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Warning: Extreme sarcasm and excessive flippancy to follow. Many scenarios are fictitious, but sadly not all.
From the Stop Woke Act to the New College of Florida takeover, the media devotes a great deal of airtime to Ron DeSantis’s beliefs that colleges and universities indoctrinate students into Communism, along with what he wants to do about it. But isn’t blaming higher education for supporting and promoting equality and independent thought somewhat limiting in scope when the sector could be blamed for so much more? If we are going to accuse education of promoting liberal views, let’s blame it for other things that really matter, too.
Both the Philadelphia Phillies and the Eagles lost their respective championships in the past year. Obviously, higher education needs to do more to support the Phillies and the Eagles. These teams would have won if Philadelphia colleges and universities would enroll more students and create an adequate fan base to attend games and buy merch and body paint. Instead, undergraduate enrollment dropped by 9.4 percent in the Philadelphia metro area in 2022. When The Philadelphia Inquirer surveyed 32 local schools last fall, 13 reported enrollment declines from 2021 to 2022. Higher education is clearly failing to support our communities and the economic development of our cities.
You have gout. A faculty member in the University of North Carolina’s sociology department tried to indoctrinate your grandson into socialism by asking him to describe white privilege, which subsequently made him feel guilty about being white. After failing the class, he withdrew from Carolina and, thus, broke the four-generation legacy of Tarheels in your family.
Suffering from excruciating shame, you drove all the way to the Raleigh Costco, so as to avoid the Dukies in Durham, bought a case of Miami Cocktail Co. Mimosa Spritz, drank it all, “fell asleep” and awoke to find your big toe painfully red and swollen. After consulting Dr. Google and reading “Marxist Madrassas: The Hostile Takeover of Higher Ed” in your convalescence, you realize you have gout, which is all higher ed’s fault. Later, you’ll explain to the ladies at the Eastgate Crossing Talbots why saying “no to higher education” will end gout.
The government seized all your assets. The government took away your hard-earned money and property because President Biden needs it for his socialist student loan forgiveness program (not because you haven’t paid your taxes in a decade; you have proof!). Higher education costs too much. Everyone just needs to go to trade school. You know you can make a six-figure salary without an undergraduate degree? Just become a welder! But first, you will need to learn to do it underwater, live on an oil rig in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean and be away from your family 90 percent of the time.
Someone ate all your Otterbein chocolate chip cookies. They were right there on the kitchen counter an hour ago. Then, you remember your son is home from Worcester Polytechnic Institute on spring break. You mutter, “All the fancy robotics equipment and that makerspace have turned my son into an entitled snowflake. When I was his age, Otterbein cookies were a privilege, not a right. I worked two jobs in college. If he thinks for one second he’ll be driving the Tesla back to school, he is sadly mistaken. It’s the Highlander for him!”
Trump’s indictment by the Manhattan grand jury. Graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with an undergraduate degree has given former president Trump a license to boast, “I went to the Wharton School of Finance. I’m, like, a really smart person.” Trump faces 34 felony charges related to falsifying business records. Good job, UPenn, for educating the first president to be indicted. You failed our country. Middle States Commission on Higher Education—can’t you remove their accreditation for this?
The assassination of JFK. Faculty members assign books to read in colleges and universities.
Book depositories contain books. Lee Harvey Oswald was a book depository employee. He fired a gun from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Isn’t it obvious how higher education is responsible? Duh. If we had banned more books, a book depository wouldn’t be needed. Oswald wouldn’t have had a job or a vantage point, and JFK would still be alive. He’d be more than 100, but he’d be alive.
Your wife left you for the Safelite guy. Well, we all know this is Oberlin College’s fault. If they hadn’t introduced coeducational learning in 1833, she never would have left you. Oberlin empowered women to get an education on equal ground with men and, ultimately, created a pathway for women’s self-sufficiency. Who cares if your wife went to Boston University instead of Oberlin? She makes more money than you and no longer needs to put up with your narcissistic nonsense. She can marry whomever she wants. “That’s not right!” you say? It may be time to start a petition on Change.org for Oberlin’s president to be ousted.
Long lines at the Chick-fil-a drive-through. If higher education were more successful at indoctrination, the lines at Chick-fil-a would be shorter. Everyone knows about Chick-fil-a’s conservative politics, and yet, liberals can’t get enough of those deeply delicious, succulent chicken sandwiches (even if buying them goes against their core values). It’s all about the pickles. Don’t you think?
