Horde of Dream Thieves

A college degree previously signified, as well as required, a higher degree of intelligence and learning. Today, however, that "impression has precipitously eroded over the past several decades."

Once upon a time, college was viewed by most of the American public as an indicator of intellect and specialized academic or professional knowledge. That impression has precipitously eroded over the past several decades.

What accounts for this? Perhaps it’s too many midwits attending college. Charles Murray explains in his book the rationale for this assertion. Statista illustrates the gradual increase in American academic attainment across the past eight decades, highlighting the differences between the sexes. In 1940, only 5.5 percent of men and 3.8 percent of women had obtained a college degree. By 1970, these proportions had respectively risen to 14.1 and 8.2 percent, and continued to rise to 27.8 and 23.6 percent by 2000. By 2015, women overtook men, with men accounting for 36.7 percent and women for 38.3 percent by 2020. Irrespective of the Flynn effect, which observed average public increase in measured intelligence (at least in the twentieth century), expanding participation in college-level education from what was originally a select ambitious and informed cadre to broader groups appears to have diluted pedagogic benefit to students overall.

A recent Canadian study reveals a precipitous decline in cognition among university graduates over the past eight decades. Its authors dispute the widespread perception of above average intelligence for the educated compared to the general population as being both outdated and exaggerated. While previous generations of students in academia typically demonstrated exceptional intellect, as well as studious discipline, today’s cohort display an unfortunate arrogant mediocrity. Over time, it has been observed that average cognitive capacity of students has diminished as compared to their earlier peers. Consequently, the cognitive acumen of current university enrollees approximates that of individuals who historically pursued non-academic vocations.

Professionally oriented degrees such as in medicine, law and engineering, or scholarly research fellowships in physical sciences and mathematics, can provide tremendous benefit to society through technical innovation. In the past, humanities and other liberal arts could confer broad based cultural appreciation, but lately became vitiated (i.e., adulterated) by the inclusion of cultural Marxist solipsism (i.e., subjective and self-indulgent epistemology), combined with trans-promoting gender existentialism and climate change hysteria.

“College educated” cohorts appear to constitute the dominant constituency within the modern Democratic Party. These pseudo-professionals currently drive the trendy woke agenda of ephemeral nostrums (i.e., vaporous fantasies) of the laptop class over practical concerns of citizens who operate in the material economy, profoundly dividing the electorate. Such intellectual masquerades include intersectional victimhood provocation through various ideologies such as “diversity equity & inclusion” (DEI) and “black lives matter” (BLM). Baroque yet vacant jargon, epitomized by “critical race theory” (CRT), serves to obfuscate their sanctimonious hustle.

In support of psychotic crusades, they insist on monstrously indefensible injury against the vulnerable, such as LGBTQ+ child grooming coupled with “gender affirming” adolescent castration, which also includes unrestricted abortion until birth (and perhaps even later). Their demands to inflict further societal damage remain insatiable via the promotion of unimpeded illegal migration, law enforcement emasculation, energy strangulation, and the cancellation of student loans used to pay for worthless degrees. And lastly, they defend Hamas butchers who conduct vicious mass murder and mayhem, in bloodlust hatred against their Jewish neighbors.

The anointed condemn traditional Americans as racist while they ignore price inflation, military defenestration via proxy engagements, as well as Biden family influence peddling. During the prior century, however, that academic-benefiting demographic seems to have possessed more urbane tastes and sensibilities. So what happened? The answer: colleges and universities gradually transformed from institutions for advanced learning and scholarship to feminized playpens for a mass group of emotionally stunted toddlers.

Can such deterioration be accurately assessed? Such an evaluation, if done properly, would necessarily involve an analysis comparing several institutes of higher learning across various academic fields over time. I must admit that I’m far too lazy for that endeavor, so I’m going to simplify by selecting just one such place – my own alma mater, the University of Washington (UW) headquartered in Seattle, which has made the news recently due to on-campus anti-Semitic demonstrations. Established in 1861 and currently enrolling sixty-thousand students, UW offers a broad suite of academic disciplines from which to study and is considered a leading institution in the Pacific Northwest. Based on review of course catalogs from the mid-1970s (during my attendance) and the early 2020s, I select two disciplines to historically compare, along with one newer area of study.

The UW is academically divided into several Colleges (arts & sciences, construction, education, engineering and environment) along with separate Schools (business, dentistry, law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health and social work). Many of these, such as arts and engineering, have broad offerings in sundry and separate disciplines from which to major (or optionally minor). The first field I selected is from Engineering: Aeronautics & Astronautics (AA), whose courses I attended long ago. The second field, from Arts & Sciences, is English. The newest addition, also from the latter college, is Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies (GWSS), which was formally established in 2011 from a subset of General and Interdisciplinary Studies inaugurated in 1970. What shall we find?

Today’s prerequisites for an AA bachelor’s degree include freshman English academic and composition writing, a year of calculus, general chemistry, Newtonian mechanics, and a supplemental technical course in the natural sciences or programming. Sophomore fundamentals within the department include static loads, kinematics & dynamics, mechanics of materials (particularly solids) and thermodynamics.

