How to End Academia

Periodically, I wonder when the institution of academia is finally going to collapse, when people are going to realize that they don't want what we're selling -- or at least don't want it as much as $20,000. Sometimes, I think some new tech company will come and do to us what Uber did to the taxi industry.

Particularly in recent years, though, I wonder if academia is going to self-destruct, and if I am presently watching the beginning of that process.

This might sound overblown. Academia has been around for centuries. No doubt it will continue in some form for centuries more, provided human civilization continues. But I think it might drastically shrink.

The Academic Business Model

Almost no one in the Academy understands our business model, and that is part of why the institution might be in danger.

Here is what most people seem to think is our business model: we have some incredibly valuable knowledge, which for some reason is impossible to acquire except by coming to us, studying for four years, and paying us $20,000 - $60,000.

Now, I simply know that that is not true.

To be clear, I think we have valuable knowledge -- but by that I mean valuable in some moral, aesthetic, or other objective sense, not in the sense of economic value. Valuable to the world in general, not valuable in the sense of satisfying individual consumer demands. If the knowledge I have to teach could be imparted by taking a pill, and if the pill cost $1300 (about the price of one course at CU-Boulder), and if it didn't contribute toward getting your diploma, then no one would buy the pill. In fact, I think most people would not even take that pill for free.

The knowledge of philosophy (like most of what people study at the university) may make you a more interesting person, or help you better understand the world, but it will not directly contribute to any job skills for any job you are likely to ever have. The majority of people don't even find it entertaining.

Anyway, even for people who love philosophy (or any other impractical subject), of course you can very well acquire the knowledge without paying $20k-$60k to a university. For a lot less than that, you can get a reliable internet connection. None of our knowledge is secret; it's all publicly available. If you really want to talk to someone about it, you could hire a private tutor.

I won't go more into that, though. If you want more, see Caplan's The Case Against Education.

Here is our actual business model: there are certain traits that are desirable to employers, such as intelligence, conscientiousness, industriousness. These traits are strongly correlated with college education. This is not because we give people these traits (no one knows how to do that); it is because we filter people according to these traits: People who don't have these desirable traits are unlikely to try to go to college, unlikely to get accepted, and unlikely to complete the entire course of study.

Self-Destruction

Perhaps academics think that we are just so clever, and interesting, and socially conscious, that the universe has decreed that we must be paid lots of money to continue talking to each other and lecturing young people. Alas, I am afraid, this is not the case.

What is the case is that we will continue to collect money as long as our business model continues to work -- i.e., as long as a college degree continues to signal economically valuable traits to potential employers. If we manage to screw up that correlation, then we're finished. Because, again, no one would pay this amount of money just for the knowledge that we have, and they certainly wouldn't pay it for our political views.

Now, I think there are a few things we in academia are doing that are weakening the correlation that our business model depends on. This, by the way, is something of a public good/public bad situation – universities can harm not just their own reputations but the reputation of academia more generally.

Grade/Admission Inflation

This one is obvious and well-known, so I won’t say much about it. When universities give overly high grades, that just makes all grades less meaningful (except for the low grades, which of course now communicate terrible performance more effectively). I would guess the average college grade is a B+, and A’s are so common as to be unimpressive.

We’re also accepting more people to college than previously. We do this because we like money. But the effect is that a college degree means less than it used to. It used to be that only smart people graduated from college. Now average people do it.

I’m not very worried about this, though, because I think grading standards have stabilized, and I think admissions standards should reach an equilibrium where the value of the college degree matches the demand for it.

Training SJW’s

The recent self-destructive thing we’re doing is training Social Justice Warriors. Most employers, I’m going to guess, do not want to hire someone whose main interest is in finding injustices to protest and accusing other people of racism, sexism, or whatever other sin. If you think about it, it doesn’t seem as if adding such people to a company would make things go better. (It's not so great for a society either.)

