As a consequence of the decline of liberal education in the United States, most American Jews will also graduate college without a basic knowledge of the virtues that underlie free societies; the institutional arrangements through which constitutional government secures liberty and equality under law; and the assumptions, operations, and achievements of free markets.
This a symposium on the future of Jews, but his comments apply to the future of well-educated Americans in general. I am afraid to say that
a) I agree with Berkowitz about the way higher education now works, or does not work.
b) I think that unless new institutions emerge that solve this problem, one has to be very pessimistic about the future.
Other contributions to the symposium that I found interesting include that of Eliot Cohen (whose brilliant daughter I taught in high school) and Eric Cohen, who writes,
in the realm of politics, Jews seem pathologically silly…
In America, Jews should be focused on promoting school vouchers, the only hope for expanding the day-school movement and unleashing a new generation of Jewish educational entrepreneurship; on fighting to defend religious liberty, the only hope for ensuring that traditional Jewish beliefs and institutions are not marginalized by a hostile secularist culture; and on electing political conservatives, the only ones who still believe that Jewish nationalism is a noble cause and that American power is necessary to preserve decency and order in the troubled Middle East.
I am quite sure that the phrase starting with “American power” will turn off libertarians, including many Jewish libertarians.
Actually I have a problem with a country of religious liberty militarily supporting Jewish nationalism. Would we support a Jewish Mississippi? It would actually make a lot more sense.
Why does nobody apply public choice concepts to eduction? “the decline of liberal education” is not a cause, it’s an effect.
I suspect it’s an effect of elitism shifting from education to popular celebrity, and I agree that it’s probably right to be pessimistic about the future.
You are right the current decline is an effect as the liberal education has long been undermined.
“The passionate endeavors to eliminate the classical studies from the curriculum of the liberal education and thus virtually to destroy its very character were one of the major manifestations of the revival of the servile ideology.”
Mises, Ludwig von, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, 1956
“I think that unless new institutions emerge that solve this problem, one has to be very pessimistic about the future.”
Exactly. And overcoming the economic obstacles may be the easy part compared to the political obstacles.
Kids are always going to move out around adulthood. They are always going to want to get a jump start on their career by degree signaling.
What I observe is that the more practical a major (engineering, business, econ, even psychology) the less they have been co-opted by progressivism. Maybe the new institutions might be very specialized practical small colleges highly focused on technical job skills.
If my observation is true, Thus us by the way an objective indictment of both education and progressivism.
Maybe it is just an “objective indictment” of your (lack of a real) education.
No. It’s not. I have had a “standard” education. But if it were, it would mean that the state-funded institutions I attended objectively that constitute a very standard education should be indicted.