When applicants are plentiful, collegiate administrators generally uphold standards. When applicants are scarce, they don't. When I was an undergraduate, for instance, my college had three applicants for every opening. Standards were rigorous. For instance, students were subjected to a summative "Junior Standing Test."It measured measuring sophomore student's knowledge of the core subjects they ere required to take during their first two years. Fail this test and you failed to gain junior standing. Imagine instituting a Junior Standing Test today. One with real teeth. It would never happen! In fact, given the current acute shortage of applicants, the standard now approaches: "the customer is always right."
An abundant supply of applicants fosters collegiate rigor. When applicants are scarce, rigor evaporates. And thriving in this permissive atmosphere is a breed of "professors" who, not only fail to impose rigor, they decry the very concept. They claim rigor it's a form of oppression. And that's only one of the many assertions they employ that castrates reason itself. Is that judgement too severe? Not at all. They claim, for instance, that reason and logic are mere "white" ways of knowing. Therefore, they are racist. There are, they vaguely assert, "other ways of knowing." Via the glands, one supposes.
These "woke" professors push such views with religious intensity. They are, in effect, evangelists for the new "woke" religion. And this pertains even though evangelization is emphatically NOT a professor's proper job. Real professors pose intelligent questions and communicate settled knowledge. They do not sell dogmatic political theology disguised as scholarship.
Consider the Socratic method. It provides a time-honored method of thoughtful teaching that is far from doctrinaire. But, in service of their ideology, many "woke" folks assert that Socrates was just another white, male, oppressor. Worse, they claim, with a straight face mind you, that no culture is better than any other.
That means the culture of, say, Canada, is qualitatively covalent with the culture of North Korea. Don't they realize realize that this very assertion could prove fatal to them in North Korea? After all, their dumpy little "Dear Leader" is orders of magnitude better than every other leader in the world. Moreover, according to them, their cultural practices are utterly without equal. The place is a veritable paradise.
Adding fuel to these "woke" professor's intellectual Dumpster fire, higher ed administrators — preoccupied with meager enrollments and vanishing revenue — too often support, even urge, the dereliction of duty of these "woke" types. Many, in desperate pursuit of enrollment, even join them in worshipping their "woke" religion. For example, many now urge professors to engage in "whole life," not merely academic, counseling. Professors are urged to ask things like: "Are you sleeping well?" "Do you have digestive issues?" "Are you anxious about anything?" "Is there recent trauma in your life?"
Of course traumas ar now quite plentiful because these "woke" folks have redefined an entire range of normal stressors as "traumatic." Unintended slights have even morphed into "micro aggressions." So now there's much personal angst for students to report. Some might even make up traumas because more intense whining will probably gain them a passing grade,
What, pray tell, entitles professors to pry into student's personal lives? They aren't trained mental health professionals. Besides, what is a professor supposed to do about anything revealed, beyond sending them to the counseling center? It couldn't possibly be to ease up on grading and boost enrollment, could it? Besides, doesn't emphasizing personal complaints have the effect of undermining the subject's resilience? Don't suck it up and get on with the job! Don't consider that shit just happens. Feel sorry for yourself and look for excuses.
Professors are also being urged to be the student's friend. No, they should not be the student's friend. They are their teacher. Friend and teacher are very different roles and should not be confused. Otherwise, the teacher's role is easily compromised.
Sorting and Grading
When I was an Army officer and failed to get something done, the only acceptable explanation was: "No excuse sir." That's the attitude that gets things done. With regard to rigor, it defines higher education. That's precisely why it's "higher." To qualify for a legitimate college diploma, students must meet rigorous standards. And it's a professor's job to apply them. Though there is one proviso. Research reveals gender bias in student's reaction to the enforcement of meaningful standards. Females are more likely to be penalized for imposing such standards. Culturally they are expected to be more solicitous. Motherly, if you will. So they need more sand to do the job right.
Sorting and grading students is unappealing. Nevertheless, it is an absolutely necessary aspect of college teaching. "Woke" professors who evangelize rather than teach, frequently evade this responsibility. I even know of one fellow who said he could never fail anyone. "Think of the damage this could do to their lives!" he says. Such dereliction of duty should cost these ersatz "professors" their jobs. Instead, it improves their "course" evaluations and greatly helps in winning promotion and tenure.
