Did you know that college loan debt in America now totals more than credit cards and car
loans combined? It’s 1.5 Trillion Dollars. Two out of every three student loan holders
are currently in default. For younger generations, this, right here, is the central broken promise
of America. So why is it that college has gotten so obscenely
expensive? Well here’s a central perpetrator, and they’re banking on you finding them
boring: administrators.
College is supposed to be a unique time for young minds to test themselves against the
great works of human civilization, to learn how to dig up truth.
Campuses have steadily devolved away from that vision into all-purpose fun-houses.
Sports complexes. Endless extracurriculars. Five-star dining.
So schools have had to staff up. Since the 70s, while total student body
and faculty have both jumped by about half, total administrators has increased 300 percent.
The average university org chart is like a self-parody of bureaucratic bloat.
I found a job title that was simply “engagement specialist.” Someone tell me what the person
does all day! Now, you can imagine all these administrators serving
as bland functionaries, you know, the toiling gnomes stuck with the unsexy logistics of running
a school But oh, no. They’ve got ambitions, baby.
While the ratio of liberals to conservatives among students is about two-to-one, and faculty,
it's six-to-one, it’s 12-to-one among administrators. This bureaucrat bloat is pumping highly concentrated
political propaganda directly into young minds: "We ignore the reality of those perpetuating
racism. White people have no learned ability to grapple with the nuances of mixed race
interactions." Sorry, What.
"As a white person the first step is to work off of the assumption that you really are
part of the problem." You have associate deans working overtime...
to purge violent microaggressions from breakfast cereal.
"There's one character on this box who is different than all the rest. The only character
on the back of this box who's brown. He has his hat tilted a little to the side, right?
This image is problematic." The college administrative apparatus was essential
to the rise of Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility, you know your sister
in law’s go to vessel for social media virtue signaling that’s also the best
selling book in the country? Her career was supercharged by fat
consulting contracts and speaking gigs with college administrators.
"When I hear this from a white person,I don't care if you're pink, purple, polka-dotted. I
see people as individuals. Don't ever say that. That's all I gotta say."
Now college administrators advance their ideological agenda with the empty corporate
jargon of middle management. You know those scientific-sounding terms bureaucrats make
up to justify their own existence? If you’re the administrator of student
affairs you don’t have a casual conversations with students.
"Two students stopped me. Hey Lamont! We want to ask you a question. I dove into an intergroup
dialogue session on the spot."
Ah yes. The intergroup dialogue session.
"It's an intergroup dialogue and critical action program."
Administrators come wielding the soul-sapping
weapons of corporate strategy . "An innovative 5 year strategic plan for diversity
equity and inclusion. This strategic plan is not a single plan, in fact it is really 52
different plans" "PRODI-G stands for, Promoting. Recruitment.
Opportunity. Diversity. Inclusion. And Growth." These are nightmare amalgamations of activist
and bureaucrat. So you get a little dose of social justice jargon...
"intersectionality coalesce with marginalizing oppressions"
And some empty corporate buzzwords. "Leadership development, institutional advancement,
external relations, all of it. Strategic planning and accountability."
Mmhmm. "That’s the answer. And that’s where we
need to go." Administrators have this perverse incentive to
cultivate student grievances, to encourage students to see themselves as frail fragile
wards. Because the less students can run their own lives, the more power accorded to administrators.
And if you want to watch this bureaucratic bloat in action, let’s take a quick trip
to the heartland. This is Oberlin, an exclusive liberal arts
college in small town Ohio with an annual tuition north of 60,000 dollars a year.
In the fall of 2016. Three undergrads are caught trying to steal alcohol from Gibsons,
a beloved neighborhood grocery story. A clerk catches them, the students attack him,
the students get arrested. "Oh my god why… can you tell me anything
that’s going on?" "Yes, you are being arrested for theft right
now." "Is there anybody I could talk to, my mother,
anything?" "We’re changing him with robbery."
"They’re going to be trashing us." The students pled guilty to theft and, in
open court, said the Gibsons owners were not racists.
This is Meredith Raimondo, the pure alpha administrator. She refuses to let truth get
in the way of an opportunity to play act a civil rights struggle
Raimondo starts orchestrating protests of Gibson. Students flood the owners with death
threats. Raimondo personally hands out flyers condemning the store’s long history of racism.
She gives the protestors free pizza and soda. "Suddenly they’re in the middle of a storm
that has been crippling to them." "We’re just a family... Let me get control
here for a second, sorry." No learning. No logic. No reason.
If the protestors had done a little bit of digging they would have learned that Gibsons was founded
by a family that fled the south because of its opposition to slavery.
Raimondo’s crusade epically backfires. Gibsons sues her and Oberlin
for defamation and wins a $30 million judgment. But Raimondo isn’t going anywhere.
She’s still at Oberlin. The typical university has more full-time
employees in administration than in instruction and in research combined. And while schools have
enlisted a servant class of adjuncts to do much of the work of actually educating, some
admins rake in over half-a-million dollars a year.
This is what all your college loan debt is financing. A shadow university system that finds things
like the liberal arts and marketable skills to be highly problematic. By making college
more expensive, and degrading the value of the education itself, the very people bathed
in the language of inclusivity are steadily making college more exclusive.