting for trade and technical schools.
The value of a college degree is increasingly being questioned for many valid reasons.
To counter this trend a multibillion-dollar business exists advertising for students on billboards, television, and in magazines.
Competition for students is enormous, causing colleges to offer good deals. One ploy is to increase the actual price, then offer most every qualified student a multi-thousand-dollar scholarship.
Or offer programs that guarantee a four-year degree in three years or less. Or offer a master’s degree that, instead of the normal 2 to 3 years, can be earned in one year.
Then add that the degree can be earned totally online; no concerns about driving to a campus, parking, or sitting in classrooms listening to some professor drone on.
Online classes are often canned programs mentored totally by a computer that presents the material, then requires a computer-graded online exam. Some of the better online classes offer a live chat with a live professor.
A major concern of prospective college attendees is the cost. Tuition for the average four-year degree at a state university ranges from $56,000 in Ohio to $84,000 in Pennsylvania. Annual room and board costs adds another $53,310.
Textbooks and supplies, personal expenses, activity fees, and transportation can all add up to another 4,000 dollars.
The total cost often equals over 100,000 dollars. And elite private colleges costs are often twice this. A four-year degree at Harvard—including books and tuition—was approximately $334,152 based on the 2022-2023 school year. The big question is, “Is it worth it?”
One rather pessimistic internet post tells one side: Most colleges these days are vanity degree mills peddling basically worthless courses that give you nothing but an enormous amount of debt and information you could have gotten for free on the Internet. In my day, you had to be part of the top intellectual 1% to go to university. Now, any schmuck with a loan can get in for a worthless degree in some pointless field like “gender studies” or “video gaming.” Waste of time and money.
This was written by a very successful college graduate who added the following: A college degree is no guarantee of a good or well-paying job. When I was in my early twenties, I was working as an administrator in an office. On my team was a woman who studied English at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, Oxford University. She was paid the same amount and did the same job as the majority of my team who had never been to Oxford.
Today, the job market is saturated with candidates with college degrees. As more and more people have college degrees, their value decreases.
Most critics of college add that they are not referring to STEM degrees or those that specifically prepare one for a science or technical career.
The Moral Climate
Colleges and universities are, unfortunately, well-known for their booze drinking habits, partying antics, and loose moral conduct of the students and faculty. Academia is often dominated by anti-Christian ideas and far-leftism/Marxism.
Higher education tends to foster an “It’s in the textbook so it must be true!” credulity. This enormous problem was revealed by a Harvard University poll that highlights the failure of universities to protect free speech on campuses, particularly for religious and conservative students.
The poll found that 65 percent of young Republicans felt uncomfortable sharing their political opinions on campus.
Even many Democratic students felt uncomfortable in sharing their views on campus. Campuses are no longer bastions of free speech and tolerance for opposing views.
One major reason is the failure of the faculty to encourage free speech. One student, who transferred out of a major university into the college where I taught, told me the reason she did was because a female biology professor asked students who rejected the belief in biological evolution of all life to stand up. Several students stood up.
She then told them to drop her class because they were going to fail. The foundation of life science is evolution, and you cannot study life, she explained, without this foundation.
This is one of many examples of the rising intolerance and violence on college campuses, particularly against conservative speakers.
An example is Cornell University graduate Ann Coulter, who earned her law degree at The University of Michigan. Mob rule on campuses involving violent protesters have succeeded in silencing many other speakers, including ACLU officials and James Comey.
Both students and some faculty have maintained the view that they have a right to silence those with whom they disagree.
At one University of California campus, professors defended a professor who physically assaulted pro-life supporters and destroyed their anti-abortion display.
Some academics and deans claim that free speech protection does not exist for offensive or “disingenuous” speech. They reasoned that disrupting speech on free speech was free speech.
Academics are failing our students and institutions by allowing the rising level of intimidation and intolerance of opposing views on campuses.
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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,800 publications in 12 languages and 60 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,500 college libraries in 27 countries.