Is It Any Wonder That Graduates Are Unemployable Socialists When They Are Taught By Vicious Ideologues?
Not long after I posted my Schumpeter/Elite Overproduction piece, the FT ran an article titled “It’s a bad time to be a graduate.”
The gist:
From North America to Europe, university leavers are struggling to find suitable work. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates in the US has for the first time been consistently above the national level since the Covid-19 pandemic. In the EU, the employment rate of 15- to 25-year-olds has fallen over the past two years. Even the crème de la crème are struggling. The percentage of MBA students from Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan without a job offer three months after graduation has risen sharply since 2021
(Note this is not strictly a western problem. It is a major issue in China as well).
The article concludes:
A surfeit of underemployed elites is bad for society and the economy. To ensure it does not become a feature, education must evolve from being a ticket to a job to a toolkit of skills for a changing world.
Skillz! What a concept!
Yes, specific job-related skills are important, but generalized critical thinking skills are even more important. But those are something that modern academia fails to impart, and has done so for years.
The article also mentions that the fraction of jobs advertised that require a college degree has dropped. This indicates that not only is the knowledge/skills acquired in an education deemed increasingly irrelevant to the extent it even exists, but that the signaling value of post-secondary education has also dropped. The most likely explanation for this is that grade inflation, dumbing down of coursework, etc., have reduce the correlation between individual characteristics (e.g., generalized intelligence) and the cost of completing a degree. Something that anyone can get with no differentiation (e.g., grades) is worthless as a signal.
These are some symptoms and effects of the devolution of university education. A related, and disturbing, phenomenon is the increased ideological slant of the modern academy. Three examples from just the last couple of days.
First, Zorhan Mamdani’s father–a professor at Columbia, where Zohran lied about his race in a failed attempt to get in—gives a disquisition on American history:
That is so disgusting and bizarre that it is self-refuting.
The next example is from my alma mater, The University of Chicago:
Of course, as is de rigeur, Abdelhadi wants to use that power to advance the Palestinian cause, among others.
Why the University of Chicago gives “power” to someone who boasts of her hate for it, and her desire to exploit its reputation for her own twisted ends, is beyond comprehension.
In a similar vein is my, er, “colleague,” University of Houston Poli Sci prof David McNally, in remarks apparently delivered at the same socialism conference where Abdelhadi ranted. (Unfortunately not the late Baltimore Orioles All-Star lefty Dave McNally).
He also wants to seize power at the university in order to advance his far left agenda. And his keffiyeh of course signals his pro-Palestinian (and therefore anti-Semitic) bona fides.
Bring it, dude. See how that works out for you. Look for me. I’ll be on the other side of the barricades.
Given that such individuals have achieved prominence at prestigious universities, and presumably spread their poison in the the classroom, is it any wonder why (a) a large fraction of college graduates are unemployable, and (b) many are unthinking leftists seduced by the siren song of socialism?
Universities need to be torn down to the studs, if not razed to the ground. The rot is far too deeply embedded in the walls for merely cosmetic changes to be worth the candle.
Ring ring.
“Hello.”
“This is the development department from your alma mater. We want to talk to you about what’s going on at your old school.”
Click.
Comment by Jeff Carter (@pointsnfigures1) — July 7, 2025 @ 4:56 pm
“The article also mentions that the fraction of jobs advertised that require a college degree has dropped. This indicates that not only is the knowledge/skills acquired in an education deemed increasingly irrelevant to the extent it even exists, but that the signaling value of post-secondary education has also dropped. The most likely explanation for this is that grade inflation, dumbing down of coursework, etc., have reduce the correlation between individual characteristics (e.g., generalized intelligence) and the cost of completing a degree. Something that anyone can get with no differentiation (e.g., grades) is worthless as a signal”
I agree with you completely, on all points. Especially critxical thinking skills, they are non-existentx and apparently irrelevant in the modern world. Ideology has replaced them.
Regarding the above quote from your post. May I present something of an object lesson. When my son graduated college his first job was in the registrar’s office at the local junior college. (Yeah, I know). At the time he told me the fastest growing program at the school was remedial courses for unprepared students. Courses that do not count towards graduation. So kids sign up and 9 of their first 15 hours are remedial. Many of these kids drop out after a couple of semesters frustrated and unprepared to do the work needed to move along.
Why? Well, the local school systems preparing these kids offer English as a second language classes. Today in these systems ESL is offered from kindergarten through 12th grade. So, you graduate kids who do not think completely in English, if at all, who cannot read English very well, if at all, and do not write in English. Of course writing is a taboo skill now so we will not hold that against them. So what have we done to these kids? I’m pretty sure we have cast them as second-class citizens.
How has this happened? The local school board has been hi-jacked by retired teachers and people associated with the largest employer in town and the largest voting bloc.
So, raze universities to the ground unless and until people are given critical thinking skills in English.
Comment by Donald Wolfe — July 7, 2025 @ 5:16 pm
I recall reading that the reason universities stand by when faculty promote outrageous politics is that the university presidents and provosts are more nutcase progressive than the faculty.
The grim irony is that citizens are providing financial support to universities that are irremediably hostile them and to their country.
As they are thoroughly political, universities should lose their 501(c)(3) standing as charitable organizations. State budgets should be zeroed out. Also, zero Federal grants.
