Defensive Education

You’ve heard of defensive medicine.  This is where physicians perform unnecessary medical tests in order to protect themselves from potential lawsuits.  The consequence has been to drive up medical costs, while forcing a wedge between the doctor and patient.  If anything, this has worsened medical outcomes.

Today we are experiencing something similar in higher education.  Colleges too are threatened with lawsuits if they do not provide the desired benefits.  As a result, they have adopted practices designed to thwart such legal actions.  Here too the outcomes have been less than satisfactory.

The recent spate of college protests has exacerbated a long-term trend.  Ever since the 1960’s, college administrators have been capitulating to student demands.  Fearful that angry students will close down their campuses, they accede to foolish policies.

During the safe spaces movement, demonstrators stipulated that unwelcome opinions be quashed.  But more than this, they tied their requirements to the Black Lives Matter crusade.  Some of the more strident demands have therefore concerned who can teach what, so as to preclude racism.

Once upon a time competence counted.  Professors were asked to teach the courses where they possessed an expertise.  Now, in this era of identity politics, the instructor’s ethnic and ideological credentials are more salient.  Academics with the wrong skin color, gender, or sexual orientation need not apply.

This is a serious development.  People have been forced to resign their jobs; others were never hired.  As importantly, many new positions have been created to accommodate the radicals.  These were not instituted for academic reasons, but for political ones.

Kennesaw State University, along with colleges across the country, has witnessed an explosion in vice-presidents.  Most of these are intended to demonstrate that the school cares.  Their portfolios are generally oriented toward keeping problem students happy.

Mind you, the administrators who create these positions know that they are window-dressing.  Nonetheless their hands are tied.  They have learned from bitter experience that if they do not follow the lead of other schools, they will lose subsequent lawsuits.

Unless these administrators can point to programs similar to those of their competitors, this will be regarded as prima facie evidence of a dereliction in duty.  They are thus forced to defend themselves by initiating useless policies ostensibly aimed at implementing justice, but achieving nothing.

Actually, they do accomplish something.  They water down education and serve notice to all on campus that they must be politically correct or place their careers in jeopardy.  In other words, this educational defensiveness spreads like kudzu into every corner of academe.

When this is combined with other programs such as Complete Georgia, the outcomes are disastrous.  In order to make sure that every student is able to obtain a degree, standards are lowered and controversial subjects sidestepped.  Instead of genuine learning, we get pabulum disguised as wisdom.

When I was younger, social promotions allowed students who could not read to graduate from high school.  Today we permit students who cannot think to receive a college degree.  Who this is supposed to help is another one of life’s enduring mysteries.

As long a politicians continue to promise that everyone can get a college education and that no one should be offended by uncongenial ideas, this nonsense will prevail.  The administrators have little choice.  They realize either that they will be fired or that their schools will be deprived of millions of dollars.

Higher education is supposed to be on the cutting edge of scholarship.  It has long been regarded as the custodian of our shared knowledge.  This, however, is an ideal that is receding into history.  Nowadays the objective seems to be reinforcing the pretense that everyone is genius-in-waiting.

This nonsense will not stop until more of us have the courage to demand that it does.  Unless those who insist on higher standards also begin to intimidate the people who run our colleges, they will continue to cave into those who care not one bit about actual learning.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University