Here's what American universities should teach instead of activism Industry and moral skills are essential for our students and the future of our country By Gerson Moreno-Riaño Fox News Published July 27, 2024
Honestly, when my alma mater, Cornerstone University sent me an email touting this essay by President Moreno-Riaño and asking me to share it on social media, I don't think they had this in mind. However, the excellent professors of the Humanities Department, the one that President Moreno-Riaño demolished this year {The Cornerstone University I graduated from is no more, my daughter won't be going there.} me how to think, so that's what I'll do.
{The Fox News essay is below in italics, my commentary will be in brackets [and bold]}
Colleges and universities are failing our country. This seems to be the growing consensus among an increasingly large percentage of Americans and business leaders.
[From the very start this essay bothers me a great deal. This is being written by the President of Cornerstone University, I had great respect for this university's past presidents, but I have no respect for the attitude of President Moreno-Riaño which in this essay is being derived from business concerns and survey results. Why? Because Cornerstone University is supposed to be a Christian organization. That's why it was founded, that was its mission for generations, and that is one of the main reasons why most of its students chose to go there, it brought me there in 1994. A Christian organization, be it a church, a publishing house, a homeless shelter, or a school, is not supposed to be swimming with the current of our culture, business world, and politics, instead we are to serve a different master, on a different mission. As an essay about secular Higher Education this opening line would still be disturbing as it frames the conversation about higher education as an ordinary business, which it is not, but coming from the President of Cornerstone University, it is ominous indeed.]
The recent Gallup and Lumina Foundation report shows that an increasing number of Americans have little to no confidence in higher education. For the first time since Gallup begin to measure the confidence level in higher education, America is "now nearly equally divided among those who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence (36%), some confidence (32%), or little or no confidence (32%) in higher education."
This finding represents a seismic shift from 2015, when almost 60% of Americans had a high level of confidence and 10% had little or none.
[Opinion surveys reflect what the people who respond to them are ingesting, not necessarily what is real. It isn't a coincidence that Fox News and similar outlets run stories and opinion pieces attacking higher education (and public education in general) on a regular basis. Perhaps this steady drumbeat of doom and gloom has something to do with the changing attitudes found in the survey?]
Many business leaders equally reflect the growing lack of confidence. In a recent interview, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO, criticized colleges and universities for the little focus they place on helping graduates find good employment.
This unwillingness, so argues Dimon, not only places an exorbitant amount of pressure on businesses to train their employees – something pre-employment education should do – but also disenfranchises large sectors of society.
Kiersten Barnet, executive director of New York Jobs CEO Council – a group of 30 of America’s top CEOs and their companies – was perhaps more direct than Dimon, stating: "When you think about what you need to do a job, it is skills. It's not a degree."
[I don't know Jamie Dimon or Kiersten Barnet, so this is nothing personal about either or them, but is the goal of higher education to please the CEO of a giant corporation or the executive director of an organization representing our nation's largest business interests? Again, this may legitimately be one of the goals of secular higher education, to bolster the economy by providing workers suitable to what businesses want, but nowhere in this essay is the question asked, let alone answered, "What kind of students ought Christian Higher Education be aiming to form? What role does Christian discipleship play in the process of educating young people? How can our professors be mentors to students, not simply teaching them job skills but how to mature into God-honoring adults?"]
America’s growing doubts about colleges and universities are rooted in a list of causes too long to detail here, but it is worth noting that the lack of confidence is connected to certain factors. The most notable of these being what colleges and universities teach and do not teach.
In Gallup’s report, of the Americans who register little or no confidence, almost 40%, criticize colleges and universities "for not teaching relevant skills, for college degrees not meaning much, or for graduates not being able to find employment."
Indeed, a new survey released this week by Cengage Group found that 55% of recent graduates said their degree programs did not prepare them for the workforce, with 70% saying basic AI training should be taught. These are, in essence, the same concerns of business leaders like Dimon and Barnet.
[Basic AI training? God help us. So much for being taught how to think biblically.]
Gallup’s report goes a step further, however. Slightly over 40% of Americans in this same low to no confidence group think that our colleges and universities "are pushing certain political agendas." In short, many believe that higher education is miseducating our students. Rather than preparing for careers and a productive life, colleges and universities appear to be preparing students to be radical activists.
[I don't disagree that today's students could use less politics in their lives, so could the millions of adults who spend way to much time engaged in the bashing of "them" and uncritical praising of "us." Politics is a drug, much of America is addicted, and it isn't healthy. But is the answer to focus on job skills and give up on the Humanities?? Such a notion would have horrified our ancestors in the faith, men and women who were deeply educated in languages, art, history, philosophy, music, and more.]
