OPINION:
A year-end study from Pew Research Center found that 7 in 10 Americans now say the higher education system in America is rolling along in the wrong direction. By comparison, 56 percent said similarly in 2020.
This is actually good news because it means the vast majority of Americans may finally have reached the breaking point of disgust with colleges and universities and are ready to force a permanent fix.
Enough of the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) playbook. Stop with the wokeism. Quit the LGBTQ coddling. Antisemites, be gone!
Sometimes, it takes some serious problems to push people to demand change. Just look at the day care fraud in Minnesota. For years, various entities have warned about the missing millions of dollars from these tax-paid coffers, but it was only when an independent journalist with a sizable YouTube channel went to the scene of the crime and videotaped the “Quality Learing Center” misspelled sign and mysteriously vacant building that the flow of federal money was put on hold.
“HHS says it’s freezing child care payments to Minnesota after fraud allegations,” ABC News reported, referring to the Department of Health and Human Services.
So could very easily go America’s taxpayer-subsidized places of higher learning.
In fact, so has it gone already to some. Just look at what transpired in the months after pro-Palestinian, Hamas-emboldening, Jew-hating protests and encampments sprang up on dozens of college campuses under then-President Biden’s administration, and when President Trump took office.
In 2025, Trump halted and delayed millions of dollars in grant payments to several universities that failed to properly address on-campus antisemitic incidents. Courts intervened and, in some instances, ordered the funds to once again flow. But the damage to these colleges lingers.
“Seven in 10 Americans now say U.S. higher education is going in wrong direction,” Pew wrote.
“Views of the nation’s colleges and universities have turned more negative among Republicans and Democrats alike,” Pew wrote.
The numbers are in — and they cross party lines.
Forever after, many of the nation’s once-noble Ivy Leagues will carry the stink of antisemitism.
“University administrators overwhelmingly failed to impose meaningful discipline for those who engaged in antisemitic conduct,” the Committee on Education and Workforce concluded in a yearlong investigation in October of 2024.
Among the congressional findings: “Across the board, enforcement of campus rules was wildly uneven, from Harvard and Columbia faculty playing key roles in derailing discipline toward antisemitic conduct violations and Rutgers University actually disciplining Jewish students who spoke out against the harassment, to the overall lack of consequences for those involved in encampments at schools including the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), Yale University (Yale), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),” the committee reported.
This isn’t just distasteful and disgusting.
It’s un-American. It’s immoral. It’s evil.
And the evil hasn’t escaped the notice of the American public who are saying, with a loud and clear and vast majority voice: Maybe college isn’t the best pursuit for my kid, after all.
“FY25 Sees Best Recruiting Numbers in 15 Years,” the U.S. Department of War reported this month.
“Trade School Enrollment is Skyrocketing,” the U.S. Department of Labor wrote in a YouTube headline a few months ago.
Note to antisemitic colleges; memo to woke and DEI-enabling universities: There are other options.
And Americans are choosing them in droves.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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