Recent commentary in national media asking whether a four-year degree is an expensive scam signals a rising frustration in homes across America. Parents worked hard, saved and sent their sons and daughters to college in good faith, only for graduates to come home with heavy debt, uncertain skills and the uneasy sense that four years on campus had not prepared them for work, family or citizenship. That sense of betrayal is real. And it’s growing!
As the President of a Christian university, I can tell you that the failure lies not in serious study or demanding academia, but in a model of higher education that has surrendered information to ideology and formation to fad. On too many campuses across America, activism has shouted down learning as the aim of a university education. Students are immersed in popular causes before they have mastered the history, economics or moral reasoning needed to judge those causes. They are encouraged to think in silos of grievance and identity politics that divide neighbors and erode gratitude for the good that still exists in this country. In place of genuine debate, many are handed a blinkered moral script and learn to treat disagreement as a threat rather than an invitation to think more deeply.
This constant posture of outrage carries a heavy cost. Young adults who are taught to see words as violence and disagreement as assault do not grow into resilient human beings. They are encouraged to retreat from difficult conversations and they struggle to build friendships, marriages and workplaces where people can disagree and still cooperate. Mental distress rises, trust in society and institutions falls and a generation of students is left anxious, isolated and unsure of its purpose. When a university rewards performative outrage more than patient achievement, it fails the very young people it professes to serve. Colleges should be laboratories for courage and curiosity. When they become training grounds for fragility, the wider culture will wither under that weakness for decades to come.
Employers have begun to speak openly about the results. They need graduates who can think clearly under pressure, accept correction, solve problems and stay with hard tasks until they are finished. Instead, they often encounter young professionals who are quick to condemn systems and structures yet hesitant to take responsibility for their own decisions. Parents see the same pattern when their children return home from college more certain of what they oppose than of what they are prepared to build. No tuition discount can compensate for four years that leave students less able to shoulder adult responsibility than before they began their studies. Change needs to happen, and it needs to happen fast.
Thankfully, there is another way. At higher education institutions such as Colorado Christian University, where I serve, we begin with the unstinting conviction that truth exists and that education must shape the whole person of the students we are entrusted with. Our sole aim is to provide Christ-centered higher education that produces graduates of competence and character who can think clearly, work diligently and lead with courage in every sphere of life, be it at work, home or in the community. We uphold academic excellence, but only as a means to develop graduates embodied with wisdom, service and belief. This conviction is not an abstract key performance indicator; it instructs what we teach, how we teach and the kind of community we expect our students to build with one another.
Such an approach also demands honesty with students about cost, calling and character. A degree is not a magic shield against hardship or disappointment. It is a tool that must be put to work in the service of God and country. A Christian university that takes its mission seriously will insist that students grow not only in knowledge but also in perseverance and moral courage. The goal is not to shelter young adults from the harsh winds of the world, but to equip them to stand firm in it, to meet its confusion with clarity and its cynicism with hope.
So, is college a scam? It certainly is when institutions charge a small fortune for politicized confusion and call it enlightenment, but the answer is not to abandon higher education but instead to reclaim it for its centuries-old purpose. Our nation needs colleges and universities that cultivate critical thinking, creativity and effective communication, skills that transcend shifts in culture, and create graduates who possess real-life abilities, no matter their chosen career path. We also need institutions willing to be judged not just by marketing materials and rankings, but by the lives their students lead many years after graduation. When that becomes the benchmark again, families will be able to send their sons and daughters to college not with apprehension, but with confidence that the promise of higher education matches the reality their children will live.
Eric Hogue is president of Colorado Christian University, which was included in the Wall Street Journal’s College Pulse Ranking for a third consecutive year and named one of the fastest-growing universities in the country for the 10th year in a row.
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