When I applied for college there were 3 applicants for every opening. The result was tough standards. For instance, to become a junior, every sophomore was required to pass the "Junior Standing Test." It measured our knowledge of the required core subjects taken during the first two years.
Fail to pass the test, you could not become a junior. To attain that you had to retake the test until you passed. If you dropped out instead, t3 applicants were ready to take your place. This did wonders for standards.
Imagine administrators instituting a Junior Standing Test these days. More likely we'll find Polar Bears roaming the rain forest. Indeed, today's acute shortage of applicants causes far too many colleges to either fold, or trash meaningful standards and at least flirt with a new guiding principle : "The customer is always right."
A new breed of professor multiplies this deterioration. These "woke," Neo-Marxist, true believers not only tolerate the absence of acceptable standards, they promote it. As a matter of fact, they reject the very idea or rigor, piously proclaiming to be still another form of oppression. While they're at it they also denounce reason and logic as "white" ways of knowing. Valuing a "right" answer also is out for them. They even throw the mighty Socrates in the hopper as just another white, male, chauvinist. In fact, these so-called "progressive" professors even scorn the Enlightenment, as well as the whole of Western culture. Instead they assert that no culture is better than any other. So, for them, the culture of, say, Canada is no better than that of North Korea. Yet, if these remarkably prejudiced individuals happened to live in North Korea, they would likely be among the first to praise North Korean culture as exceeding that o every other. After all, it operates on Marxist principles.
If these true believers kept this nonsense to themselves it might be tolerable. But, like true believers everywhere, they yearn to impose their beliefs on others. So their lectures turn into sermons that rival the Bible pounding of generations of evangelists. But the trouble is, evangelization is most decidedly NOT their job. Professors communicate settled knowledge, pose intelligent questions, and lead penetrating discussions. In short, they teach, not preach. These new breed academics preach, then preach some more.
They sermonize endlessly about the evils of capitalism and the West while simultaneously castrating instructional quality, consigning competing scholarship to the dust bin and awarding passing grades willy nilly.And remember, they are selling their goofy gospel to impressionable students. They teach their classes with the same objectivity as Dr. Joseph Goebbels brought to the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. They are, in effect, Neo-Marxist missionaries promoting a profane, destructive, illogical and self-loathing faith. But their academic permissiveness keeps behinds in seats; and that wins administrative approval!
Yes, a distressing number of college administrators then add more combustibles to this academic dumpster fire in order to retain as many tuition paying customers as possible. Preoccupied with meager enrollment and vanishing tuition revenue, they slyly promote slack standards and academic dereliction of duty under a variety of disguises. Their stated goals vary. But their actual goal is always the same? Keep seats filled.
The worst of these policy makers even urge professors to "become the student's friend." Professors certainly owe each and every student fairness, courtesy and quality instruction. But they also have a non-negotiable obligation to sort the academic wheat from the chaff. That's why professors must NOT become a student's friend unless and until they are no longer responsible for grading them.
I even know of a college president who recently required professors to conduct "whole life," not just academic, counseling. Besides scheduling classes and the like, they now had to inquire into each student's personal life. They were to ask things like: "Are you sleeping well?" "Are you suffering from digestive issues?" "Are you anxious?" "Is there recent trauma in your life?" Beside referring them to the Counseling Center, what is a professor supposed to do when such disturbances are revealed? Awarding a passing grade for failing work is one likely remedy. Plus, in this environment, students plainly see that fake traumas might pay off. Whining could well get them a passing grade for failing work. And, from a tuition starved administrator's point of view, that might well be good enough.
Professors too have a big stake in keeping seats full. That's why they too are cutting corners. Especially when they teach a poorly subscribed major, lack tenure and/or many years of service. For them, no students, no job. I recall a professor of a meagerly attended Russian program, for instance, pacing standing anxiously outside his classroom door long after class was supposed to begin. He would glance at his watch, then look up and down the hall, hoping a latecomer or two might supplement his sparse attendance. Of course those who did attend could probably count on a passing grade.
No one wants an ignorant, stupid, lazy or otherwise incompetent individual building our bridges, doing our taxes, teaching our children, performing our surgeries, and so forth. But disappearing higher education quality control makes such incompetents ever more likely.
No Whining
Professors are not qualified to pry into student's personal lives. Besides, focusing on limitations and difficulties, rather than strengths and possibilities, undermines young people's resilience. Shit just happens. And it happens to everybody. So it is very unwise to encourage students to wallow in them. And let's not forget these new breed woke "progressives" have redefined a broad range of normal stressors and perturbances as traumatic. For instance, minor slights, even unintended ones, have been transformed into "micro aggressions."
Far better to urge them to suck it up and get on with life. Emphasizing grievances and personal difficulties fosters whining, surrender, self pity, blaming others, looking for excuses. Every one of which undermines their human potential.
Rigor and student responsibility are what makes higher education "higher?" That is why earning a legitimate diploma requires students to perform at a relatively high level. Not just pay tuition. So it's a professor's non-negotiable duty to enforce high standards. When they fail to do so, diplomas become more and more worthless. Counterfeit might be a better word. This is a key reason why college degrees are losing credibility. And as the new breed professors extend their influence, these degrees grow increasingly valueless.
And here's one more thing to keep in mind. There are increasing numbers of female professors. And research reveals a strong gender bias in student's reaction to females that enforce high standards. The reaction is hypercritical. Students generally expect females to be more solicitous and sympathetic. Motherly, if you will. So female professors have to have more guts to enforce high standards. How many actually have that? I suspect it isn't very many. Especially considering the general lack of backup from tuition starved administrators.
