Can the Taxpayer-Bloated, Snarling, Woke Beast of Higher Ed Beast Still Be Saved?

For those late to the idea that elite American Universities are on the verge of becoming a serious societal problem, Tuesday’s hearing featuring the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn was almost certainly a sobering wakeup call.

Here’s another, specifically for the American taxpayer: the fecklessness that was on display in that hearing room is being funded by your money. To the tune of billions.

Seated before a panel of bipartisan legislators on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, these leftist academic leaders, each in turn, failed miserably to forcefully condemn calls for “intifada revolution” and the menacing of Jewish students at their respective campuses, with all witnesses appealing to that great political equivocator “context” as a lifeline.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) was particularly adept at slicing through the rhetoric and shepherding the “context” argument to its logical conclusion.

While grilling Penn President Liz Magill, Stefanik exposed why the campuses responses to the Oct. 7 attacks were not just disappointing but dangerous, too.

“I am asking [if] specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?” Stefanik asked.

…It is a context dependent decision, Congresswoman,” Magill answered with a bewildering smirk.

“…Calling for the genocide of Jews is dependent on the context?” Stefanik asked, incredulously.

“…If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment,” Magill offered.

“Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide?” Stefanik shot back, horrified.

This exchange, coupled with what we already know about the funding universities receive from foreign nations – with Penn’s Biden Center most recently linked to sketchy funding from China – gives the question of whether to act before speech becomes conduct a new significance.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com quantified the federal payments on contracts and grants and special tax treatment of their endowments into the eight schools of the Ivy League plus Stanford University and Northwestern University.
Since 2018, $33 billion of federal contracts and grants flowed to these ten colleges – averaging $6.6 billion annually.
…
Furthermore, these schools reaped another $12 billion in special tax treatment benefits on the growth of their massive endowment gains (2018-2022). Endowments totaled $237 billion in 2022, up almost $65 billion from $172 billion in 2018.

One would like to believe the best institutions in America would be taking this kind of largesse from their fellow citizens and churning out educated individuals who go on to be innovative and productive citizens.

One would be wrong.

A recent survey found that 4 in 10 business leaders say, “recent college grads are unprepared to enter the workforce,” citing difficult temperaments and oversensitivity. Of the thousand plus business leaders surveyed, 88% said this “unpreparedness” is more prevalent now than 3 years ago, while an astonishing 94% admitted to avoiding hiring recent graduates.

The trend has also likely manifested with the removal of college degree requirements by top companies, although the standard narrative is that this decision is about job creation and student debt more than a substandard young workforce.

Either way, it’s clearer by the day, and to more people daily, that higher ed is in trouble if not irretrievably broken, but it took the horrors of Oct. 7 to push many academic donors out of their comfortable bubble. Businesses, concerned with their bottom lines, woke up a little earlier. Now with reports that a proper Congressional investigation of Harvard and Penn – with the full force of subpoena power – is on the horizon, it appears the federal government is shaking the nightmare off, too.