Quote:Universities: Dysfunctional Incubators of Socialism



02/26/2025 • Mises Wire • Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Ludwig von Mises called the universities of his day “nurseries of socialism” because of the inevitable socialist bias of all government-funded universities. He also said that there is always a remnant of students, however, that does not buy into the endless drumbeat about the alleged wonders of socialism and the “imperfections” of free-market capitalism. It is this remnant that the Mises Institute devotes so much effort to educating and inspiring in the Misesian/Rothbardian tradition. 

The vast majority of today’s American universities have become incubators of socialism to a far greater extent than anything Mises experienced. They have produced generations of students who are well versed in all the left-wing platitudes about just about everything even if they lack the most elementary critical thinking skills. (So-called “critical theory,” invented by Marxist law professors, is not about critical thinking but criticizing the critics of socialism and all the institutions of Western civilization). The unique incentive systems in American universities have made this possible.

Almost all universities are either government funded state universities, or private nonprofit sector universities that receive significant amounts of government subsidies, making them de facto state universities. (Remember: He who takes the king’s shilling becomes the king’s man). As such, they have no real customers in a business sense. Students do not think of themselves as customers in the sense that they are customers of say, Starbucks or a pizza joint. They rarely pay the tuition bills for one thing; mom and dad or the taxpayers do, or the banks that extend to them student loans. Parents may pay the tuition bills but it is the children who receive the primary benefits of higher education, if such benefits even exist. Thus, consumer pressure that leads to consumer sovereignty is very weak.

There are no stockholders in government or private, nonprofit universities, so neither is there stockholder pressure as with private competitive businesses. On top of that there is supercharged rational ignorance. When we acquire information during the course of our lives it is mostly to get through school, get and keep a job, raise a family, buy houses and cars, etc. Private affairs. We spend relatively little informing ourselves about government policy. Besides, government at all levels is so gargantuan that no human mind could possibly comprehend a tiny fraction of one percent of what governments do. We are rationally ignorant of it for the most part. Universities are the same way, but in addition, many people are intimidated by people with Ph.D. degrees in the same sense they are somewhat worshipful and intimidated by medical doctors. So they don’t question them very often. Rational ignorance is supercharged when it comes to universities and doctors. 

The boards of directors of universities are primarily composed of yes men and women who rubber stamp the decisions of the administrators for the most part. To oppose them might jeopardize the main reasons they are on the board of trustees in the first place: to improve their social lives, local reputations, and business connections. University boards were easily intimidated into acquiescing in the latest synonym for socialism, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” with its threats of calling critics racists or sexists. 

At some universities the university president can fire board members rather than the other way around. When yours truly first arrived at Loyola University Maryland in the early 90s a senior faculty member recalled how Loyola alumnus Tom Clancey, the famous author, was not invited back to the board after he complained too much that the son of a mail man like himself could no longer afford the tuition. 

So-called peer-reviewed research is not all that it is made out to be. So much university research is government funded, that “peer reviewers” are often very careful not to allow the publication of much literature (if any) that criticizes the state. Try having a career as an environmental scientist who criticizes the EPA, or as an agricultural economist who criticizes the massive interventionism of the Department of Agriculture. Even modern physics is almost entirely devoted to military applications. Economist Larry White published a research article that revealed that almost three fourths of all peer reviewed articles in monetary economics were authored by economists with some connection to the Fed. As Milton Friedman once said, if one wants a career as a monetary economist, it is best not to criticize the major employer in your field. 

Let’s not forget also that the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s theory about “the long march through the institutions” to turn a country communist was first spread in universities, and is still metastasizing there. The extreme left-wing bias among university faculty is proof, moreover, that most faculties are enemies of academic freedom despite all their false claims otherwise. 

Because of the near absence of customer and stockholder pressures – or even elections as with government – university administrators often behave like dictatorial tyrants who answer to no one. This causes younger conservative or libertarian faculty members to cower in fear that the university administrators might discover that they have politically unacceptable ideas like respect for property rights, the rule of law, or God forbid, free enterprise.

University faculties are mostly paid like government bureaucrats with rigid pay scales that go by seniority rather than merit. Faculty committees are typically controlled by the least scholarly faculty members due to the fact that to the more productive scholars the opportunity cost of spending endless hours sitting in unproductive committee meetings is too high. It’s the low opportunity cost faculty who make university policy by committee. 