Sorting and Grading
Sorting and grading college students is very unappealing. Nevertheless, it is an absolutely vital responsibility. "Woke" professors are prone to evade that duty. I even know one individual who says he simply cannot fail anyone. "I wouldn't be able to sleep at night!" he says. (This same individual has male genitalia, but sometimes wears dresses to work.) Such dereliction of duty should cost this ersatz "professor" his job. Instead, his permissiveness improves his "course" evaluations and helps him win both promotion and tenure.
Such dereliction of duty is tolerated, even encouraged, because administrators are more concerned about decreasing enrollment and unbalanced balance sheets than they are about quality education. Imagine suggesting to any of them, for example, that the school start requiring students to pass a final. summative test before granting them a diploma. Prepare to give the CPR!. It's bad enough that some uncooperative professors still require students to study and attend class.
What has come to be called "political correctness" is at the heart of this malignant nonsense. And many academics are self-righteous converts to this faith. In fact, some go to astonishing lengths to equalize everyone in a world where everyone is NOT equal in either ability or effort. Their loathing for the Western culture that separates them from Isis style barbarism is also remarkable. For instance, they assert with invincible assurance, that reason and logic are “white" and therefore bogus. So too are "objectivity" and" rationality," There's no need to require that sort of thing from students or oneself. Even getting the right answer, is a "racist" aspect of "white identity culture," They declare, "it's time to decolonize the curriculum!" In other words, it;'s time trash the most accomplished culture in human history -- Western culture.
Yet this new breed even asserts, with a straight face mind you, that no culture is better than any other. So the culture of Isis is equal to the culture of, let’s say, France. Of course if all cultures are equal, then no religion would be better than any other. Now let's imagine these de-colonizers making such a claim in a theocratic Muslim society, Iran for instance, or in the ISIS controlled region of the Muslim world. They would quickly be imprisoned; possibly even put to death. And so far as female professors who hold all cultures covalent are concerned, they are particularly dense. That's because they are endorsing cultures in which men routinely subjugate women an systematically deprive them of their most fundamental human rights. It’s titanicaly stupid for any woman to claim cultures are equal to Western culture.( Unless, of course, it's OK for other women to be subjugated, so long as they are not.)
Winning Souls to Silliness
In this wacky world these folks inhabit, individual responsibility has virtually disappeared. Child molesters, for instance, are no longer perverted pederasts. They merely are "minor attracted persons." Worse, these academic preach their faith as objective truth to naive adolescents. And since many adolescents long for simple answers to complex questions, they win souls to this silliness.
This quasi-religious indoctrination even emboldens some students to inquire into the political reliability of all their professors, searching for signs of damnable heresy. Should one of them even mention, say, David Hume, they noisily demand the offending devil be purged. After all, it is their faith conviction that the world is in the clutches of an all-powerful, neo-colonial white male hegemony that smothers all that is just, good, true and beautiful. And administrators, intensely preoccupied with balancing the budget and preserving their well-paying jobs, cower in the face of such outrageous student conduct, consign academic freedom and intellectual rigor to the dust bin and even pretend they too are true believers in this blighted orthodoxy when they're merely fellow travelers.
The "Woke" and Chairman Mao
For some time now “students” have become converts of thought-police professors. And they subsequently patrol the campus looking to be offended. They are, in effect, inquisitors, junior grade. Instead of using college to create themselves, they let political evangelists do it for them. To "convert them” so to speak. And as converts, they eagerly find any contravening researched knowledge so offensive, emotionally troubling and dangerously heretical that it must be expunged.
What disappears in all of this is individual student agency and responsibility. They've been taught to evade all that. To believe that it is never they who fail to think, who refuse to listen, who rule out being in the wrong. It is always the "other." That's who is to blame! It's not hard to see how poisonous this is.
In truth, "woke" culture is little more than a watered down version of Mao's "cultural revolution." Professors aren't being beaten, imprisoned, or murdered as they were in Mao's China. But they are subjected to name-calling, public ridicule, administrative muzzling, censorship and job loss.
Worse, this politically correct zealotry that provokes a right-wing backlash that also threatens academic freedom, but from the opposite direction. And guess who's caught in the middle?
Conclusion
Of course DEI is tangled up in all of this as one breed of “woke” professors continue to try to combat racism with racism, prejudice with more prejudice, inequality with more inequality, etc. Yes, Trump and his MAGA republicans are busily expunging D.E.I. from government. Corporate giants are also backing away. But in academe “wokeness," performative virtue and identity politics remain firmly in place. Actual, as well as fellow traveling, true believers still successfully denounce non-conforming colleagues as homophobic, racist, reactionaries. They often even can block articles they deem 'heretical' from being published in professional journals. This is why professors willing to risk being labeled a heretic are as proportionaltely scarce as collegiate applicants.
Yes, in higher education, the "woke" religion remains firmly in place. And the zealotry of its true believers remains undiminished. In consequence the intellectual and marketplace worth of a "higher education, "especially in non-STEM areas, is loosing value. What employer wants a blindly fanatic, judgmental college graduate, who knows little, can do less, and promises to be nothing but trouble?
In the final analysis, wokeness is having the same devitalizing impact on U.S. academic life that Marxism-Leninism had in the Soviet Union. And because it is coupled with the growing collegiate enrollment crisis, its impact is especially virulent.
Worse, this quasi-religious zealotry and intellectual vacuity, continues to coin new so-called "scholars" who substitute faith for reason and conviction for evidence. And they busily churn out ever more of the sort of pseudo-scholar evangelists who threaten higher education's very future.