My recent post at Ricochet: the results of FIRE’s recent study on the free speech climate at America’s universities, a view of Harvard from 1835 (which I posted here a while back), and some signs of pushback against academic credentialism.
11 thoughts on “Harvard and America”
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David,
Great post over at Ricochet.
I see two phenomena. The first is that, finally, higher education is facing the reckoning we have been predicting for the past 30 years. The post-WW II boom of higher education is collapsing due to a high-cost, lousy product and declining population. The number of 18-years olds is forecast to shrink starting in 2025 resulting in a 4-year decline of nearly one-million starting in 2025. Where all of this is really going to hit home are the small liberal arts colleges that fall outside of the elite category,; their enrollment is expected to drop 11%. (https://www.cupahr.org/issue/dept/interactive-enrollment-cliff/) Of course when we include the factors you mention, the combination of other options and the removal of college degree requirements will worsen the trend
The second is that Harvard and the other elite institutions have separated themselves from the rest of higher ed and have become the gateways to the new technocratic, managerial elite that now run the country through the business-government-educational complex. What makes this different from the incestuous, indolent mess that Martineau observed 200 years ago is that today’s Ivy elite is openly hostile to the American nation.
First, the Ivies will be immune to the upcoming higher ed shakeout and fully emerge, as Drucker feared, the Oxbridge or Ecole(s) for the newly stratified society. The problem is what happens to the rest of higher ed. More than career prospects, higher ed for much of the country is an issue of status. The barista at Starbucks with $30,000 in college debt would have been much better off foregoing college and the worthless degree and learning a trade, but that would mean putting him/her on same social status as a plumber or other icky people. The closest parallel to this is the antebellum South which was run for the benefit of the plantation class; the yeomen farmers who were otherwise treated like dirt by the upper class were made part of the social fabric by placing them above the slaves based on racial categories and thus social peace was maintained. In our case, ideology (and therefore education) will align with social class.
It’s for this reason I see something similar to the South happening with higher ed. as the government intervenes to create a new equilibrium in order to maintain social peace. Also keep in mind that the Democrats, who of course are more per-disposed to government activism, are rapidly increasing their share of college-educated voters. I would expect we will be seeing debt-forgiveness to be coming back time and time again
Really what we are talking about is another part of the post-WW II social compact collapsing as a college degree is no longer the assured means of entering the middle class, either econically and socially. This is going to cause enormous problems keeping in mind that revolutionary moments occur when people’s expectations of a rising standard of living aren’t met. Such “revolutionary” moments do not have to happen with forces and pitchforks (or AR-15s) I have been going through Desmet’s “The Psychology of Totalitarianism” and he makes the case that historically, and especially now, totalitarianism emerges during a time of fear and anxiety. We saw this during COVID, we saw this during Trump, and we will see it big time in the next fear years as events and the Democrats introduce fear and chaos into our society/ This will not be pretty.
I have a pretty good idea on how to cut Oberlin down to size, I don’t know what we’ll do about Harvard and the rest.
Mike,
It’s nice to see a longer comment that doesn’t read as if it was written by a badly-trained chatbot, but I still have some disagreements.
…today’s Ivy elite is openly hostile to the American nation.
Let’s put a pin in that, for later.
First, the Ivies will be immune to the upcoming higher ed shakeout and fully emerge, as Drucker feared, the Oxbridge or Ecole(s) for the newly stratified society.
Another pin.
The closest parallel to this is the antebellum South which was run for the benefit of the plantation class;
And how did that turn out for the planters in the end? Not well, I’d say.
…the yeomen farmers who were otherwise treated like dirt by the upper class were made part of the social fabric by placing them above the slaves based on racial categories and thus social peace was maintained.
Just who are the Trump supporting middle and working class yoemen put socially above today by our self-described elite, to maintain social peace?
In our case, ideology (and therefore education) will align with social class.
I think a more accurate description would replace the word “education” with “credentialing,” which is a vast difference.
