So how are colleges killing themselves, committing unintentional suicide? Five ways.
First are the high fees they charge. The tuition fees of colleges today are nearly triple what they were a half-century ago after correcting for inflation. [Editor’s note: Cheers to UNC for freezing tuition for the seventh year in a row.] Since the 1980s, the rise in tuition fees has exceeded the growth in family incomes, meaning college has become less affordable. While air travel and electronic gadgets have all become more affordable, college attendance is now a bigger financial burden.
Totally dysfunctional federal student financial assistance programs have played a big role by allowing colleges to aggressively raise their fees.
How have colleges used rapidly growing student-fee income? Not to fund or improve the main purpose of colleges—to promote the growth of knowledge, wisdom, and civility through instruction and research provided by faculty.
Fifty years ago, a typical college had far more instructors than administrative support personnel—registrars, deans, librarians, etc. Today, at many campuses, there are far more administrators than teachers. Moreover, a growing proportion of that vast administrative army is anti-academic, anti-merit, and anti-learning. Especially harmful are the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” apparatchiks, who believe campuses should be defined especially by the racial, gender, and other biological traits that students possess, not by academic accomplishments. These new anti-academicians increasingly control campus decisionmaking.