Many liberal schools are seeing declines in enrollment and could be forced to close their doors in the coming years due to lack of revenue.
By David Potter
Conservative and Christian universities across the country are dramatically increasing their enrollment numbers. Critical thinking, math, and science may once again become the pinnacle of higher learning. Meanwhile, liberal schools are seeing declines in enrollment. Many of these traditionally secular and liberal schools will be forced to close their doors in the coming years due to lack of revenue. While it is true that Covid will accelerate the demise of status quo higher education, it is the epidemic of wokeness that is ultimately responsible for their fall.
Dr. Steve Turley, an influential conservative scholar, speaker, and author elaborates. “For example, in radical contrast to the enrollment deficits that so many of these leftwing secular colleges experienced prior to the Covid outbreak, enrollment has actually been rising at conservative and Christian colleges! In fact, four of the five conservative Christian colleges and universities with the highest freshman enrollment have actually tripled the size of their incoming class since the fall of 2001. Liberty University quadrupled their student enrollment in the last few years prior to the pandemic. According to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the 150 colleges that they represent have grown on average by an astonishing 20 percent in their enrollment since 2003, all the while the absolute enrollment among universities nationwide went down 10 percent.”
People are waking up and questioning the value of the education provided by these different institutions. Not every school is created equally and not every degree program is created equally. Traditional schools are doing so poorly that even U.S. News and World Report is calling the situation The Higher Education Apocalypse.
For most people, learning about social justice and gender studies will not put food on the table.
The Foundation for Economic Education discusses some interesting salary data that distinguishes the economic utility between different degrees. “Young people are finding that the answer is more complex than it first appears. The career-long financial return to a four-year degree ranges from over $3 million for STEM majors to a negative quarter million dollars for majors like Early Childhood Education, Voice and Opera, and Piano Performance. Most majors ending in the word, “studies” (Film Studies, Organizational Studies, Urban Studies, Liberal Studies) deliver a financial return anywhere from one-third to one-tenth that of the STEM majors.”
The ramifications of this salary data should startle those who are considering taking out huge loans for sub-prime degrees.
The shift away from status quo higher education will be a blessing to conservatives and common sense, politically moderate Americans. Dr. Steve Turley continues. “Scholars have looked into the question as to what makes people liberal, and what they found is that a recurring factor is that most liberals graduated from college. Now notice I didn’t say that most liberals were ‘educated’; that’s precisely what liberals often say. They would say that conservatives are basically uneducated knuckle-draggers. But I think we need to be very clear here: it’s college, not education per se, that seems to be making the most significant difference in terms of differentiating who’s liberal and who’s conservative. And as we saw above, colleges are not so much educating as they are indoctrinating. What we’re finding is that those who don’t have a college degree are disproportionately more likely to consider themselves conservative and vote conservative. The Voter Study Group found that white non-college voters comprised two-thirds of Trump’s base in primaries and three-fifths in the election. Among those who claimed that they wanted to preserve their culture and their traditions, 6 in 10 had actually left the educational system during or after high school and only 1 in 8 went to college. In fact, Hillary Clinton lost among whites without degrees so badly that even if she received Obama’s turnout among blacks she would still have lost. During the primaries, Trump won more than 150 counties where at least 8 in 10 people were whites without college degrees. Similarly, across the pond, Brexit was supported by 74 percent of people without degrees. By contrast, 84 percent of Brits under the age of 34 with degrees voted to remain with the EU.”
As the woke indoctrination camps start to close their doors, fewer young people will vote for politicians with insane policy proposals. Be of good cheer conservatives. The best is yet to come.
David Potter is Communications Coordinator for Americans for Limited Government.