I don’t know how many college students are actual SJW’s. I think it’s a small minority, but that minority is extremely loud and persistent. The problem is that the loud minority can alter the reputation of college students as a class. In other words, we might be creating a (false) stereotype of college students as SJW activists. We keep hearing stories about college students loudly protesting visiting speakers, shouting them down, even threatening them with violence. Tearing down statues, demanding that people be fired, and generally acting like hooligans.

Note: keep in mind that different people get different news feeds. If you’re a Democrat (/Republican), you are seeing different news from what the Republicans (/Democrats) are seeing. I expect that conservative internet users are getting lots of news items about outrageous behavior by SJW college students. This may create an impression that that is mainly what college is about, and that that is how college graduates can be expected to behave. It also happens that many employers are on the conservative side of the political spectrum. So I expect that all this is lowering the value of college graduates for employers.

Example: This is what happened when Milo Yiannopoulos was invited to speak at UC Berkeley (my alma mater) in 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/milo-yiannopoulos-uc-berkeley-event-cancelled

They had riots in Berkeley, and the university had to cancel his speech.

Now, you might think, “Just don’t invite people like that, don’t be a racist, etc., and you won’t have to worry about any riots.” Furthermore, “Those riots only happen on college campuses, not at businesses, because businesses don’t do things like inviting Milo Y to speak.”

Note that the topic of conversation here is not whether protesting Milo (or whomever) is good, whether it promotes social justice, or whatever. The topic of conversation is how all this bears on the business model of the university, and on the desirability of college students to employers.

The problem is that a typical employer would not want to hire the sort of people who would engage in those riots. Granted, it’s highly unlikely that doing so would result in an actual riot at the place of business – but one still obviously would not want the rioters as employees.

Furthermore, the idea that one could avoid having any problems with SJW’s by simply “not being racist” is foolish. SJW’s think everyone is racist. They also tend to react with outrage at mainstream political views, which would include political views that many employers actually hold.

Another example: the professor from Iowa State who put on her syllabus a “GIANT WARNING”, prohibiting students from arguing against gay marriage, abortion, black-lives-matter, etc.

Keep in mind that about half the country is against abortion, while a third oppose gay marriage (https://news.gallup.com/poll/313094/americans-abortion-views-steady-past-year.aspx, https://news.gallup.com/poll/311672/support-sex-marriage-matches-record-high.aspx). So this professor was essentially declaring mainstream political views as so beyond the pale that she refuses to listen to them. That professor later changed her syllabus – but not her mind. Obviously, any students in her class still know that they'd better not express any conservative views. This sort of episode contributes to the stereotype about how colleges are training students. If you’re a conservative, do you want to hire a bunch of people trained by that professor?

My impression of the academy (not my department of course, but many academic departments in many universities) is that there are now two routes to academic success: (i) be smart, do the work, and learn stuff; (ii) be a vocal follower of a strident, left-wing ideology. It is the people of type (i) who are giving all the value to college degrees; they’re the ones whom employers want to hire. But (ii) is much easier than (i). The more the type (ii) people get mixed in, the lower the value of a college degree.

The hard-core academic ideologues don’t care about this, though. They also are not trying to understand reality, or be fair or objective, or promote social cooperation. They just want immediate power gains for their ideological tribe. So they are going to keep lobbying to expand option (ii). We have whole departments that are devoted to this, and we have lots of hiring initiatives devoted to rewarding political ideologues – i.e., positions created for “woke” faculty. You can identify these because they require “diversity statements”. “Diversity” (as in “we need to increase diversity” and “we have a new diversity initiative”) is a code word for (i) racial and sexual discrimination, and (ii) ideological discrimination in favor of SJWs.

Example: see this open letter signed by hundreds of Princeton faculty, calling for more "anti-racist" action by the university, to include giving lower teaching loads and extra sabbaticals to faculty of color, giving credit for student political activism, and generally stepping up racial discrimination: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfPmfeDKBi25_7rUTKkhZ3cyMICQicp05ReVaeBpEdYUCkyIA/viewform

Conclusion

In sum, I think the academic world may be undermining its own economic viability, by converting the college degree from a signal of intelligence and self-discipline, into a signal of hypersensitivity and intolerance.