Ever since the American economy moved from being dominated by sole proprietorships to corporations the Left has complained about the separation of ownership from control. In corporations the stockholders are the owners and management is composed of their agents who are entrusted to earn profits for them. Who, but the taxpayers, are the “owners” of a state-funded university? And what control do they have over what goes on? 

Universities are incubators of socialism because they are themselves socialist institutions funded by taxpayers with Rube Goldberg style incentive systems. 

We don't need no thought control...

Quote:Trump White House Drafting Executive Order to Abolish Department of Education
by Cristina Laila Feb. 4, 2025


Credit: White House

The Trump White House on Tuesday drafted an executive order to abolish the Department of Education, NBC News reported.

Trump vowed to wage war with Education Department and give power back to the states.

“On Day 1, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto the shoulders of our children,” Trump said. “And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate.”

Trump said he wants to strip the entire department.

“We’ll have one person plus a secretary, and all the person has to do is, ‘Are you teaching English? Are you teaching arithmetic? What are you doing? Reading, writing and arithmetic, and are you not teaching woke?’ Not teaching woke is a very big factor, but we’ll have a very small staff,” Trump said on the campaign trail.

“In total American society pours more than $1 trillion a year into public education systems but instead of being at the top of the list, we are literally right smack — guess what — at the bottom,” Trump previously said.



President Trump previously nominated Linda McMahon for Education Secretary to replace Biden-appointed Marxist Miguel Cardona.

“For the past four years, as the Chair of the Board at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Linda has been a fierce advocate for Parents’ Rights, working hard at both AFPI and America First Works (AFW) to achieve Universal School Choice in 12 States, giving children the opportunity to receive an excellent Education, regardless of zip code or income. As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families,” Trump said.

Trump continued, “Linda served for two years on the Connecticut Board of Education, where she was one of the fifteen members overseeing all Public Education in the State, including its Technical High School system. She also served as a Member of the Board of Trustees at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, for two stints totaling over 16 years.”

“We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort,” Trump said.

President Trump is expected to sign the executive order dismantling the Department of Education on Tuesday.

This just in......

An interesting tale of diploma mill follies, featuring the drugs, perverts, fake preachers and weirdos we've come to expect from the DebrisInflow crowd.

Quote:Disciples of Truth, diplomas of fraud: The tumultuous tale of the ‘Anglo Saxon Sikhs’ of Oklahoma
Led by spiritual seeker Homer Bradshaw, The Disciples of Truth had a brief, failed tryst with a religion they understood little of. Then came a second act.
Philip Deslippe
9 hours ago



Courtesy Philip Deslippe.

The first mass conversion of Americans to Sikhism occurred in Oklahoma nearly 70 years ago. Decades later, it spawned a vast illegal enterprise involving fraudulent degrees. After two years of research through newspapers, magazines, and government records, its story is told here for the first time.

In 1955, a handful of spiritual seekers began to meet weekly at a small, single-family home within a quiet residential neighborhood in northern Tulsa, Oklahoma. Their aim was to study the world’s religions in chronological order, and their host and guide was a thin, middle-aged man in glasses named Homer Bradshaw.
   
After a few months, the study group became an official organisation and was incorporated by Bradshaw as “The Disciples of Truth” with a stated purpose of embracing and teaching “the underlying truth contained in all systems of religion, philosophy, and science”.


Articles of Incorporation for the ‘Disciples of Truth’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

Towards the end of 1956, the Disciples of Truth had made their way to the final religion of their survey, Sikhism. They became convinced that they had found “the most complete revelation from God to our world” and were determined to meet actual Sikhs and learn more – although at that time, Sikhs numbered only a few thousand across the entire United States. They were mostly living in agricultural centres along the West Coast.

In what they saw as serendipity, the group soon learned that there were two Sikh students from India studying at the University of Oklahoma. The Disciples drove 120 km to meet them.

The students, JS Bakshi and KL Mehea, were likely astonished, given the lack of familiarity with Sikhism in the United States and the absence of any converts in the country. But they answered questions from the Disciples, gave them some literature, and told them to write to the Pacific Khalsa Diwan Society in Stockton, California.

Bradshaw wrote a lengthy letter to the Pacific Khalsa Diwan Society and asked them for literature in English and guidance so that the Disciples of Truth could “become good, full-fledged Sikhs”. He also introduced his small group of six persons to the Sikhs of Stockton and expressed hope to establish a gurdwara in Tulsa and serve as a missionary to “assist in bringing this wonderful Faith to many of our fellow Americans”.

