Another academic year has wrapped up, and another batch of college graduates has walked across the stage to accept diplomas of declining value. Even the graduation ceremonies have lost their historic luster, as only ideologically approved speakers can provide commencement addresses. Any speaker who might bring a serious message is either disinvited or not considered in the first place.
American sentiment about the value of a college education is in steep decline. Pew Research Center polling indicates seven in 10 Americans believe higher education is “going in the wrong direction.“ And a recent Fox News poll reports nearly two-thirds of respondents believe a college degree is less important to individual success compared to 25 years ago.
University administrators should use the summer recess to acknowledge what has led to this downturn in public confidence. The market is speaking to the higher education establishment — pricey administrators might descend from their ivory towers to listen.
It should be obvious, for example, that when free speech is stifled, the search for truth necessarily suffers. As Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression chief researcher Sean Stevens reports, “self-censorship remains frequent among many students, and student trust in their school’s administration to defend freedom of speech has declined.”
Obviously, colleges were created to allow for free and open inquiry, but that can’t happen in an environment that has gone off the rails with activism and indoctrination. Classrooms have become academic gulags that lack intellectual range. While colleges obsess over social, global and racial diversity, the curriculum is delivered by faculty who largely think alike and lack viewpoint diversity.
A recently released study by FIRE analyzed the financial political donations by thousands of professors across 55 universities spread across the nation. The findings confirm that faculty congregate politically on the far left — the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren brand of left, as the study’s summary points out.
FIRE researcher Angela Erickson points out that faculty are concentrated in an extremely narrow ideological range, raising “serious concerns about whether students and scholars are getting the full benefit of the open inquiry universities promise.” This result confirms another study showing viewpoint imbalance, with conservative and even centrist faculty becoming endangered species on campus.
It should be obvious that such ideological imbalance affects curriculum, speakers invited or not invited to campus, and the hiring practices of new faculty, given that search committees are saturated with groupthink. And this all happens with the blessing of upper university administrators.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has evaluated the academic programs of more than a thousand colleges and universities across the nation, and the findings show a general weakening over the years of basic curricular requirements for graduation.
For example, only half of the evaluated colleges require a math class for graduation. Only one in five requires a course in American government or history, and only one in four requires the study of literature. Just 3 percent of college graduates nationwide are required to have a course in economics.
It should be obvious to curricular planners that graduates are not prepared for the real world with such voids in their academic requirements. Parents, alumni and regular Americans must all be wondering what trendy courses are being required, given that foundational education is largely missing.
It should also be obvious that when grade inflation provides most students with courtesy “A” grades, heft disappears and students feel entitled. Thankfully, even stuffy Harvard has recognized this poison and has decided to limit the number of A’s issued.
Yale issued a report earlier this spring with some hopeful guidance about mission and intellectual freedom. The “Report of the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education“ is a surprising acknowledgement of academia’s problems. Key recommendations provide renewed focus on free speech, intellectual inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and a mission of creating knowledge. The report boldly states, “Echo chambers do not produce the best teaching, research, or scholarship.”
These points certainly come under the category of “obvious things,” but at least the obvious is again being stated. The test for higher education now is to put these obvious values into operation and avoid further decay.
This piece was originally published by The Hill on June 9, 2026.