It’s for this reason I see something similar to the South happening with higher ed. as the government intervenes to create a new equilibrium in order to maintain social peace.
The solution the South came up with to solve their problem was the Dredd Scott decision, which led to you-know. The present regime seems equally competent, in that the solutions it conjures up to solve its present dilemma involve such things as slavery reparations for people who were never slaves and forgiveness of college debt paid for by people smart enough to avoid such debt or successful enough to pay it back. A super majority of the population does not benefit from these policies and has no reason to support them, or be pleased to be forced at gunpoint to pay for them.
This is going to cause enormous problems keeping in mind that revolutionary moments occur when people’s expectations of a rising standard of living aren’t met.
Who, whom? I’m quite certain our putative elites don’t care when the living standards of flyoverland decline- in fact I’m equally certain they’re striving mightily to ensure that they do.
So obviously the living standards they care about are their own. They just can’t extract enough wealth from the American society that existed to maintain themselves to the standards they imagine they deserve, so they openly announce their plans to “fundamentally transform” American society into something that suits them better.
In other words, our supposed betters who are hostile to the American nation are scheming to enrich themselves- as usual and of course- but they’ve run into the same sort of problem the Antebellum South ran up against. They can’t keep the game going without changing the rules, which will necessarily cause the mass of people to notice, just like it did before the Civil War.
The Ivies aren’t going to be immune from what’s coming, anymore than the wealthy plantation owners were immune to the Union army burning their plantations to the ground.
Those huge elite university endowment funds are going to be a very attractive target for future politicians desperate for funds. After all, if politicians can steal Russia’s funds in the US, why not take Harvard’s as well? Harvard does not have nuclear weapons, and Harvard graduates are an insignificant minority of the population.
I definitely agree with Xennady that the Ivies are not going to be immune from what is coming. They may even find themselves as unwilling conscripts in the Ruling Clique’s economic wars.
The comparison to the antebellum south is one I had not thought of, but my initial take is that it is very perceptive.
I recommend Steve Hsu’s recent podcast on Manifold about the Ivy Plus colleges
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/meritocracy-sat-scores-and-laundering-prestige-at/id1450540825?i=1000627057802 He is a graduate of Caltech, now a professor of Physics and an administrator at Michigan State, and very much in favor of the SAT and GRE’s to give schools and employers the info they need. He describes the Ivy Plus strategy of “prestige laundering.” A quarter or more, even up to 75% of students admitted are legitimately brilliant and are decently taught. But the others, admitted for legacy, diversity, athletics, or being “interesting,” (music and arts, unusual background, mostly) share in the prestige, but do not perform at that level cognitively upon graduation. But employers and grad schools have no clear way of knowing who is who among the graduates and have to enter the crap shoot.
re the antebellum south comparison…I’m under the impression that a lot of the former plantation owners were able to switch to a sharecropping model, and wound up doing pretty well.
Anyone have any historical insight into this? Just recently, I saw a piece somewhere (maybe at Tyler Cowen’s blog) claiming to show that the plantation-owning class did do pretty well, but not sure if this referred to the same individuals 10-15 years later, or to their descendents 40-50 years later.
I think there will be always be a Harvard. There is a demand for elite universities that is both perpetual and universal. So why re-invent the wheel and build a new one when you can suborn the old one? I am pretty sure Harvard would be more than happy to accommodate any new circumstance or political regime as long as it can maintain its endowment and social position. I mean look what it did when the post-modernist and Woke came knocking… you just need to know how to push its buttons.
As far as revolutions, with whom and who, fair enough as I also look for specific mechanisms. First revolutions do not have to be from below, violent, or sudden. I would argue that we are in the midst of two revolutions from above which are slow-moving and yes to this point, relatively peaceful.