In the spring of 1958, Bradshaw incorporated a new entity called Akal Sat Ke Sikhen or the Disciples of Eternal Truth. Newspapers in Oklahoma published stories about the state having its first “Sikh Church” and for a short while Bradshaw and his fellow converts conducted weekly services at his home that mostly consisted of lectures and reading the Ardas or Sikh prayer.

Amar Singh Khalsa, the editor in chief of Sardar magazine in Lucknow who had been corresponding with Bradshaw, arrived in Tulsa shortly after for a month-long visit to provide assistance and give lectures to the local community.


Listing for the Tulsa Sikh Community, from the ‘Tulsa Tribune’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

Bradshaw then took his missionary efforts on the road and visited Sikh communities in Texas, Arizona, California and then Canada. While his Sikh hosts generously received him, they often did not know what to do with the head of a self-described “Anglo-Saxon Sikh community” in Oklahoma.

Bradshaw’s account of the trip included unintentionally humorous events such as waiting for days for talks that never happened or lecturing in English to a handful of elders who only spoke Punjabi. But he did record a talk for a radio broadcast in California and spoke to Sikhs at a Gurdwara in British Columbia.

After his tour, Bradshaw wrote a series of articles for The Sikh Review in Calcutta, mostly on the possibilities of spreading Sikhism and establishing it as modern, global religion for the “Atomic Age of mankind”. His suggestions were both sensible and flattering.


Madan Pal Singh Makhani, Amar Singh Khalsa, and Homer Bradshaw in 1958, from from the ‘Tulsa Tribune’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

Bradshaw hoped that Sikhs and their institutions would start devoting resources to catechising young Sikhs outside of India and proselytising the general public through motion pictures and literature in English. With a convert’s zeal, Bradshaw spoke glowingly of Sikhism and referred to Sikhs in inclusive terms such as “we” and “our people”.

Despite his enthusiasm, Bradshaw had come to Sikhism recently and only through materials in English. He knew little of Sikh history or culture, and did not know any Punjabi. Bradshaw’s ideas about Sikhism were largely his own and shaped by his personal preferences and spiritual worldview.

While the Sikh Review carefully edited Bradshaw’s articles and omitted what would have been seen as bizarre or offensive by their Sikh readership, those ideas were freely published by newspapers in Oklahoma and Canada.

Sikhism, according to Bradshaw, was the New Age culmination of “the progressive evolution of religion.” He told the Tulsa Tribune, “We accept Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Jesus Christ, Mohammad and Guru Nanak as prophets of God of equal rank and dignity.”

Bradshaw was also adamant that beards and turbans had no place in Sikhism, and that Sikh communities in North America needed to hold their services in English, install pews in their gurdwaras and enter them wearing shoes. In Canada, he told the Times Colonist that the Sikhs of British Columbia were “smothering their religion through the worship of outward symbols”.


Homer Bradshaw in Canada on his Missionary Tour, from the ‘Times Colonist’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

Remarkably, despite his lukewarm reception on the West Coast and his unorthodox ideas, soon after Bradshaw travelled to India where he was warmly received by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, an institution that manages gurdwaras in northern India and is the closest thing to a governing body for Sikhs around the world.

Bradshaw was given a copy of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib, the scripture and living guru of Sikhs, for the newly established American Sikh community led by an American convert.

Whatever hopes Sikh authorities in India may have had for the Akal Sat Ke Sikhen were soon dashed. Not long after his return to the United States, the SGPC asked a man named Dr Harbans Lal, then a student at the University of Kansas, to go to Oklahoma and check in on the care being given to the Siri Guru Granth Sahib and the progress of Bradshaw and his fledgling congregation.

In an interview for Scroll, Lal recounted how he found Bradshaw and his mother as the only two remaining members. Unable to read the Gurmukhi script and unaware of the standard ritual care Sikhs show to the Guru, they stored their copy in a cabinet like an ordinary book. Perhaps even more offensive, Bradshaw smoked in the house where the Guru was stored. Without any protest, Bradshaw surrendered the copy of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib to Lal who became the new custodian.

Less than four years after the Disciples of Truth began to meet in the home of Homer Bradshaw, the first group of American converts to Sikhism were no more, but nearly two decades later, the Disciples of Truth would re-emerge for an astonishing second act.

The Doc and Crime by Degrees

By 1960, a man named James Caffey became the owner of the articles of incorporation of the Disciples of Truth. He was an unlikely person to head up a religious organisation. The year before he became its head, he was arrested and released on suspicion of narcotics possession and killed a schoolteacher in a traffic accident.

