NHEG-September-October2022

September October 2022
NHEG EDGUIDE September - October 2022
FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2022
BY KERRY MCDONALD
College Enrollment Drops As Students Seek
Alternatives
The past two years have been marked by major education
disruption at the K-12 level, as more families questioned
the schooling status quo during prolonged school closures
and remote learning. They left district schools in
droves, choosing instead to become independent homeschoolers,
join learning pods and microschools, or find
high-quality virtual learning platforms.
Public school enrollment plummeted during the
2021/2021 academic year, and continued its decline
this academic year in many areas, despite the fact that
schools reopened for full-time, in-person learning.
Higher education is seeing a similar trend. College enrollment
dropped in the 2020/2021 school year as many
colleges and universities turned to remote learning, and it
has also not rebounded.
In fact, The New York Times recently reported that the
college enrollment decline may indeed be worsening this
year. According to the National Student Clearinghouse
Research Center, undergraduate enrollment this spring is
down 662,000 students compared to last year, or a drop
of 4.7 percent. Graduate school enrollment also declined
this year compared to last year.
“Prospective college students may be weighing the relative
value of jobs that require or expect a college degree
against equally attractive opportunities that do not,”
wrote the Times.
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
More young people are recognizing that the conveyor belt to college, and the debt they assume
along the way, may not be the best option.
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These students are smart. They are recognizing that the
conveyor belt to college, and the debt they assume along
the way, may not be the best option. They are weighing
the benefits of a college degree against the costs, both
financial costs and opportunity costs, and determining
that perhaps another pathway to adulthood might make
more sense.
On this week’s episode of the LiberatED Podcast, I interviewed
Cameron Sorsby, CEO of Praxis, about alternatives
to college. Praxis is an apprenticeship boot camp program
that helps young people to develop skills and experience
that make them valuable to prospective employers.
Over the past couple of years, Sorsby has been seeing
increased interest in Praxis, along with a growing cultural
acceptance of alternatives to college. “As soon as it
became more socially acceptable to pursue other options
outside of the typical higher ed track, you see more people
flocking to it,” said Sorsby.
More individuals and families are questioning the conventional
K-12 and college pathway, and are exploring other
options. Their demand for both schooling and college
alternatives will continue to dramatically reshape education
for years to come.
Listen to the weekly LiberatED Podcast on Apple, Spotify,
Google, and Stitcher, and sign up for Kerry’s weekly LiberatED
email newsletter to stay up-to-date on educational
news and trends from a free-market perspective.
https://fee.org/
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 The lesson of 1989 is that today’s culture and ideas are tomorrow’s politics and policies.
BY JON MILTIMORE
The New York Times Reported ‘the Mainstreaming of
Marxism in US Colleges’ 30 Years Ago. Today, We See
the Results
In August 1989, Poland’s parliament did the unthinkable.
The Soviet satellite state elected an anti-communist as its
new prime minister.
The world waited with bated breath to see what would
happen next. And then it happened: nothing.
When no Soviet tanks deployed to Poland to crush the
rebels, political movements in other nations—first Hungary,
followed by East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia
and Romania—soon followed in what became known as
the Revolutions of 1989.
The collapse of Communism had begun.
‘Marx’s Ideological Heirs’
On October 25, 1989, a mere two months after Poland’s
pivotal election, the New York Times published an article,
headlined “The Mainstreaming of Marxism in US Colleges,”
describing a strange and seemingly paradoxical
phenomenon. Even as the world’s great experiment in
Marxism was collapsing for all to see, Marxist ideas were
taking root and becoming mainstream in the halls of
American universities.
“As Karl Marx’s ideological heirs in Communist nations
struggle to transform his political legacy, his intellectual
heirs on American campuses have virtually completed
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their own transformation from brash, beleaguered outsiders
to assimilated academic insiders,” wrote Felicity
Barringer.
There were notable differences, however. The stark,
unmistakable contrast between the grinding poverty of
the Communist nations and the prosperity of Western
economies had obliterated socialism’s claim to economic
superiority.
As a result, orthodox Marxism, with its emphasis on economics,
was no longer in vogue. Traditional Marxism was
“retreating” and had become “unfashionable,” the Times
reported.
‘’There are a lot of people who don’t want to call themselves
Marxist,” Eugene D. Genovese, an eminent Marxist
academic, told the Times. (Genovese, who died in 2012,
later abandoned socialism and embraced traditional conservatism
after rediscovering Catholicism.)
Marxism wasn’t truly retreating, however. It was simply
adapting to survive.
Watching the upheaval in Poland and other Eastern bloc
nations had convinced even Marxists that capitalism
would not “give way to socialism” anytime soon. But this
would cause an evolution of Marxist ideas, not an abandonment
of them.