Robb: Are universities hurting society?

The paroxysm of identity and grievance politics that engulfed college campuses after the ouster of the University of Missouri president should be a conversation starter.

Basically by default, a college degree became a necessary credential for a white-collar professional job. There is no logical reason for that. It’s a highly inefficient method of such credentialing. But that is the way things evolved beginning in the 1950s.

Today, the question presents itself: Have universities and colleges become such indoctrination centers for identity and grievance politics that having them play this role is a net societal detriment?

What's wrong with grievance politics

A distinction needs to be made between the hard sciences, such as chemistry and biology, and the social sciences, such as sociology and political science.

In the hard sciences, American universities still do a first-rate job of research, education and job preparation – although identity and grievance politics have crept into admission policies even here.

But in the social sciences, identity and grievance politics have become the main course. They are inescapable. And they have consumed American higher education.

In this latest round, the pattern was pretty much the same everywhere. Some minority students complain that they feel “marginalized.” They don’t feel “safe,” emotionally rather than physically.

The problem of entitlement

Now, this complaint is self-evident nonsense. There is no more racially sensitive organism on the planet than academia.

Nevertheless, university administrators apologize. Additional diversity officers, sensitivity training and minority faculty members are promised.

This socializes all students, not just those directly pandered to in this way, to a sense of entitlement. You get things because of who you are, not because of what you do.

Today's toon: Mizzou's big tackle

The real world doesn’t operate this way. American society is still mostly a market-based meritocracy. A sense of entitlement doesn’t get you very far. The left is trying to impose identity and grievance politics on American businesses. But so far, their success is at the margins.

In the real world, you get things because of what you do.

No doubt there is lingering bigotry. But no longer is it a major hurdle to academic or business success. Rather than being pandered to, students claiming to feel marginalized or emotionally unsafe should be socialized to the habits of mind and work ethic that will enable them to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them in a market-based meritocracy.

The Missouri lesson

Take the Black football players who took down the University of Missouri president. They threatened not to play. College football is big money for such schools. So, the president is gone.

No doubt these students are feeling powerful and entitled. They had leverage and they used it. But what have they really been taught?

In one to three years, most of them, and perhaps all them, will no longer be football players. Their leverage will be gone. And, according to recent statistics, a quarter of them won’t even have obtained a college degree. What will this experience have taught them that will prepare them to make their way in the world?

Boivin: Missouri's empowered athletes a good thing

A social scientist who wanted to do something useful would do a follow-up study on where these boycotting college football players are in 10 years. I suspect it will be a grim story.

At this point, it’s not much of a stretch to say that the socialization students get at university actually has to be overcome for them to become productive workers.

So, what's the point of college?

Which returns us to our question. If universities are net detriments in terms of socialization, why should a college degree be a required credential for white-collar professional jobs?

Four years of the academic content offered in the social sciences is hardly necessary for such jobs. In fact, often it is barely relevant.

The general business courses that would be helpful and any specialty training could easily take place in a year or two. If done in association with an internship of some sort, it would produce a much better prepared white-collar professional at a fraction of the cost.

The universities have benefited enormously from this default role as the credentialing agent for white-collar professionals. Most students are there to grow up and get their occupational tickets punched. Few are truly there for the intellectual pursuits universities were originally intended to facilitate.

Something for the universities, and the rest of us, to think about.

Reach Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com.