The year after he assumed control of the Disciples of Truth, Caffey was a suspect in a robbery and his home was searched by the police.


James Caffey in 1961, from the ‘Springfield News-Leader’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

The officers described what they found in Caffey’s residence as “one of the largest and most weird assortments ever obtained here with a search warrant”. The cache included stolen goods, lock picking equipment, narcotics, hypodermic needles and syringes, and “lewd photographs”.

Officers also found suitcases filled with diplomas and gold seals, a package addressed to “James R. Caffey, MD” and a prescription pad with the same name and title. These last items connected Caffey to the Disciples of Truth.


Items found in the home of James Caffey by the police, from the ‘Springfield News-Leader’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

The articles of incorporation for the Disciples of Truth allowed its owner to “confer academic honors, degrees, and certificates” on students. Since degree-granting institutions at this time were mostly unregulated, this allowed Caffey to operate what is commonly known as a diploma mill: a business that sells certifications and degrees through the mail while requiring little, if any, coursework, or abiding by educational standards.

Caffey was also able to use the Disciples of Truth to award himself credentials as a medical doctor, which he used to order and receive narcotics through the mail. (Ironically, his friends and family had called him “Doc” after he worked at a local hospital as a teenager.)

But his plans were quickly put on hold. After the police searched Caffey’s residence, they discovered a large quantity of cocaine he was storing in a safety deposit box at a local bank. “Doc” Caffey was then charged with possession of narcotics and given a 20-year prison sentence.

In 1973, Caffey was paroled after serving a little more than half of his sentence, and only a few years later, he was operating a massive and lucrative diploma mill.

Caffey acquired the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences, a long-dormant unaccredited school from Missouri that only existed on paper, but made the Disciples of Truth the centre of his operation.

Through it, he created and organised the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences and numerous other churches, seminaries, and universities. Caffey also erroneously believed that the Disciples of Truth provided him with a loophole to avoid paying taxes on his earnings since it was a religious organisation.

The operation was promoted through small, classified advertisements in national magazines that offered readers “degrees, diplomas, (and) certificates” that they could earn through studying at home, writing a thesis, or by earning credit from their previous work experience.

Those who wrote into the Disciples of Truth soon found that the requirements were negligible, and they could essentially buy degrees ranging from high school diplomas to doctorates, as well as ministerial credentials.


Credit: Philip Deslippe.

As the money poured in, Caffey was savvy enough to avoid criminal charges for years despite constant complaints. When the regents of the state of Oklahoma passed a resolution to stop one of his colleges in 1979, he moved and reestablished his operation in the neighbouring state of Missouri, one of a handful of states that had no laws against diploma mills.

He also used numerous semantic tricks to stay technically within the law: his schools were called “non-traditional” institutions, degrees were “awarded” not bought, and all monies sent to the Disciples of Truth were described as “examination fees” that only covered administrative expenses.

For those members of the public who doubted the legitimacy of his degrees, Caffey created a fake accrediting body to provide the appearance of validity to his schools.

Bringing criminal charges against Caffey proved to be impossible for investigators and prosecutors. Not only did he operate within a legal grey area, but it was difficult to find people who bought degrees through the Disciples of Truth who would come forward and testify against him, since these potential “victims” had their own ulterior motives in obtaining dubious credentials.

Two US government agencies, however, looked for indirect ways to shut down the Disciples of Truth. The Internal Revenue Service investigated Caffey for not paying taxes on the money he made selling diplomas, and the United States Postal Service tried to establish that he was using the mail to “obtain money through false representations”.

Their efforts dramatically culminated in January 1982. As the Internal Revenue Service was finalising a warrant to search Caffey’s home for evidence of tax evasion, postal officials ordered a stop the mail that came to the Disciples of Truth which effectively ended its ability to operate.

Five days later, Caffey’s home in Missouri was gutted in a massive fire. Investigators found gasoline and lighter fluid throughout the charred remains of the house and described the fire as a clear act of arson.

Caffey was so scared by these developments and the prospect of returning to jail that he immediately cut ties with his diploma mills and left them to his former salesman turned associate Anthony Geruntino. For the next few years, Geruntino used the Disciples of Truth to open new schools such as American Western University in Utah and Arizona.

Despite his efforts, Caffey acted too late to avoid criminal charges. While the Internal Revenue Service and Postal Service were closing in on the Disciples of Truth, a third US government agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had been gathering evidence on Caffey and others for years as part of a nationwide investigation of diploma mills codenamed “Operation Dipscam”.