These are followed by junior and senior courses including thermodynamics, incompressible aerodynamics, flight and orbital mechanics, structural vibration, electronic instrumentation, laboratory experimentation, aerospace structures, aircraft design and system control. Additionally, electives are available for viscous fluids, compressible gas dynamics, propulsion and heat transfer. Along the way, our minds must wrap around Fourier transforms, Navier-Stokes equations, Wheatstone bridges, Fresnel lenses and other esoteric concepts. Throughout the process, I can assure you there’s little time to yammer about hobbyhorse grievances.

Well then, what about the curriculum a half-century ago? Over time, UW has closed its colleges of fisheries, forestry and librarianship. For AA, aside from adding an obligatory paean to “diversity” from elective liberal arts classes, not much appears to have changed. Programmable coding has replaced Fortran (on punch cards – yes, I’m that old) with modern executable languages, computer modeling has been substituted for design graphics (by pencil on drawing boards), and control theory now receives more emphasis than acoustics.

Professors during my attendance demonstrated vast knowledge in their respective areas of expertise, and many actually showed an ability to teach. Although it’s not unimaginable that the current faculty costume themselves as drag queens while lecturing about the conservation of momentum, one can only assume that no engineering department has yet to succumbed to such sophistry.

Unlike some people in my acquaintance, much of what I learned at UW became very relevant to my careers in aerospace and law, particularly in fluid mechanics and propulsion, as well as calculus and linear algebra. This employability benefit came at a price – college is often a miserable gauntlet for STEM students, and I was no exception. So why enter such a difficult field? My reasons were starvation avoidance coupled with inability to imagine any feasible alternative given a paucity of interpersonal skills and a perceived dreary persona. But I also wanted to learn things based on observable facts attributed to physical cause-and-effect, rather than fanciful sentiment-laden conjecture, which are tagged – fairly or not – within the liberal arts. As evidence of this, we know that the UW psychology department invidiously discriminated in its recent faculty hiring. For these reasons, we encouraged our children towards STEM-related majors (and hopefully, they’ll eventually forgive me.)

Now let’s turn to English, which permits more electives and hence requires fewer core classes than engineering. Necessary courses include language and literature introduction, verse composition, short story writing, prose and poetry craft and selections from various historical literature. This department further recommends classes in classics, history and philosophy. The newer catalog lists additional classes in medieval, pre-modern and early modern literature, along with technical writing and rhetoric. And of course, the curriculum includes study of literature devoted to racial and gender identities as well as social differences. By contrast, the earlier catalog placed more emphasis on American and British literature, along with advanced prose writing.

So on appearances, emphasis in English has shifted incrementally towards identity politics, but only at the margins. But why should these historical course comparisons have any salience or relevance? In short, it is because much of higher education has been hijacked to militant agitation, rather than integrated learning and thoughtful argumentation. But somehow STEM seems to be immune, and traditional language arts (at least based on course descriptions) reveal minor effect.

Now then, we arrive at the bane of modern academia: “Studies” as exemplified by the Gender department and other such excuses for undeserved status prattling disguised as pseudo-research which can be found throughout UW’s latest catalog. The department’s mission “is to… change society from… unequal gender relations… GWSS generates knowledge through frameworks that are interdisciplinary, transnational, decolonial and intersectional.” Uh huh. More disturbingly, the catalog claims 2,000 students enroll each year for this propaganda, far exceeding the entire Engineering freshman class! Anyway, let’s see what’s included on the GWSS curriculum.

Aside from “theories” relating to feminism and gender, several courses focus either on activism or oppression from cultural expectations. To cite but one example, GWSS 302 Feminist Theories: “explores… feminist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist frameworks; focus on qualitative research methods…” Indicating a degree of cross-contamination, many of these courses are offered in collaboration with departments in anthropology, psychology, philosophy, social studies, political “science” and other related fields.

Such activist studies form the nucleus of academic devolution, emphasize partisan politicking over scholarship, while at the same time hijacking respectability from the institutional legacy. This development coincides with academia’s gradual emasculated conformity with consequent irrelevance to men. Over the past half-century, women’s college enrollment eclipses those of men, thereby altering the purpose of higher education from inquiry to something more akin to therapy.

The twin shifts of campus feminization (for students, faculty and administration) combined with demographic inclusion of declining intellectual prowess among participants, deteriorates the institution towards irrelevance and ridicule. Furthermore, those exhibiting gormless ignorance seem utterly unaware of their deficiency in skills or knowledge. Despite woke incursion, some core fields remain minimally affected, primarily in STEM. However, as administrative mediocrities succumb to performative virtue-signaling tantrums and incessant demands for greater unearned status bestowed to cerebral midgets, unqualified trolls have come to dominate campus life and beyond, and have moved into wider society to immiserate the public at large.

Mitigation of further damage and perhaps ultimately creating a reversal from such institutional deterioration requires state supported colleges to defund all “studies” faculty and DEI staff who are employed by public subsidy. Alternatively, legislatures could privatize those institutions completely. Additionally, academic accreditation of these “studies” should be withdrawn, as absolutely no justification exists for taxpayers to financially sustain such corrosive anti-intellectual nonsense. Doubtless however, dismantling such sinecures (i.e., remunerative patronage) will encounter significant resistance.

In short, we should treat this parasitic horde of intersectional frauds with the disdain that they so richly deserve. Even if these midwits can’t be summarily laid off from corporate human resource sinecures or dismissed as diversity consultants, we can at least partly close the college spigot to such future plagues and thereby restore the American dream to those who are appropriately placed to earn that chance.

Photo Credit- University of Washington