Why is their dereliction of duty tolerated — even encouraged? Because administrators are far more concerned about decreased enrollment and unbalanced balance sheets than they are about quality education. That's why you'd give them a coronary should you suggest a final testing before granting any diplomas.
Political correctness is the theology that nourishes this malignant silliness. And many academics, most commonly found in the softer disciplines, are self-righteous converts. Indeed, the lengths some will go in actualizing this faith are truly astonishing. For instance, reason and logic, these benighted souls claim, are "white." So are objectivity and rationality," In consequence, they do not trouble themselves with either. Even getting the right answer, or being able to express oneself in articulate English is just another racist aspect of "white identity culture,"
They yowl that "it's time "decolonize the curriculum!" They even assert that no culture is any better than any other. Failing to recognize that should they express this same idea in a number of societies, Iran for instance, they might well be imprisoned. Even possibly put to death.
Winning Souls to Silliness
In their politically correct world there's no individual responsibility, nor agency. For instance, child molesters are no longer pederasts, but "minor attracted persons." Worse, these academic evangelicals preach their dogmatic faith to naive adolescents. And since many of them long for simple answers to the complex questions of late adolescence, they win souls to this silliness.
This quasi-religious indoctrination even emboldens some students to self-righteously investigate their professors for signs of heresy. Should one even mention, say, David Hume, brands the offending professor as someone to be purged. Emboldened by evangelical true belief, these converts denounce any professor they deem an apostate.
Meanwhile administrators, preoccupied with balancing the budget, consign academic freedom and intellectual rigor to the dust bin. After all, there's plummeting enrollment, and their own job security, to consider. A few of these "leaders" are even true believers. These are the ones who become half-baked Torquemada's, advising professors to be careful concerning which facts they present. Such coercion should be anathema in academe. Instead it is commonplace wherever and whenever political correctness rules.
"Wokeness" and Chairman Mao
There now is a supply of "students" scouring the collegiate world looking to be offended. These same youngsters are the converts of true believing professors who have defined them as inquisitors junior grade. So, instead of using college to create themselves, these youngsters have let someone else do it for them. They find researched knowledge offensive, emotionally troubling, heretical, if it violates their conviction that the world is in the clutches of an all-powerful white male hegemony.
What disappears in all of this is agency. The realization that one's choices and degree of effort really matters. It isn't that they fail to put forth the requisite effort. No, they're victims! The other is to blame! It's not hard to estimate how harmful such an attitude might be for their future.
Here's the bare fact. The "woke" culture is just a domesticated version of Mao's "cultural revolution." Professors aren't being beaten, imprisoned, or murdered as they were in Mao's China. But they are being subjected to name-calling, public ridicule, administrative muzzling, censorship and job loss. Worse still, politically correct zealotry has provoked a right-wing backlash that threatens academic freedom from the opposite direction. Guess who's caught in the middle?
Conclusion
President Trump is expunging D.E.I. from the federal government. Corporate giants are also backing away. But "wokeness," performative virtue and identity politics remain firmly in place. Actual, as well as ersatz, true believers still can successfully denounce non-conforming colleagues as out of date, homophobic, racist, reactionaries. They also block publication in most professional journals, should they deem a submission heretical. This is why professors who are willing to risk being "heretics," are in just as short supply as collegiate applicants.
Yes, in higher education the "woke" religion remains firmly in place. Moreover, the zealotry of its true believers remains undiminished. Consequently, the intellectual and marketplace value of a so-called higher education, especially in non-STEM areas, is loosing its value. What employer wants a blindly fanatic graduate, who knows little, can do less, and promises to be nothing but trouble?
The truth is, "wokeness" is having the same devitalizing impact on U.S. academic life, that Marxism-Leninism had in the Soviet Union. Worse still, because it is coupled with a growing collegiate enrollment crisis, its impact is especially virulent. Unfortunately, this quasi-religious zealotry and intellectual vacuity, will probably have Toyota-like durability. It very probably will continue to attract an abundance of "scholars" who yearn to substitute faith for reason and conviction for evidence.
To further examine these and similar issues, visit www.newfoundations.com
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