RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/colleges-are-creating-adult-children/

College students are increasingly childish, unable to think for themselves, and follow the crowd rather than pursue their own interests, according to William Deresiewicz, a former professor at Yale University who discusses this in a recent guest post on Bari Weiss’s Substack Common Sense. They are ultimately unable to grow up. Students immediately turn to their professors for direction rather than confront issues themselves, he writes.

Deresiewicz borrows a term from one of his former students — “excellent sheep” — to describe the majority of the students he taught and those who populate elite college campuses today. He points out that despite the rise of campus wokeness, with its “radical-sounding sloganeering,” students are not becoming more creative and independent-minded. Deresiewicz stresses that excellent sheephood is really about acquiring more — more money, power, status, and connections — while claiming, to make oneself feel better, that one is doing it for altruistic reasons. This, he says, explains things like the alarming lack of protests against out-of-control tuition, strangulating pandemic policies, and many universities’ investments in China. 

While the campus protests of the 1960s challenged the authority of professors and campus administrators, Deresiewicz observes, protesters today do not demand more power from their higher-ups. In fact, they just put what they have been taught into action. Social-justice warriors lobby those in power to do their bidding for them. They are much more comfortable acting as the children rather than as the adults in the room. And those in authority accede to their demands rather than assert their dominance. They’re all on the same side, after all. Deresewicz states the reality bluntly: “College is now regarded as the last stage of childhood, not the first of adulthood. . . . Society has not given them any way to grow up — not financially, not psychologically, not morally.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-needs-merit-based-admissions-college-supreme-court-decision-policies-race-11654116449?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

The Supreme Court, in its next term, will render a decision in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which will determine the legality of Harvard’s race-based affirmative-action program. The plaintiff’s claim that, by creating a floor for certain racial and ethnic groups in its admissions, Harvard created a ceiling for Asian-Americans. The result is that Asian-Americans who are academically qualified become victims of discrimination.

If the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, as many experts believe it will, Harvard and many universities around the country will have to continue their quests for increased racial diversity without violating the specific terms of the decision.

The time has come, however, for universities to abandon their efforts to achieve superficial, artificial diversity based on race. The coming decision would provide American schools with an opportunity to develop admission criteria based on academic achievement and potential—while abolishing such non-merit-based criteria as legacy status, athletics, geography and other nonacademic preferences. There would be resistance to getting rid of these advantages, but it could be done.