Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch. And in today's episode, we're asking the question, should we care if colleges die? This is prompted by an article in The Atlantic written by Danielle Allen, who is a college professor, writing about how America and its universities need a new social contract.

That's because studies are showing that the American public is losing trust in colleges. As a result, the whole idea of college is facing a kind of collapse. It it isn't being valued the way it once was in society and even financially is at risk with the Trump administration recently applying some pressure on colleges that if they won't do or say or not do and not say the things the administration wants, they will lose hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. What professor Allen is arguing is that for a long time, America has benefited from a kind of symbiotic relationship with the university, that universities have let out in research and in studies and things that have gone on to benefit society as well as training young generations to morph into adulthood. But but what a professor Allen is also arguing is that colleges have made some mistakes and as a consequence need to go back and redo some things.

For example, science and technology education is getting massive amounts of funding, but colleges really have long since foregone teaching students on civics and and personal responsibility and becoming a good citizen. As a result, the divide between the so called elites and the middle class is being furthered. People who have the kind of skills that are champion in a white color setting are being served by colleges, and everyone else is kind of being left behind. We also have a society that is getting rapidly more accomplished and rapidly wealthier and rapidly worse at actual civic engagements. So what professor Allen is arguing for is a renewed way of the college understanding itself as a source of societal good.

The college is gonna make sure they're giving society what they need. Listen. I don't know if that's true or not, but it brings up a bigger question. If colleges are losing trust and if as a consequence, they're in danger of of becoming something less valued in our society, is that even a problem? I mean, here's my point.

Colleges for the last thirty years, we all know, have becoming increasingly incubators for some of the worst world views available on the planet. They become incubators of gender confusion, of of, unbiblical sexuality, of communism, of socialism, of all these things that have been either tried and tested in history to have failed or are actually becoming moral negatives in our society. Colleges are propping up the kind of ideology the apostle Paul writes about in Romans one, exchanging truth for trends, for cultural fads. Not only that, a lot of big name universities are propped up by millions or billions of dollars in their endowments so that if they never took another penny for tuition, they could go on for hundreds of years just as they're operating now. And yet they still receive government money, and still tuition costs are rising.

Maybe I'm speaking from a vulnerable place here as a father of five children. But despite having all that money in endowments, college isn't getting cheaper. So you have incubators of all the worst idea ideologies charging us money and taking our tax money all at the same time. And they're not exactly being stewards of those resources in a helpful way. One of the ways you know they're not managing their own money well is that they have to depend on government funding for a variety of the things that they do.

The truth is that it might just be time for a cost analysis of whether or not the American university is doing what it alleges to do and what it should do, whether or not we need a renewed sense of what it means to be a valued citizen and whether or not that always means a white collar job or a blue collar job, whether or not college education is an indispensable part of growing up, and whether or not it should cost what it cost and whether or not it should only be available to certain kinds of people. We have crippling student loan debt. We have a crippling blue collar workforce. We have a country in need of ideological renewal, and I'm not sure colleges help us with any of that. As Christians, we should always be stepping back and asking what is actually true?

What is actually helpful for me and my family, but for society as a whole as well? We should be asking whether or not college makes sense for our family, whether or not and which colleges make sense for our family, and sometimes being okay with the old way of thinking about things, the old way of doing things, moving on. The Bible tells us the fount of wisdom is God himself and his word. I'm not saying a college degree isn't a good thing. I have a couple of degrees, but I am saying this, if all we had is God's word, we have the wisdom we need.

Colleges, the burden of being actually profitable is on them to convince us we actually need them as part of our lives. Hey. Thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

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