Time to Overhaul the University System and Shut Down the Marxist Mills

The education problem has been growing in America for decades, as the costs of educating our children skyrocket and students are churned out of the public education system and universities with less and less actual education.

Test scores aren’t  the only indicator of a failing education system. Man-on-the-street interviews reveal that college age Americans have little or no understanding of American history or the political process. They appear to be focused solely on leftist political issues, like man-made global warming, social “justice,” and anti-American propaganda–and if any student questions his leftist professors or the nonsense they spew in classrooms, he is automatically flunked from the course.

A decades-long growing battle between liberals and conservatives over education is culminating in conservative calls to either get the government and education unions out of education altogether, or to entirely overhaul the system.

The major problems with the current system are:

1) costs have artificially skyrocketed and the taxpayer is left holding the bag for much of it while students incur decades of debt; and

2) Anti-American leftists dominate the university system and classrooms, leaving indoctrinated students with little usable education and mush for brains.

I propose a new government backed higher education option, patterned somewhat after the current online degree programs being offered by a number of universities. Notably, Brigham Young University just expanded its university system to include a worldwide online university that will provide online education and degree programs to hundreds of thousands of students who would otherwise have great difficulty attending one of its campuses in America. The program is designed to deliver the highest quality university education, for a fraction of the cost of campus courses.

In this age of digital access and computer interactivity, it is relatively simple to launch a program that provides students with online classes, with streamed lectures by top experts in every field and stunning graphics, videos and demonstrations of the principles and concepts being taught. A basic 2 year core curriculum will ensure that all students receive across-the-board instruction in math, science, English, history, American politics, etc. Then specialization will occur in 3^rd and 4^th year online courses. This is essentially how colleges and universities are supposed to offer classes now, but they have strayed far from their mandate, with tragic results. [pullquote]streamed lectures by top experts in every field and stunning graphics, videos and demonstrations of the principles and concepts being taught[/pullquote]

Third and fourth year specialization courses in the government-offered online university should emphasize productive degree programs initially; science, engineering, language, history, chemistry, education, pre-medicine, pre-law, etc., with some liberal arts programs being added as the system is more fully developed to accommodate their greater need for interactivity.

To help reduce cheating on exams, a major problem in the current system as well, interactive biometrics and testing centers should be established for this online university system with certified proctors to administer standardized, computerized tests.

Students can take online courses at their own pace, and show up to take the exams at proctored centers as soon as they have completed each course.

Costs, which will be only a fraction of the current $500 billion the American taxpayer shells out for higher education, can be shared by students and the taxpayers. Students can pay a low flat fee for each course, and the federal government can dramatically cut its higher education budget and finance the remaining costs of the online university system.

This will replace the current Student Loan program, which essentially supports a bloated, ineffective higher education system that is little more than a propaganda arm of the global leftist movement. It will also eliminate the current juggernaut of student debt, hanged around the neck of most graduating students in America.

This proposal will provide higher education for anyone who is self-motivated enough to do the work, and who wants it–rich, poor or middle-class. It doesn’t get any easier, cheaper or better than this. By defunding the leftist propaganda mills and eliminating the burgeoning and crippling student debt that keeps graduates from prospering for the first decades of their careers, this proposed federal university system will put education back into higher education.

By James Thompson. James Thompson holds a Juris Doctor degree, and is a published author on several subjects. He is a professional ghostwriter, and ghostwrites on political, legal, business, educational, and many other topics for the nation’s top leaders.