The Right Way to Choose A College

What students do at college matters much more than where they go. The key to success is engagement, inside the classroom and out

Does the brand name of the college you attend actually matter? The best research on the question suggests that, for most students, it doesn’t. Challenge Success, the research and advocacy group that I cofounded at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, conducted an extensive review of the academic literature on the subject. We found that a school’s selectivity (as typically measured by students’ SAT or ACT scores, high school GPA and class rank, and the school’s acceptance rate) is not a reliable predictor of outcomes, particularly when it comes to learning. As common sense would suggest, the students who study hard at college are the ones that end up learning the most, regardless of whether they attend an Ivy League school or a local community college.

Similarly, the 2014 Gallup-Purdue Index, a study of over 30,000 graduates, found no correlation between college selectivity and future job satisfaction or well-being. The study showed that graduates were just as likely to score high (or low) on a scale measuring their “thriving” whether they attended community colleges, regional colleges or highly selective private and public universities. Research does suggest that there is a modest financial gain from attending a highly selective school if students are the first in their families to attend college or come from underserved communities.

But the difference in financial outcomes between the low-earning and high-earning graduates of topranked schools is greater than the difference between students from such highly selective schools and graduates of non-selective schools, including community colleges. As Greg Ip noted in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, “The fact that smart, ambitious children who attend elite colleges also do well in life doesn’t mean the first caused the second.”

Would such findings have mattered to the parents involved in the college admissions scandal that has unfolded over the past two weeks? Probably not. In a society that is hyperfocused on achievement, credentials and status, it isn’t surprising that some parents are willing to sacrifice just about anything, including their integrity, to get their child into a top-ranked school. Unfortunately, many high school students also have a “cheat or be cheated” mentality when it comes to getting the grades and test scores that they believe they need for future success. More than 80% of students at high-achieving schools cheat in one way or another, according to surveys of over 145,000 students conducted in recent years by Challenge Success.

Today’s admissions scandal should serve as a wake-up call. As a society, we need to reexamine the purpose of college and the underlying issues that lead families to be so obsessed with status or brand that they jeopardize their own children’s healthy development and well-being. In surveys conducted by my group, three-quarters of high school juniors and seniors list planning for college as a top source of stress or worry in their life, well above relationships and family issues. More and more students are reporting severe sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression and thoughts of suicide as they struggle to meet the unrealistically high expectations foisted upon them. The ultimate irony is that, even when these students do end up in selective colleges, many of them continue to struggle with mental and physical health issues, and often lack the independence, resilience and sense of purpose they need to graduate and enter the workforce.

What would a better approach look like? If the name of the school they attend doesn’t make a difference for most students in the long run, what does?

It turns out that what students do at college seems to matter much more than where they go.

The students who benefit most from college, including first-generation and traditionally underserved students, are those who are most engaged in academic life and their campus communities, taking full advantage of the college’s opportunities and resources. Numerous studies attest to the benefits of engaged learning, including better course grades and higher levels of subject- matter competence, curiosity and initiative.

Studies conducted in recent years by Gallup- Purdue also show a strong connection between certain forms of engagement in college and future job satisfaction and well-being. In particular, they found six key college experiences that correlated with how fulfilled employees feel at work and whether they thrive in life after college:

* Taking a course with a professor who makes learning exciting

* Working with professors who care about students personally

* Finding a mentor who encourages students to pursue personal goals

* Working on a project across several semesters

* Participating in an internship that applies classroom learning

* Being active in extracurricular activities

And yet, as important as these various forms of engagement seem to be, relatively few college graduates say that they experienced them. While more than 60% of graduates strongly agreed that at least one professor made them excited about learning, only 27% strongly felt that they were supported by professors who cared about them, and only 22% said the same about having a specific mentor who encouraged their goals and dreams. Just under a third strongly agreed that they had a meaningful internship or job or worked on a long-term project, while just a fifth were actively involved in extracurricular activities.

Given the research on what matters in college, the best advice for choosing the right one would seem to be finding a place where the student will be engaged, in class and out, by all that the college has to offer. The good news is that engaging experiences of this sort can happen at a wide variety of colleges, regardless of selectivity, size or location. And with over 4,500 accredited degreegranting colleges in the United States, students have plenty of options from which to choose.

Parents can play an important role in the college search process, but they should always let the student—the one who will actually attend the school—lead the way.

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More University Corruption

By Walter E. Williams

Last week's column discussed the highly publicized university corruption scheme wherein wealthy parents bought admission at prestigious universities for their children. That is dishonest and gives an unfair advantage to those young people but won't destroy the missions of the universities. There is little or no attention given by the mainstream media to the true cancer eating away at most of our institutions of higher learning. Philip Carl Salzman, emeritus professor of anthropology at McGill University, explains that cancer in a Minding the Campus article, titled "What Your Sons and Daughters Will Learn at University."

Professor Salzman argues that for most of the 20th century, universities were dedicated to the advancement of knowledge. There was open exchange and competition in the marketplace of ideas. Different opinions were argued and respected. Most notably in the social sciences, social work, the humanities, education and law, this is no longer the case. Leftist political ideology has emerged. The most important thing to today's university communities is diversity of race, ethnicity, sex and economic class, on which they have spent billions of dollars. Conspicuously absent is diversity of ideology.

Students are taught that all cultural values are morally equivalent. That's ludicrous. Here are a few questions for those who make such a claim. Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is currently practiced in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan; is it morally equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limitations placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment and education. Under Islamic law in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning. Thieves face the punishment of having their hands severed. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death in some countries. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to Western values?