The first is the transformation of our constitutional government designed to protect the rights of citizens to an administrative state that has its telos the efficient implementation of policy by a technocracy. Some say this transformation has been happening since Wilson, some like Marini say since the early 1970s. Either way the Democrats have been quite explicit that they will complete the job if they end up with the amount of control they had in 2021. The second is of course the implementation of the post-modernist Woke ideology
Desmet in his “Psychology of Totalitarianism” points to a third type which is not exclusive to the first two and perhaps even builds on them. He posits that a totalitarian regime arises in order to deal with growing fear and anxiety in the population. He points to the historical development of modernity and the Enlightenment which basically dissolved traditional societies but failed to replace them with any sort of meaning. The totalitarian impulse is to alleviate the resulting fear and anxiety through ideology, in this case science-based bureaucracy. We saw this with COVID.
I would argue that the process of what David described regarding redirecting the workforce toward areas that don’t require college degrees is common sense, but also problematic because a college degree is as much for status as for a career. A high school senior from a middle class background may earn a great deal more as an electrician, as opposed to be a graduate with a BA, and not carry any debt. However to forego college, let alone into the trades is socially unacceptable.
Yes there will be some who do go this path but the vast majority will balk as they are caught in a bind The student debt cancellation debate from last year is the harbinger of this crisis because it clearly tell us that college for many people doesn’t pay. Classical economics and the National Review would tell you that’s just a market signal that is communicating to people that they need to go into the trades, basic political economy and social psychology will you we will have an enormous social problem on our hands at the same the social fabric is already stretched thin. Kids and their families, who see college as their ticket to middle and upper-middle status will not do the blue-collar equivalent of “learning to code.”
So what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? You get a political crisis. Desmet would say that this creates the potential, or perhaps accelerates the third type of revolution which like the previous two is also from above and gradual, which is incorporate the disaffected and fearful population into a totalitarian structure that provide predictability and safety,. We saw this with COVID as people were willing to forego freedoms and blindly follow government dictates in order to soothe their fears and anxiety. You see this with move to create an “Other” by labeling MAGA and what was until yesterday traditional American culture the “Far Right”; this creates fear especially among the college educated who vote Democratic in increasing numbers to allow for erosion of constitutional rights in the name of combating hate speech, misinformation, and gun violence.
I don’t see this disaffected “college” group as actively engaging in revolt as much as enabling others to further the totalitarian revolution. I would imagine we will see the cost/debt issue resolved through some form of federal subsidy of either students or colleges. However that will come a cost, and this is where the totalitarian aspect comes in because that subsidy will have strings attached in some form of a social credit score tied to personal behavior or curriculum. It won’t be anything too onerous, not at first, and probably would be similar to what kids are going through now in K-12 and many campuses For colleges they probably wouldn’t have to make any changes. Oh as for future employment, well that’s what diversity statements are for.
I can definitely see a President Newsom announcing this in 2026 or so.
As far as my previous comment regarding the antebellum South, the fact that the dirt farmers didn’t reject slavery and instead aligned with the plantation owners drove Marx nuts. Don’t ever underestimate the value of status.
Mike…”a college degree is as much for status as for a career”
Oh, very much so. A black guy who used to comment at blogs said that in his experience, black women with college degrees would not consider marrying a man lacking such degree, even when he was a skilled tradesman earning good money and her degree was in some squishy and not-high-paid subject. (He also said, ‘Watch out white guys, if this hasn’t happened in your world yet, it will.)
In his autobiography, longtime IBM CEO Tom Watson Jr mentioned that when he was a teenager, he was interested in a local girl, but her mother would not allow them to date—because the Watsons were not an “old family.” I think that today, this perceived status barrier would be much more likely to involve educational background than family history.
Kids and their families, who see college as their ticket to middle and upper-middle status will not do the blue-collar equivalent of “learning to code.”
Sure they will, because never underestimate the value of having food every single day.
We saw this with COVID as people were willing to forego freedoms and blindly follow government dictates in order to soothe their fears and anxiety.