Public money cannot and should not be used to support partisan groups.
And for that matter, public money should not be granted to NGOs, either.
Comment by Pat Frank — July 8, 2025 @ 6:41 pm
Hmm sounds like another Year Zero project is in the offing. Surely they can’t all be that bad – every single person in every department?? In my limited experience in academia there were a smattering of oddballs, deviants and weirdos (as there are currently, according to chums in the know), the type of people who would have never have made it in the real world, but on the whole most of the academics were sound, functional adults.
I think you’ve focussed too much on the supply side. From what I hear here in the UK, opportunities for new grads have diminished quite considerably, with STEM jobs being shipped off to eastern Europe and beyond, the big four looking increasingly at using AI to do the donkey work which new grads would have previously done etc etc. Also many kids are now choosing to go down the apprenticeship route – more-or-less the same outcome, but no student debt, a few years work experience on their resume, and a wage in their pocket.
@ Woolfe Critixical?? Ooof, that’s embarrassing. Oh for an edit button eh?
@ Pat Funnily enough I was peripherally involved with a nascent US-based ‘institute’ which was applying for 501(c) whatever status. You should have heard some of the people involved – real conspiracy theory nutters. You’d have loved it. Suffice to say, I left them to it.
Comment by David Mercer — July 9, 2025 @ 10:38 am
Critical thinking requires a dedicate course of study all of its own.
It need only take a semester.
That critical thinking – actually, any form of acquisition of skill in thinking other than the logic taught in philosophy courses – has been neglected since forever, is another reason to raze the universities to the ground and start again.
I’d go so far as to say that teaching people how to think might be sufficient to solve a whole swathe of problems, including the ‘radical chic’ in the universities, which have their root in the absence of activity in the frontal lobes.
(I’m doing my part – please contact me if you would like information or would like to be part of the project.)
Comment by Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break — July 9, 2025 @ 11:35 pm
Just a note:
It is almost a week since I made the comment above noting how important it is to help people to improve their thinking, and asking those interested in same to contact me.
In that near-week, no contact from your readers. Nada. Not a sausage.
So you see Prof, beyond you and me there really is zero interest in teaching/learning critical thinking, or indeed in any sort of thinking at all.
And I think that explains a lot about why our societies find themselves where they are LOL.
Comment by Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break — July 14, 2025 @ 11:22 pm
@ex You didn’t say how they should contact you. Also, you may have been a little presumptive – I’d wager most of Craig’s readership would assume they know how to think (wild idea, I know).
Comment by David Mercer — July 15, 2025 @ 2:38 pm
@DM I was hoping they would leave an expression of interest here, and we could then take it further. Perhaps I didn’t think that one through LOL.
One of the problems that I have run into is exactly what you put your finger on: most people do not realise that their thought can be improved. For example, in one of my economics lectures yesterday, when I asked my students if any of them had studied logic, none of the twenty of them raised their hands. But none of them then approached me to ask how they might learn logic! Happily one of the reasons why I enjoy returning here is because the level of intellectual formation of those who write and comment here is better than I find elsewhere – more good-quality thought happens here than other places.
Comment by Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break — July 16, 2025 @ 2:24 pm
When I was a fresher I found that my tutors and lab supervisors felt a bit intimidated in discussion with me. I realised why: I had a good background in critical thinking. Here’s how I got it.
At secondary school I didn’t eat “school dinners” but went home for lunch. My father did too. And throughout lunch I discussed all manner of things with that intelligent, well-read chap, arguing the toss with relish. Sometimes he’d read out something from the morning paper: “How do we know that’s wrong?” I might reply “Well, Dad, the population is fifty million and therefore … blah blah blah … so he must be wrong by a factor of ten or maybe even a hundred.” “Well done.” “But, Dad, why did he write it if it must be wrong?”
“Various possibilities – maybe he’s dimmer than a bright 14 year old, maybe he just wants to provide column-inches, maybe he wants to mislead the readers …”
So there you are: combine lunchtime home-schooling with going to school. All it needs is a revolution so that everyone is close enough together that they can get home for lunch, and a Mum available to have cooked it. Easy-peasy.
I’m half serious – teaching critical thinking to undergraduates is far too late: they should enter university with an ability to say “How come …?”, “That can’t be right …”, “No, no, no” and so on. I’m reminded of an American I saw lately saying that he’d read Chaucer in his graduate program, but only in translation into modern English. We read the old boy at school, aged thirteen, in the original. People seem to leave the worthwhile stuff until far too late. Get the youngsters to wrestle with it while they are full of beans and still enamoured of learning new stuff every day. Also they appreciate fart jokes more.
Comment by dearieme — July 17, 2025 @ 5:57 am
@Dearie exactly right. It’s so easy – just a matter of asking questions and having a simple conversation. Usually only two or three questions are all that need to be asked to reveal that an Emperor is wearing no clothes.
Anyone can do it, and yep even schoolkids. That it is so rare is damning of us and our society.
Comment by Ex-Global Super-Regulator on Lunch Break — July 18, 2025 @ 2:39 am
Unemployable – that’s a good output. Worse if (when?) they are gainfully employed and are rapidly advancing in their chosen careers. Harassing anyone below them who does not subscribe to their hateful views.
Comment by Tatyana — July 19, 2025 @ 8:22 am