Social justice theory holds the vision that the world is divided between oppressors and victims. The theory holds that by their toxic masculinity, heterosexual white males are oppressors. Among their victims are females, people of color and male and female homosexuals. The world's Christians and Jews are oppressors, and Muslims are victims.

Increasingly, the classics of Western civilization are being ignored. Why? Because they represent the work, almost exclusively, of "dead white men." Only works of females, people of color and non-Western authors are seen as virtuous. The same is true with political history. The U.S. Constitution should be less respected because its writers were white slaveholders. The academics who teach this nonsense to students are grossly ignorant of the struggle over the slavery issue at our 1787 Constitutional Convention.

Professor Salzman concludes his article with the observation that "Marxist social justice offers all the answers anyone needs, so no inquiry or serious research is required. Be confident that at university your children will learn 'the right side' to be on, if little else." As a result of leftist indoctrination, many college students graduate illiterate, innumerate and resistant to understanding. A survey of employers showed that over 70 percent found college graduates were not well-prepared in skills such as "written communication," "working with numbers/statistics," "critical/analytical thinking" and second-language proficiency.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni publishes occasional reports on what college students know. One report found that nearly 10 percent of the college graduates surveyed thought Judith Sheindlin, TV's Judge Judy, is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Less than 20 percent of the college graduates knew the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. More than a quarter of the college graduates did not know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during World War II; one-third did not know he was the president who spearheaded the New Deal. Such ignorance might explain why these young people are the supporters of today's presidential candidates calling for America to become a socialist nation.

By the way, one need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. One just has to accept the sanctity of the individual above all else.

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Marxism, the Frankfurt School, and the Leftist Takeover of the College Campus

How did socialism become mainstream?  Look no farther than modern-day socialism's roots: Marxism.  When one observes the modern political scene occupied by the likes of Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, one observes nothing but modern-day Marxism.  When one observes the modern-day college campus, one observes nothing but the Marxist-leftist indoctrination of America's youth.

When Marxism is considered, it is often viewed through an economic lens.  Karl Marx's ideas of historical materialism, the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, and class-based division are staples of American collegiate academia.  Any second-year university student, no matter his degree path, has already been taught from the enlightened minds of Marx and Engels.  However, what if these ideas of Marxism go much deeper than mere economics?  What if Marxist philosophy has extended to every facet of the American college campus?

To some, this idea might seem preposterous and a manufactured right-wing conspiracy.  To any politically moderate or conservative student, it's a living reality.

While socialist and Marxist-influenced ideas have spread throughout the corridors of America and thus led to the election of such prominent democratic socialists as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, many Americans don't realize how deep an impact Marxist ideas have made culturally — namely, on college campuses.

The Frankfurt School was a movement of far-left European philosophers who sought (among many other things) to apply the ideas of Marx in a social context.  What developed from this school was Critical Theory, which is ultimately a re-envisioning of the way the world is seen.

The Frankfurt School rejected objective truth and the historical records of humanity and objected to any form of objective knowledge.  According to Claudio Corradetti of the University of Rome, this can be said of the Frankfurt School: "on the basis of Habermasian [a Frankfurt School philosophy] premises, indeed, there can be no objective knowledge[.] ... Since knowledge is strictly embedded in serving human interests, it follows that it cannot be considered value-neutral and objectively independent."

With this statement comes the basis of the identity politics–centered culture.  There is no longer objectivity in the sciences or arts, and everything becomes an element of interpretation.  Knowledge, according to Marxist thought, can be manipulated to serve a purpose, and that is what the left is actively doing.

While this idea that objective knowledge is no longer accepted might seem like nonsense, these ideas are prominent in far-ranging academic subjects from the arts to the sciences.  In turn, these ideas are captivating campuses and infecting students everywhere.

Throughout Western history, society has been rooted in the principles of objective truth.  The great philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Locke all believed in some form of objective truth that guided society and established principles to be followed.

Much of the modern Western world is based on the ideas produced by Judeo-Christian thought.  Judeo-Christian thought is based deeply in objective truth and objective reality.  However, objective truth or reality of any kind is no longer the fad.

 One has to look no farther than Boston University to find courses with titles such as "Dismantling White Privilege, Power, and Supremacy."  Any course that attempts to induce guilt for one's ethnicity is undeniably subjective in nature.  Consider the debates on sex, sexuality, and human physiology.  There is arguably mainstream societal acceptance that there are more than two "genders" and that sex and sexuality are in no way linked.

Furthermore, if one even questions the eligibility of male athletes in female-only sports, he will often be labeled a bigot, or at the very least old-fashioned.  No empirical research is needed to realize that much of American history is now scrutinized rather than honored.  American military involvement is commonly preached as oppression rather than liberation.  Everything from the nuclear family to supporting ICE is under scrutiny.  There is a systematic dismantling of American values that were once accepted as objectively good and now maligned as evil.

When objective truth and reality no longer exist, the Left can rewrite the rules to society — and it has.

Where do all of these ideas come from?  Primarily college campuses.  The Frankfurt School's rejection of objective truth has led to the creation of leftist ideologies that demonize all forms of conservatism while praising intersectionality.  Once an idea is preached into impressionable minds, reiterated throughout the echo chambers of social media, and proselytized to the masses, these ideas became mainstays of mainstream culture.

 If objectivity continues to be rejected on college campuses and throughout much of our society, it will be a lonely world for conservatives and free-thinkers.  There's no telling where the promulgators of Marxism and the Frankfurt School will go from here.

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