In 1985, Operation Dipscam bore fruit. A federal grand jury indicted Caffey, Geruntino, and several others on charges of fraud and conspiracy stemming from the sale of thousands of degrees from a network of twenty-two bogus educational institutions.

Geruntino was arrested in Utah along with his secretary after making a presentation to a local town council about the benefits of his Southwestern University. Caffey was arrested the next morning in Missouri. Eventually they were both found guilty of fraud and each sentenced to five years in prison.

There was a wave of outrage in the wake of Operation Dipscam that was directed at both the operators of the diploma mills as well as their customers who were seen as knowingly buying fake degrees for their own advancement or vanity.

Through the diploma mills, thousands of unqualified people were placed in positions of power as nurses, medical technicians, schoolteachers, and accountants. Holders of bogus degrees were found in such high-reaching places as NASA, the Navy, the Pentagon, and even the White House.


Man with a degree from the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences, from the ‘Intelligencer Journal’, 1983. Items found in the home of James Caffey by the police, from the ‘Springfield News-Leader’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

‘The most ordained man in the world’

In all the publicity surrounding Caffey and his diploma mills, Homer Bradshaw was rarely mentioned, and when he was, it was only briefly as the original incorporator of the Disciples of Truth. Bradshaw made no public statement about the massive crime ring that developed from the small study group that began decades earlier at his home.

There is no evidence as to how and why the articles of incorporation for the Disciples of Truth originally changed hands. Homer Bradshaw most likely crossed paths with the inveterate criminal Caffey because of Bradshaw’s life as a closeted gay man.

Although Bradshaw described himself in a letter as having “no sense of guilt or shame” about who he was, he lived in an era when homosexuality was illegal and considered a mental illness in the United States. Gay social spaces were often controlled by members of organised crime who offered protection from police raids at a cost.

Gay men and women of that time were vulnerable to blackmail and extortion. This may have been the reason behind Bradshaw’s missionary tour of Sikh communities on the West Coast in 1958. A few months before he departed, two young men were charged with extorting Bradshaw after robbing him. Being out of state on business as a reverend kept Bradshaw from having to testify in court and explain why he picked up one of the young men in his car late at night outside a train station.

The various Sikhs in America and India who backed Bradshaw’s efforts likely took his claims of conversion seriously, but Sikhism was a just small part of Bradshaw’s prolific history of joining religions, collecting titles and creating organisations.

In the year before establishing the original Disciples of Truth, Bradshaw had incorporated another New Age organisation and the Oklahoma diocese of the Reformed Catholic Church, a schismatic group not aligned with Rome. During his time as a Sikh, Bradshaw gained a PhD from the Living Way Bible College in Tulsa.

Bradshaw’s religious experimentation continued at a similarly dizzying pace after he left the Sikh fold. During a 10-year period between 1964 to 1974, he founded seven more religious organisations and was a participant in several others. He lectured on Islam to the Moslem Students Association at a nearby university, officiated a Christian wedding and funeral, became a Buddhist priest, and established one society dedicated to the Shinto-derived new religion of Oomoto and another to the Bengali saint Haranath Banerjee.

As he did with Sikhs in California and India 14 years earlier, Bradshaw offered himself to various groups as a humble and devout convert who was eager to serve them and establish centers for them in the United States. One representative was so convinced by him that they wrote, “The yearning, firm faith, sincerity and enthusiasm of Rev. Homer… are unparalleled.”

Beyond enthusiasm, he was also adept at creating organisations and navigating bureaucracy. In a letter to the Haranath Society, Bradshaw made specific requests for letters and certificates that would allow him to incorporate a new organisation in the United States, accept donations, and order books at a wholesale rate. By the late-Seventies, he worked for a municipal government in Oklahoma in which he navigated local homeowners through complicated federal grant programs.


Credit: Philip Deslippe.

Bradshaw clearly took personal satisfaction from his many titles, publications and lectures. He referred to himself as “a recognised authority on the great world religions” and boasted of others referring to him as “the most ordained man in the world”. But this did not necessarily mean that Bradshaw was a dilettante with no real or fixed religious identity.

Like so many spiritual seekers in America, Bradshaw saw the exploration of one religion after another itself as a legitimate path, and one that granted him expertise and authority. He described his many conversions as both a quarter-century-long “search for Truth” and a single, consistent ministry that was “characterized by its freedom, universality, and love”.

