The Breakdown of Higher Education

The Breakdown of Higher Education by John Ellis examines the causes and consequences of left wing political radicalization on college campuses with a focus on California schools. Ellis is a tenured professor of German Literature at UC Santa Cruz who is concerned with the increasing left leaning political bias in the humanities departments as he has personally seen the damage it does to students learning. The book ranges from reasonable to less so but manages to maintain a relative faithfulness to facts. Personal bias in his findings mostly exists in the word choice being more hostile when referring to left leaning instructors and a lack of significant counterarguments for his point of view.

Ellis intros the evident political bias on campuses by explaining times when professors were attacked for sharing academic work that should have been apolitical. Gilley, Wax, & Griffiths all spoke “truthfully and intelligently” in regard to the finding of their research, but the implications of their findings were potentially harmful to some activist groups who went on the offensive to defend their political beliefs.

Ellis attributes this targeted harassment of logic towards the growing imbalance of left leaning staff and faculty in universities that has made it dangerous to have political beliefs not aligned with the majority. This change has been most notable in the humanities departments (e.i. History, Literature, Political Science, etc.). This disproportion has only grown worse as recruitment for schools has put bias into hiring people politically aligned with the department according to Ellis.  

The left’s presence in academia started to grow dramatically during and after the Vietnam war when radical activists had growing membership on college campuses. This was an important factor when the number of higher ed institutions started to increase quickly when the baby boomer generation started to attend college and the demand for seats increased past what was previously available. The civil rights movement compounded these events and led to universities hiring a lot of first-time instructors with political beliefs greatly influenced by the times they were living in. Their lack of academic experience led to decreased educational outcomes that never fully recovered because, like mentioned earlier, identity politics made sure that new hires at universities had similar political beliefs.

Ellis expands on the introduction of new “studies” departments that take a non-historian approach to history and adopt a social justice mindset altering the way content is presented and robbing students of the ability to look at events in a way that allows for critical thinking to let them understand it. Even traditional history courses were susceptible to this unacademic mindset as political ideals of instructors changed the way content was taught.

Ellis claims that these changes have resulted in decreased enrollment in humanities majors since students are seeing how ineffective these departments have become at teaching. This may be part of the truth but it’s worth noting the point when he claims this started, 1980s-90s, is when computing started to make its way onto university campuses. I can also personally say that students know that there aren’t a lot of jobs in the humanities. You can teach the humanities… and other careers for that field are slim pickings. Some of his arguments willingly overlook aspects like this.

Ellis believes that there are radically left engineers or that at least having predominantly left leaning professors in an engineering school can be harmful to a student’s learning. This stems from his claim that identity politics is the prime driver of recruitment for teaching positions. He brings up one school that prescreens all applicants on their efforts towards DEI before academic qualifications and that it was possible for a Nobel Laureate to be dismissed while someone who was more politically aligned is moved forward. This is a clear reduction to absurdity. As bad as some of the events Ellis talks about, I don’t think this is going to happen- in engineering schools especially. These schools tend to boast starting salaries, pipelines to big companies, and highly skilled jobs for graduates so if any school will weather this storm relatively unaffected, it will be the STEM schools. They are forced to adhere to data over feelings and slip ups are quickly acknowledged and corrected.

Even with some exaggeration and leaps in reasoning, this book is still a wakeup call. There are painfully egregious missteps made by those in charge of moderating political influences and the implications it can have on students learning are obvious. It’s illegal for a university to promote political beliefs and when the people who are in charge of enforcing this rule don’t seem to care, it’s concerning.

Ellis has a bias towards talking about California schools which makes sense since he’s a California professor. The problem is that when he does so, he talks as if California is representative of all other high ed school systems and political beliefs when that couldn’t be further from the truth. California is a very blue state, meaning its professors are the same. Additionally, California is known for being the most liberal state when it comes to introducing legislation. They were a significant amount of the civil rights movement. My personal experience, going to college in in a red state for a business degree, didn’t involve professors giving me their opinion on Israel or calling George Washington a Nazi. I would say there was a higher concentration of liberal students but that’s par for the course with gathering a large ground of college age people.

Ellis is unable to come up with any real solution to this problem. One idea involves parents preventing their children from going to college, so universities are forced to bring on reform. I also want to note that this huge call for action doesn’t end in Ellis putting in for his two weeks. He remains complacent by participating in this system that he deems unsatisfactory for the students he serves. Hopefully, more attention to the problem will bring in better ways to treat it. Based on the title it wasn’t what I expected but I’m glad I read it nonetheless and gained a new perspective on the situation.