The Higher Education System’s Dangerous Echo Chamber

The Higher Education System’s Dangerous Echo Chamber

Echoes of Echoes

Someone asked me recently what I meant by the damaging “paradigm” shared by institutes of higher education. Nearly all public and private universities have the same mindset, and that is a problem because they represent an echo chamber that promotes and gives authority to only one point of view, liberalism. Even worse, our institutes of higher education have become focused on revenue and building enormous asset values by means of endowments from alumni. Yes, there are a few, like Hillsdale or others who have specialty focuses, but for the most part the are focused on income. They are business centers. Please keep in mind that I have worked as a consultant in much of that world, universities and research centers. They are extremely focused on revenue from grants and tuition, as well as on bequests. For instance, the endowment funds of universities in the United States total almost $900 billion dollars. In addition, in a recent year the universities in the United States had total revenues of $13.6 billion from athletic programs, and nearly $200 billion from research grants.

Higher education is big business.

In 2023, Deloitte published an article sub-titled “The traditional business model of higher education is broken…” In that paper it pointed out two issues, “First, the cost-value equation is misaligned.” Meaning that the cost of getting an education doesn’t relate to the amount of money graduates can earn. This has resulted in students taking on debt that they can’t afford after graduation. In an article published in April of 2025 in the website BestColleges, they provide data that “It would take the average male professional degree-completer about 15 and a half years to pay off his student loan debt if he spent 15% of his income on repayment. The average female professional degree-completer would take over 42 years.” For many students, the only greater budget expense they face after graduation is housing.

Second is the fertility issue and the declining population that has traditionally represented college education. The fact is, universities are simply going to run out of students due to migrant populations, fertility issues, the cost model issues they face, and an increased awareness that many people can make far more money going to a trade school or through an apprenticeship program and get paid for their education. The point is that educating students is no longer the primary business of our university system, business is their business.

The next thing I would share is that beginning in the 1960s, when I grew up, the college professors became populated by liberal radicals. There was a lot of unrest on college campuses as the liberal, Marxist influenced radicals, were seeking to overthrow the political system in the United States. They quickly determined that they could not do that by force, but they could infiltrate the Democrat party and work their way inside the education system, so to influence the youth. I will refer to a paper published in The Independent Review, A Journal of Political Economy. Volume 27, #3.

That article explains “The Hyper politicization of Higher Ed.” In that article it states that sixty percent of college faculty identify as “far left.”

Read the full article.

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