The freedom and universality of Bradshaw’s ministry, however, bordered on anarchy. Bradshaw believed that others like him should be free to move from one faith to another as he did, and that they should be empowered to do so with whatever credentials they wanted.

Years before the articles of incorporation of the Disciples of Truth were handed over to Caffey, Bradshaw used them to grant divinity degrees and certificates of ordination to “a number of other sincere persons” that left them “free of any type of ecclesiastical obedience or doctrinal formula”.

There are only scant traces of the ordinations granted by Bradshaw. One was his friend Alvin Gibson who became a minister through the Disciples of Truth, ran a small spiritualist church in Tulsa, and conducted an interfaith marriage between a Baptist groom and a Jewish bride.

Years later, in something close to Bradshaw’s original intent, a temple for the syncretic Brazilian religion Umbanda used a degree from the Disciples of Truth to become credentialed and establish a place of worship in New York City.

It is far less likely that the massive and lucrative diploma mill operation that came out of Bradshaw's group of spiritual seekers-turned-Sikh converts was part of his original intent. In the hands of someone like Caffey, the unique power and lack of oversight given to religious organisations like the Disciples of Truth under American law was able to be exploited on a scale far beyond a handful of ministerial credentials.

Homer Bradshaw died in Tulsa in February of 1989 at the age of 62, and James Caffey died in his home in Springfield, Missouri, 12 years later at the age of 69.

Traces of the Disciples of Truth have remained in the decades since their deaths in the resumes of political candidates, the biographies of businessmen, and numerous obituaries around the country that have touted degrees from American Western University and the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences.

The first Sikh gurdwara in Tulsa was recently established by the local Punjabi Sikh community. Like so many other gurdwaras in the United States, it was purchased through fundraising and renovated with volunteer labour. It stands 20 km away from the small home in northern Tulsa where Homer Bradshaw met with several others nearly 70 years ago and created the first group of American Sikh converts.

Beginning Fall 2025 Grove City College will be launching an online master's degree in Economics, which they describe as "thoroughly Austrian in its curriculum and faculty." 

They don't take fed money so you have to work out your own financing. No specific price info I could find, but current master's degree tuition runs $750/unit, and $950/unit for their business analytics program. Not cheap, but less than George Mason.

If you can stand the wait, could be a worthy successor to the Mises Institute's now defunct online MA.

I would have expected him to be a physics major, but it turns out failed assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks had an AS degree in Engineering Science from regionally accredited (MSCHE) Community College of Allegheny County. It's the gold standard, you know.

Quote:Crooks graduated from the Community College of Allegheny County in May 2024 with an Associate in Science degree in Engineering Science, a spokesperson for the college confirmed to CBS News. Crooks also worked at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center as a dietary aide, according to the facility's administrator.

Quote:It Is Time to Treat Higher Education as the Business It Is


07/09/2024 • Mises Wire • David Brady, Jr.

So many of the problems with higher education stem from the involvement of government in the market.

Not a day goes by without a TikTok video surfacing of unhappy Gen-Zers or millennials lamenting their career choices that stemmed from college education. On top of this, student debt has become a hot-button political issue. And nearly every conservative laments the rise of such degrees as “gender studies” or “sociology” that seem to be little more than proxies for progressive ideological indoctrination with a price tag. Higher education has become a mess.

Though the above issues may only seem loosely connected by their relation to higher education, they share a more specific point of connection: government funding of universities. From direct funding to student loans, the United States federal government has acted in a way that divorces the customers from the producers of higher education, and the result has been one problem after another. Chief among those problems is ideological bias and the unmarketable degrees mentioned above.

The growing problem of a left-wing intellectual orthodoxy is particularly concerning. In an academic setting, left-wing aligned professors outnumber their right-wing counterparts five to one. Conservative students are often afraid of expressing their views, being regularly outnumbered by liberal-leaning students. A study on the University of North Carolina system found that liberal students dominated with a three to one ratio to conservative students and that conservatives faced the bulk of pressure to not express their views. Gone is the age of valued debate in the “marketplace of ideas.”

Sadly, many of the proposed “solutions” by conservatives are lacking. They likely will only make things worse than they already are.

The Core of the Problem

As mentioned above, the government has fundamentally divorced the consumer-producer relationship that should exist in higher education. If conservative students are among the customers, then surely their viewpoints should be reflected in universities, no? Discrimination is expensive, as you either alienate productive employees or potential customers. Some universities might find value in discriminating against certain viewpoints, but that is true of every market good. It might be costly to discriminate against effective conservative professors or eliminate a consumer base, thus they will tend to cost more. Most universities will realize this is a poor business decision and thus cater to all their customers.

