Your Kid’s Student Debt Is Funding Classes That Won’t Get Them a Job

Let’s be honest about what’s happening on American college campuses. Students are borrowing an average of $32,000 to earn bachelor’s degrees, and what are they getting for that mountain of debt? Classes on queering the Middle Ages and decolonizing French food. I’m not making this up.

A recent report from Young America’s Foundation pulled back the curtain on the scam that higher education has become. Universities across the country are charging students thousands per credit hour to sit through courses steeped in Marxist ideology and identity politics. The University of Pennsylvania takes the cake at over $5,600 for a single three-credit course. That’s real money for classes like “Sex Wars” and “Extreme Heat: White Nationalism in the Age of Climate Change.” Try putting that on a resume and see where it gets you.

Here’s what really gets me. We’ve got total student loan debt in this country pushing past $1.8 trillion. Read that number again. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that four in ten recent college graduates are underemployed. They’re working jobs that don’t even require the degrees they went into debt to earn. But sure, let’s keep pretending that a course called “Marx for Today” at the University of Minnesota is preparing students for anything other than bitter disappointment.

The University of Minnesota charges over $1,600 for three credit hours. Students can use that money to learn how Marx and the Marxist tradition offer solutions to racial injustice and environmental devastation. You know what would actually solve some problems? Teaching students skills that employers want. Teaching them how free markets have lifted billions out of poverty. Teaching them something, anything, that might help them pay back those loans.

Syracuse University isn’t any better. Try $8,000 per three-credit course for gems like “Critical Whiteness Studies” and “God Sex Death.” I’d love to see the career placement statistics for students who major in this stuff. Actually, I wouldn’t, because it would just make me angry.

Rob Tandy from Young America’s Foundation nailed it when he connected the dots. We’re seeing a massive shift toward socialism among young Americans, and it’s not happening in a vacuum. These kids are getting indoctrinated in taxpayer-subsidized institutions that are supposed to be preparing them for productive lives. Instead, they’re learning that capitalism is evil and that their country is fundamentally rotten. Then we act surprised when they embrace policies that would destroy the very system that created the prosperity to afford these bloated universities in the first place.

Here’s something else worth considering. Heterodox Academy found that liberal faculty outnumber conservative faculty at American universities by ratios ranging from 2:1 to 82:1. Let that sink in. At some institutions, you’ve got 82 liberal professors for every single conservative one. That’s not education. That’s propaganda with a taxpayer-funded endowment.

A real education challenges you. It exposes you to ideas you disagree with and forces you to defend your positions with logic and evidence. But that’s not what’s happening anymore. Students walk into classrooms expecting debate and discovery, only to realize there’s one accepted viewpoint. Step outside that narrow lane and you risk your grade, your reputation, maybe even your future at the institution. All while paying tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege.

You won’t find many courses examining Milton Friedman or free-market economics. Those perspectives don’t fit the narrative. Instead, students get told that capitalism is inequitable and socialism is the ideal path forward. Never mind that socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried. Never mind that free markets have created more wealth and lifted more people out of poverty than any other system in human history.

The real tragedy here isn’t just the wasted money, though that’s bad enough. It’s the wasted potential. An entire generation is being taught to view their country through the lens of grievance and resentment rather than opportunity and innovation. They’re learning to see themselves as victims of systems rather than as individuals capable of shaping their own destinies. That’s not just bad economics. It’s poison for the soul of a free society.

Universities used to be places where the best ideas competed and won on merit. Now they’re expensive echo chambers producing graduates who can’t afford homes but can tell you all about reparations and queering historical periods. We’re destroying both our economy and our culture, one overpriced useless course at a time.

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