Prestigious undergraduate programs, which incubate America's highly credentialed elites, purport to offer the requisite professional training - or requisite introduction to professional training - within the framework of liberal education.
"The latest wave of conservative critiques of elite universities might make a real difference," Dilulio nevertheless maintains, because of "a broader public awareness of the university problem." The anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, atrocity-defending demonstrators roiling America's elite campuses following the jihadists' Oct. 7, 2023, massacres in Israel concentrated the minds of many - parents, legislators, wealthy donors - who had averted their gaze from liberal education's steady deterioration.
In "Free Speech Is Not Enough," Hillsdale College history professor Wilfred M. McClay agrees that liberal education has been corrupted.
"The recent campus tumults thus might be the best thing for these universities in the long run. If a degree from a great state school like Texas A&M is seen as no less valuable than one from an Ivy League university, then America's top colleges might finally get out of the elite-minting business and return to their original mission of education and research." Furthermore, it is wrong to suppose that "College is a surefire ticket to a better life," argues Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity senior fellow Preston Cooper.
"Accreditation is a problem that gets comparatively little attention, even as it slowly erodes the foundations of higher education," contends Cato Institute research fellow Andrew Gillen in "Accreditation is Broken; Can it be Fixed?" University accreditors are drawn from faculty elsewhere.
According to Gillen, they largely accept universities' definition of quality - which tends to focus on inputs and process rather than learning and reasoning - and determine how well universities live up to their formal standard.
In "Building a New University on Firm Foundations," Lonsdale directs attention to UATX's constitution, which establishes "An institution of higher learning that champions the pursuit of truth, scientific inquiry, freedom of conscience, and civil discourse, and that is independent of government, party, religious denomination and business interest." The degradation of liberal education harms multifarious aspects of America's well-being.
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