Notes on the death of academia

one last invitation

As you already know, several of our pieces have covered the current state of higher education:

-This past Monday, Hamilton Craig wrote about the challenges of maintaining a neutral, depoliticized environment in academia that is open to a variety of perspectives, and of the bleak career prospects for PhD students.

-Jonah Howell in his piece on adjuncting in NYC daringly argues that perhaps—in the face of their ghastly compensation—grad students should be realistic about the impossibility of surviving on adjuncting and pursue other work.

-I also took up the theme of adjunct-life, both on the Substack and in the NYTimes, were I warned that as we prepare for the coming enrollment cliff, and with the increase in depression and suicide rates among undergrads, we should reconsider the roll of small colleges/campuses (and invest a lot of money in them)—a rather idealistic assertion…but in our overly “realist” social climate, a little idealism wouldn’t hurt…especially considering how college education is “really” bad rn.

-Both in the Times piece and in Compact, I wrote about how the corporatization and bureaucratization of universities is compromising their ability to offer students a human experience. This is especially disappointing at Catholic institutions, whose founding mission is to affirm the dignity of each student and accompany them in their path toward discovering their vocation.

-As much of the intentions of the student encampments are very noble, I expressed my fear both on this Substack and in Compact that their aim is a bit short reaching, as I’ve heard very few critiques of the over-arching problem at hand: the fact that universities are run like business…were this not the case, there would be little need to protest the matter of accepting funding from ethically questionable sources. (Jacques Berlinerblau, Musa al-Gharbi and Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales make similar points in their articles for Compact on the Columbia encampments.)

-The inevitable result of the corporatization of unis is that the curriculum ends up becoming empty. To compensate for this, many professors will sprinkle SJW-jargon on top of their syllabi to give their courses the semblance of virtue and substance. I commented in

The American Postliberal

on one boomer prof who posted a horrendously embarrassing tweet about how he has had to have a “hard and necessary conversation about JK Rowling and her hatred of trans- people,” and how I avoid preaching at my students about my own personal beliefs. (Also check out Jordan Castro’s piece in Compact about the equally cringe phenomenon of right-speak).

And so, without further ado, we want to (re)invite you to our discussion on the future of academia, featuring Jonah, Hamilton, Stephen, and K.C. Johnson.

Is academia dead? Come find out TOMORROW at 6:30 pm.

RSVP and pay the cover via Partiful (then the location will be unlocked).

**NOTE: You need to RSVP and pay in order to get onto the guest list. If you RSVP’d with a plus one, please make sure to pay for them/tell them to pay.