Is attending college worth it?

James Rosen: Attending college has a new mission — help save democracy

When I grew up, attending college was a badge of honor increasingly required for career success and a widely praised life experience that helped young people become adults, fueling American prosperity.

I remember watching public-interest TV ads extolling the benefits of college and, at least implicitly, warning that a high school diploma was no longer a ticket to success.

A generation earlier, higher education was so deeply valued that Congress passed a law, the GI Bill, to reward military veterans with low-cost or even free college tuition, affordable home mortgages and other benefits.

Today, attending college faces strong headwinds. Costs have skyrocketed — to at least $25,000 a year at public universities and four times as much at coveted private schools. Despite these costs, it is more challenging to gain acceptance to better colleges, thanks to Baby Boomer parents who have pushed their kids from the youngest age to do everything possible to get ahead in life. And we have a president who accuses professors of liberal “indoctrination” and cuts funding for academic research.

These headwinds are compelling some young people, especially young men, to delay college or eschew it altogether. Female university students increasingly outnumber male students, with many young men who skip college citing their support for Donald Trump as justification. 

Colleges have experienced tumultuous periods before. In the Red Scare of the 1950s, students faced accusations, often unfounded, of being closet communists. A decade later, campuses were rocked by Vietnam War protests that sometimes turned violent, as tragically memorialized in the 1970 fatal shootings of four Kent State University students by Ohio National Guard members.

The hyper-competitiveness of college today is new. Though I had edited my high-school newspaper and earned national writing awards in a fine suburban Detroit public-education system, there is no way, with my B-plus grade average, I could gain acceptance today to my alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley.

As an academic tutor who sometimes helps high school juniors complete their college applications, I am stunned by how cutthroat applying to college has become. The University of Virginia, near where I live, is one of the country’s best public schools — but still a notch or two below, especially in all-important reputation among employers, the Ivies and other private universities such as Duke or Stanford or MIT. Yet, I have seen stellar students with extraordinary extracurricular activities and community service, even those with 4.1 or 4.2 (above A) grade-point averages, get rejected at UVa.

As for Trump’s indoctrination claim, it is true that many professors, especially at the elite schools, are liberal. That is what I hear almost uniformly when folks learn that I attended Berkeley, a reputation based on its location in the San Francisco Bay Area and on its history as the cradle of the 1960s student free-speech movement. Far less well known, however, is its past as a breeding ground for spies where professors, including several of mine as a political science major, secretly recruited agents for the CIA.

The greatest professors make college worthwhile. I still remember the thrilling lectures and thought-provoking seminars of Karen Hermassi, a young political-theory professor who taught a course on Plato. She pushed back against the then-prevailing academic view of the ancient Greek philosopher as an ideological harbinger for 20th-century dictators from Hitler to Mussolini. 

While I came to disagree with her, her inspiring lectures helped teach me lessons that have proved invaluable in my subsequent career — challenging accepted wisdom and reading even dense texts very closely. And they taught me another lesson: However abstract it seems at the time, what you learn in the college classroom might prove more relevant than you could ever imagine. Our debates over Plato and totalitarianism seemed distant from the America I’d grown up in — the America of Jefferson and Lincoln and MLK. Today, in the America of Trump, there is no more vital debate.

That vitality has given attending college a new mission: to help save American democracy. With some of the world’s finest universities under attack from their own government, it is no longer enough merely to gain an education. Now, there is an elevated task. Young learners must model the critical role of higher education in the self-governance our Founders sought. And they must demonstrate to their countrymen that the free exchange of ideas will help us preserve our government of self-rule.

Editor’s note: James Rosen is a former political reporter and Pentagon correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers. He received awards from the National Press Club, Military Reporters & Editors Association and the Society of Professional Journalists, which in 2021 named him top opinion columnist. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.

Adam Guillette: Too radical, too expensive; are university degrees still worth the cost?

Adam Guillette: Too radical, too expensive; are university degrees still worth the cost?

For generations, an American university degree was considered a ticket to a better future. It promised intellectual growth, exposure to various experiences and perspectives, and economic opportunity and security. Unfortunately, that no longer is the case. American universities have lost their way, and students should question whether the cost of a degree is genuinely worth it.

American universities have long been seen as institutions that welcome and foster intellectual diversity and debate. Although academia has always had a leftward tilt — politically and ideologically — dissenting viewpoints were always welcomed, and open dialogue was encouraged. 

Today, American universities are no longer a marketplace of ideas but an ideological echo chamber where dissenting views are punished. On college campuses, free speech is increasingly under attack.

The decline in intellectual diversity and the simultaneous rise of intolerance are not coincidental. Instead, they are a direct result of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mandates that have infected campuses nationwide. DEI initiatives have affected hiring efforts, admissions practices and class curricula. While these initiatives are framed as increasing diversity, benefiting underprivileged students and fostering a more inclusive environment, they often have the opposite effect. These initiatives encourage a victim mentality, punish dissenting views and encourage discrimination. 

Additionally, these initiatives have given the intolerant, radical left a mandate to attack anyone who does not adhere to the belief system they deem to be correct. For example, in 2023, women’s sports activist Riley Gaines was assaulted and held hostage by radical protesters at San Francisco State University when she visited the campus to speak about the inclusion of transgender athletes on women’s sports teams. 

Just a few weeks ago, a similar incident occurred at UC Davis when masked protesters attacked students attending an event hosted by a conservative organization on campus.

Sadly, these are not isolated incidents. Over the last two years, the increase in pro-Hamas rallies on college campuses has often translated into an increase in antisemitic activity. At Columbia University, for example, I interviewed some Jewish students who told me they faced harassment, verbal abuse and threats of physical violence. 

What makes matters worse is that the university did nothing to stop it. It did not intervene, reprimand the bullies or protect Jewish students — even when they explicitly asked for help. 

A survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee and Hillel International in 2024 found that nearly one-third of American Jewish college students thought faculty members “promoted antisemitism or fueled a learning environment that is hostile to Jews.”

The truth is that, in many cases, university faculty members and administrators are aligned with these radical ideologies. Rather than serving as neutral arbiters, they use DEI to promote ideological uniformity. 

Since taking office, President Trump has taken steps to abolish universities’ DEI programs and to punish some of the worst offenders by cutting federal funding. Unfortunately, for the time being, the damage is done. It will take years to reverse course and bring American universities back into the light … if possible. 

And while the reputation of American universities is at an all-time low, tuition is higher than ever. Student loan debt has reached crisis levels, and many graduates are leaving campus with limited job prospects and crippling loan payments on the horizon. Except for medical school or a few other specialized degrees, the return on investment is shrinking. No longer does a university degree guarantee a good job or even a well-rounded education. 

By refusing to foster intellectual diversity and open dialogue, American universities are short-changing their students and failing to prepare them for the real world. Rather than shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a subpar education and a middling degree, high school students should evaluate alternative options. 

Unless university leaders take meaningful steps to course-correct, they alone will be to blame for this unfortunate decline.

Editor’s note: Adam Guillette is the president of Accuracy in Media. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.