How are universities and colleges in the United States faring in 2025? These are tumultuous times, to be sure, but some problems have been accumulating for years.
As the article linked below indicates, at least seventeen private nonprofit colleges were shuttered in 2024—and some public universities are also at risk, with public campuses closing in Ohio and in Wisconsin. Governments are “blending” or combining other postsecondary state institutions. One enterprising administrator decreed that their institution’s libraries will go “all digital” and should give away all their actual physical books to reduce costs, causing outrage and a reversal.
Will the United States continue down this path, or are there other options? The current president of the nation loudly proclaims how much he likes uneducated people. With this trend, he may well be getting more of them.
Canada also seeing a major contraction, some may say correction. Looking at this list, mostly I think it makes sense to get rid of these programs
Programs like English or Gender Studies really need to demonstrate their value, either to students or to taxpayers. When it’s all just critical navel gazing and feminist glaciers, tenure and 6 figure salaries cannot be sustainable.
English has been a core element of a classical education since the beginning. It needs to be reformed by bringing it back to its roots - teaching literature, rhetoric, and composition - and ditch the woke, post-structuralist theory crap that has turned the past two or three generations off English entirely.
Gender Studies can be scrapped entirely, however. No great loss.
Back in the late 90’s one of the universities in Australia burried several shipping containers full of books on its grounds… as it didn’t have the space in its library for the books.
I think there is a place for literature, but in high school mostly. Some universities should have literature departments, sure, but the market doesn’t need many
Rhetoric and composition have value for everyone, we don’t need English departments for that.
Yeah, but the system is stacked with this now, better to just close departments that can’t reform themselves
Not saying college is bad but you spend the first 2 years of college learning high school level stuff. That’s wasteful, and many universities have been taking in international students as cash cows, admitting rich students who don’t even understand English into wasteful programs.
They need to do it like Germany where last 2 years of high school is “gymnasium” (this is what they’re called in Germany) where you fulfill your general education stuff, and college should be teaching upper division courses only, plus more in depth stuff that would be the equivalent to a master’s degree.
You should be learning actual skills that relate to your major, meaning if you have an English degree you would be taught how to write well.
There’s a lot of bloat in college and I bet you could cut a third of the degree requirement without taking away from the degree at all. For example in geology we are taught cartography skills, which is actually incredibly important, but we don’t need to learn history or government unless we want to go into law. All that history or government stuff was already taught in high school.
Some very good. Had visitor from a California school, he says still a lot of applications than spaces, a lot of applications
not his school, but same system, all reported sky high applications. More schools that fail are tiny and unpopular and frankly a poor choice for a student with high tuition, no name brand value (even UC Schools have big marketing/ads) and thus poor job outlook.
Undergrad needs to be shortened to 3 years instead of 4. Give kids a gap year if they need it or give them a year early to go into the job market and a year less of tuition.
Don’t make them pay 40k a year to take general education courses that don’t make sense anymore. Why the fuck did I need to take and pay for music theory or geology and a lab where I’m literally licking rocks to identify them?
I have YouTube and pretty much the entire knowledge of the human race at the tip of my fingers now. Not to mention AI is changing everything.
I don’t remember the last time I had to identify a type of rock for anything I did.
Yea, I agree unless you’re studying geology there’s no need to take geology. Even within ut Austins general geology degree there’s like 6 or so courses that absolutely makes up what you must learn, the rest being side stuff in various finer disciplines to make it more general (like geophysics and such).
You could cut at least 40 credits from a typical degree plan without taking away from the degree, in other words, they’re just there to pad run times.
Not a one size fits all situation. Most engineers and a lot of science majors require at least four years of college. In fact, many engineers take five to graduate.
This is one reason that parents of overachievers get them on AP tracks in high school.
AP gains exposure to core uni undergrad subjects like advanced mathematics, uni physics, and uni chemistry. That way the student isn’t overwhelmed by freshman semesters of 18-21 hours, necessary if they want to graduate in four years in areas like biomedical, biochemistry, chemical engineering, nuclear engineering, aerospace engineering, etc.
If anything an overachiever needs to work hard in high school in order to work hard in university and get out in four years.
I did a science degree, and we were required to take credits in humanities and social sciences. The explanation was that it would give us a well rounded education, i think i benefit from it to this day
But, we had choices. Had to take x number of credits, but we could choose. I regret my social science choices, humanities choices I would say were great.
Were you required to take geology even though your degree was totally different, or was that one of many options which you chose?
In the US system. You generally had to take 10 classes from 10 different categories not related to your major. This takes a year.
What happens is people come into school and not know wtf they’re there for and just take those 10 courses and half of them will drop out.
For example natural sciences categories. I picked geology.
There’s arts and I picked music theory.
I don’t even remember the rest tbh.
I get the argument is that it makes you well rounded but the reality is that if you’re someone like me who is naturally curious, I easily have learned and applied more in my life from watching different YouTube channels. I don’t understand why I needed to pay 40k to take 10 courses that are not related to what I’m there to actually learn.
If you’re not naturally curious then you’re probably not going to remember anything. I don’t remember even most of the courses I was there to learn.
Maybe, if the goal is simply to graduate in four years.
Thing is, though, that as you get further into an engineering career you find out that what matters - what is actually valued by your employer - are social skills. Too often you find out you can’t just go back at night and pick those up easily, for many reasons including your own budding family (hopefully).