But are students truly the customers?

Figure 1: Percentage distribution of total revenues for degree-granting postsecondary institutions, by control of institution and source of funds (2020–21)


Source: National Center for Educational Statistics.

According to the Center for Educational Statistics, in the fiscal year 2020–21, over 40 percent of public-university revenue was provided by government grants, contracts, and appropriations. That compares to just 16 percent coming from student tuition. If one looks at even that small revenue amount paid for by tuition you might spot evidence of government money. Economics Data Initiative reported in 2021 that over 92 percent of student loan debt is federal student loan debt—meaning it is taxpayer money fronted to new students to pay their college tuition and costs. Seeing as there have not been any significant, if any, changes to the federal student loan system, the percentage of tuition coming from student loans is likely still overwhelming.

The Core Applied: Ideological Bias

Conservative as well as many libertarian students have lamented the fall of higher education. It has become a liberal hegemon as evidenced above. This stems from the fundamental divorce in consumer-producer relations.

The revenue stream that colleges rely upon is not from the pockets of their own customers. They rely upon a flow of money from the government. If conservative students remove themselves, who cares? They have no reason to adjust their business model as their customer base was never really the student body but rather government bureaucrats who offer them grants, endowments, and the like.

Traditionally, providing professors who have potentially controversial points of view with a secure job was the role of tenure. However, the tenure system relies upon the consent of one’s colleagues and likely one’s provost. With an overdominant liberal orthodoxy, there is little reason for them to allow a professor who doesn’t fall in line unless the professor manages to conceal their views.

The government stepping between the consumer (the students) and the producers (the universities) changes who is catered to. The divorced college appeals to the entrenched bureaucrat rather than students who may have different social or political views. This is in terms of free speech policy and in its staffing policies.

The Core Applied: Unmarketable Degrees

If one has paid attention to any amount of news related to universities, especially Harvard as of late, they are aware of the power of donations. Revenue from students isn’t the only source for money and operations of a university. Donors play a large role in the shaping of policy. Reliance on donors might provide an insight into how unmarketable degrees might be eliminated.

Only successful alumni can donate to universities. A college who wants the most revenue from their alumni must create those alumni. Successful alumni rarely come from those with the unmarketable degrees above. They must cut the chaff, removing the degrees that aren’t conducive to a return on their proverbial investment.

Is There a Solution?

If one asks Ramesh Ponurru, a columnist for the Washington Post, the solution is simply to spend more money on universities. Primarily, he suggests that the government fund centers that promote more diverse points of view. This may work for specific universities, but to tackle all the problems one might offer a different solution. Dumping more money rarely solves a problem caused by the government.

If one removes government spending on universities, it will force their revenue stream into the hands of students and donors. Conservative students revoking their funds will have a much more significant impact on university revenue, meaning that as a business higher education would be forced to cater toward them or face losses.

If one returns power to the customers, the students, then it is far more likely for this process to receive an overhaul that results in more diversity of thought amongst the educators. Colleges as a business will have a vested interest in providing this diversity, as their bottom line relies upon it.

Ousting students over their political views also becomes unprofitable. Preventing students who deviate from liberal thought from expressing their views, and actively punishing that, will result in a loss of revenue. Thus, shifting to a consumer-funded model would go a long way toward alleviating the problem that is a lack of diversity of thought in higher education.

The solution, as is often the case, for many of the problems facing higher education is to get the government out of it. The government divorces the essential connection between customer and producer in education, meaning that the universities do not cater to the students but rather to the government. When higher education caters to the government for funding, they are more likely to express views the government would like to hear. Research will be manipulated in a way to secure further governmental funding rather than provide actual results. The government’s tentacles spread into the system and pervert it in such a manner that it no longer reflects the values of those who wish to use the service. Instead, it reflects the whims of the government.

One can solve these problems by treating higher education the same as any other business on the marketplace. Universities and colleges should not be given favoritism or protectionism by the government any more than any other business. Competition will improve quality and push down prices, as is the law of the free market. Fixing the problem doesn’t involve spending more on higher education—it involves spending less.

They're from the government and they're here to help you. Sure they are. ICE seems to be hellbent on challenging the IRS as the least trusted federal agency. Fingers crossed that plaintiffs will win.

