In a famous exchange in the “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway wrote: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
“Gradually” and “suddenly” applies to higher education’s implosion.
During the 1990s “culture wars,” universities were warned that their chronic tuition hikes above the rate of inflation were unsustainable.
Their growing manipulation of blanket federal student loan guarantees and part-time faculty and graduate teaching assistants always was suicidal.
Left-wing indoctrination, administrative bloat, obsessions with racial preferences, arcane, jargon-filled research and campus-wide intolerance of diverse thought short-changed students, further alienated the public — and often enraged alumni.