I was alive during covid and I remember. We were told it was two weeks to stop the spread- which then extended into years. I recall police being called because people refused to blindly follow government dictates, multiple times. I know the regime backed down from the shot mandate in my industry due to noncompliance, even before the courts got around to blocking it. When the regime managed to get nurses fired from a local hospital because they refused an experimental medical treatment, it was widely covered by every media outlet around. When that hospital rehired those nurses, I only heard about it because I worked with someone who knew one of them. Hence, I have a different opinion about what people are willing to accept. Apparently these high-status college folks are much more submissive than the people I know.
You see this with move to create an “Other” by labeling MAGA and what was until yesterday traditional American culture the “Far Right”;
If you’re Nazi Germany you can get away with otherizing Jews, because they were a small fraction of the population. Then you can murder them no problemo. If you’re the Nazi Antifastan the left wants to fundamentally transform America into, you’re going to have a real problem killing half of the population, not least because you need to kill to sort of people who keep your lights on or bring you arugula. Also, those people have guns.
I don’t see this disaffected “college” group as actively engaging in revolt as much as enabling others to further the totalitarian revolution.
So they’ll send their minions to murder people they disagree with, like how Revolutionary France treated the Vendee. Noted.
I would imagine we will see the cost/debt issue resolved through some form of federal subsidy of either students or colleges.
We already have vast subsidies for students and colleges, which has failed to resolve the issue. Moar subsidies and giveaways isn’t going to solve the problem, either. They will only make the problem worse, as will attempting to impose some sort of social credit scheme. The problem- btw- is that the regime’s relentless efforts to give money to their friends is neither popular with the public nor does it bring economic success to the nation. That actually matters, believe it or not.
Oh as for future employment, well that’s what diversity statements are for.
I take this to mean that the various businesses operating in the US will be required to hire the swarms of credentialed idiots churned out by the astonishingly bloated collection of diploma mills that presently infect the territory of the United States, whether they can do the job or not, whether they have any useful skills or not.
What could go wrong?
Mike: “I can definitely see a President Newsom announcing this in 2026 or so.”
Could happen — but it is likely that “Events, dear boy” (to echo English PM MacMillan) will take the US, and especially FedGov, in a different direction.
The US is now dangerously under-industrialized and over-regulated. Our military is a flaccid shadow of what it was even 20 years ago. We have no border. We depend on imports for essentials. We cannot pay for those imports, and issue IOUs instead. Educational accomplishments are sinking towards Third World standards, and social cohesion is dying. We have a plethora of laws — and no justice. And our Political Class is unnecessarily treating too many other countries as enemies.
All of that means FedGov is an accident waiting to happen. No one can predict exactly what will bring down this house of cards, or when it will happen. But it is a good guess that actions (and inactions) by parties outside the US will be the trigger, regardless of what cipher the Institutional Democrats put in office.
Credentialism certainly isn’t a recent thing. I was in Johnstown, PA, last week, site of the great flood back in 1889. Just before the disaster one of the Johnstown iron magnates had sent a man to investigate the dam. His report was spot on, citing exactly the reasons that soon after caused it to fail – spillway not far enough below the breast of the dam, lack of relief valves, etc. The owners rejected his findings because he wasn’t an “expert.” When the dam collapsed not long thereafter it took the lives of over 2200 men, women and children.
A black guy who used to comment at blogs said that in his experience, black women with college degrees would not consider marrying a man lacking such degree, even when he was a skilled tradesman earning good money and her degree was in some squishy and not-high-paid subject. (He also said, ‘Watch out white guys, if this hasn’t happened in your world yet, it will.)
CrackEmcee, perhaps? A childhood friend of the Afro-American persuasion has graduate degrees and the executive experience to go with it. After being single for decades, after an unsatisfactory first marriage, she met someone online- but who lived only 60 miles away. He was a Licensed Vocational Nurse, not up to her level of education. Their marriage lasted 15 years until his death. He was also a storyteller and an unpublished poet, so the difference in levels was smaller yet.