Quote:Indian students who enrolled in fake university set up by ICE can sue federal government
By LU Staff July 4, 2024

600 foreign students who enrolled at a Michigan university that turned out to be an immigration sting operation by ICE can sue the government for a refund of their tuition, a federal appeals court ruled on June 25.

Five years ago, the news media publicly exposed the fact that the “University of Farmington” was a sting set up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target “pay-to-stay” student visa fraud.

ICE opened the fake University of Farmington in 2016. As Reason Magazine notes,

Quote:    It would ultimately lure in around 600 people on student visas, all of them except one from India, and collect roughly $6 million in tuition and fees from them.

    The government claimed that the foreign students were made well aware by recruiters and fake school officials that they were paying for classes and coursework that didn’t exist, but plaintiffs in the lawsuit say they were “unwitting victims,” entrapped by a school that had all the outward appearances of being a legitimate institution.

    The university had a website, a regularly updated Facebook page, and a fake history dating back to the 1950s. Records obtained by local news outlets showed Farmington was incorporated by the state of Michigan and listed by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges. More importantly, it was certified by the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which…is the “ultimate seal of official approval,” for foreign students looking for an American education.

    Once exposed, ICE quickly shut down the school and arrested roughly 250 former students. Many were deported, while the rest voluntarily left the country.

On June 25, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government isn’t shielded from a class action lawsuit filed four years ago by Teja Ravi, a former student at the fake “University of Farmington,” because it entered into contracts with hundreds of students like Ravi for services that it never provided.

The ruling overturned a decision two years ago by the Court of Federal Claims that dismissed Ravi’s lawsuit, and sends it back to the Court of Claims for further proceedings. Both the Biden and Trump administrations claimed that sovereign immunity barred Ravi’s suit.

The appeals court judges unanimously ruled that the government was not immune and had not proven its claim that its contract with Ravi wasn’t enforceable because it never intended to honor the agreement in the first place.

“The government relies on the notion that, because it was only pretending to operate a university, there could not have been intent to contract on its part, even though it took (and has kept) the money Mr. Ravi paid for the offered education, and it makes that assertion even accepting the assumption, required at the present stage of the case, that Mr. Ravi intended to obtain the education for which he was paying,” the ruling said. “The argument is that even when there is an objectively clear offer and acceptance, with acceptance in the form of paying money to the offeror, there is no contract enforceable against the offeror, for want of mutuality of intent, as long as the offeror had its fingers crossed behind its back when making the offer and accepting the money.”

Here's an interesting research topic for Rich Douglas in case he looks for another school on-probation for another easy PhD~ If one learns that your alma mater was on probation multiple times due to various accreditation problems which led to its eventual closure, would it be illogical for any human being to question the academic vigor of your degree? And would it be illogical for dumbass morons like Expert Rich Douglas not to defend his...umm...his PhD? Will mark-down degrees like Union limit your career options (i.e. like teaching at the unaccredited (NON-GOLD STANDARD) Virginia Commonwealth University (now called Fairfax)? I wasn't referring to you, Rich.

I think Rich Douglas can also use John Bear's help again, since Bear has first-hand experience as the ex part-owner of the defunct and unaccredited degree mill Columbia Pacific University.

Tom

Tom

I couldn't help but to notice there are lots of teachers wannabes at degreeinfo.

Here's the psychosis: If you want to teach "one day" your NA degree may limit your "options." Actually, if you want to teach "one day," you first need to have teaching and/or industry experience, which is not something that comes with a RA degree. Thanks faggots.

Unfortunately, an NA degree isn't your cure for delusional problems especially for penis enlarger/vibrator users like Randel1234 and sanantone.

But teach what though? Half of these clowns don't even tell you where they got their high school degrees. Or maybe they can teach people how to end up like faggots Steve Levicoff and Rich Douglas- get a PhD from a bottom-feeder school that's been placed on PROBATION MULTIPLE TIMES and eventually to its final demise- losing regional accreditation (aka the GOLD STANDARD) and closes forever. Phone lines disconnected. CLAP CLAP CLAP

I'm surprised none of the clowns at degreeinfo sent thank you cards to the regional accreditor HLC/Higher Learning Commission (THE GOLD STANDARD) for shutting down UNION HIGH- something that should've been done decades ago.

For Rich Douglas, it's a particular sad case because his DOCTOR OF SCIENCE DocSc from University of Leicester wasn't rated as an American doctorate. Apparently when he called WES he had an attidude (depression from hairloss) with the gay boy who answered the phone.

Tom