Further, the miseducation of our students as it relates to gainful employment – "good jobs" – is a serious problem since it robs from our students the opportunity for a fuller humanity. Jobs and compensation are essential for our humanity. But good jobs and good compensation are even more essential for a flourishing humanity and, by extension, a flourishing society.
Amid its many laudable goals, higher education must focus on preparing students for good jobs and compensation. To do any less is to perpetrate a great injustice on our students and our future.
[A good job is better than a bad job. Is that all higher education should be about? If people earn more money will they have better lives, will society be uplifted if our graduates have career success? The answers to such questions aren't simple, at least they shouldn't be. The university that I graduated from in the 1990's had a much more holistic approach to the flourishing of its students, both while they attended and preparing them for the future.]
When students are miseducated to become radical activists, the injustice perpetrated is even greater and the damage is even more corrosive. Students are duped into believing that radical activism adds value to their own life and to society when in fact it is the opposite. Such pursuits rob from students the exercise of their productive full potential, thus undermining their good as well as that of all society.
[That is a really bold statement, one worthy of a pundit or politician, but one that should be unworthy of a university president. You know what adds value to life? Having a purpose greater than earning money. You know what uplifts society? People willing to sacrifice for causes they deem greater than themselves. I'm too young to remember college campuses in the 1960's, but would our country really be better off if students there had focused on job skills and not worried about Civil Rights or the Vietnam War? Should students stick their heads in the sand and shut up about the injustices they perceive in the world? You know what else is radical? Following Jesus. Not saying that you are a Christian, but really and truly following Jesus, living like him. Thinking and feeling like Jesus, trying to echo his passion and compassion. Radical activism, when propelled by truly Christ-honoring worldview, is the stuff of legends. If you seek to starve the activism you don't like (because it is blue not red, or red not blue), you destroy the activism that the world truly needs alongside it.]
To re-ignite public and business confidence in their work, colleges and universities must have a singular focus on preparing students for meaningful jobs and careers. This begins with implementing industry-ready skills-based educational outcomes for their general education curriculum and all academic majors.
[A singular focus on jobs and careers is the death of Christian Higher Education.]
Colleges and universities should also require internships or apprenticeships for the honing of soft and industry-specifics skills as well as to create employment opportunities. And colleges and universities should require all academic departments to have industry and business partnerships for the continual refinement of curricula and preparation of students for the market.
While there may be additional market-related refinements that could be implemented, there is no doubt that the above initiatives would go a long way to re-igniting our confidence in higher education.
[I understand why business leaders would cheer this essay, workers ready to do their job is what they want the most, but don't we want more out of education than job skills? Aren't we trying to foster holistic human beings and not just employees that help keep corporate costs low and profits high?]
The focus on jobs and market preparation must also consider and integrate the enduring questions and answers to what it means to be human. This is what the humanities used to address.
Today, much of the humanities are characterized by a turn toward a contrarianism and deconstructionism that emphasize moral ambiguity and skepticism. Such an approach has resulted in generations of students who at best are sophisticated critics and at worst are radical activists. These students are too often unable to discern, affirm and defend truth and what it means to be human.
A case in point are the recent protests in which students were clearly unable to discern good from evil. Some college presidents also fared no better.
Colleges and universities must develop and implement moral skills educational outcomes for their general education curriculum and all academic majors that prepare all students to discern and affirm what is true, beautiful and good.
[And how will Cornerstone University's students develop these skills without a Humanities Department and with only part-time adjunct professors teaching these classes?? That President Moreno-Riaño has chosen to publicly rail against the Humanities Departments of other unspecified universities while gutting that of his own, one that had been both high class and high quality for generations, is deeply upsetting to alumni such as myself, truly it is heartbreaking.]
All students should also have a significant service requirement during each year of college that is a prerequisite for graduation. This service requirement would be connected to the moral skills outcomes allowing students to apply and refine their moral reasoning and judgment in preparation for life beyond college.
[One brief moment of agreement. My cross-cultural ministry experience, a month in Guatemala, was a life-changing positive experience.]
Our colleges and universities must educate students with industry skills that position them for great market contributions. This education must also include moral skills that position our students for living a great life characterized by truth, beauty and goodness.
[At the end of the essay, the idea of truth, beauty, and goodness as part of education is briefly mentioned, but only after declaring that Humanities Departments are what is wrong with higher education, and only in the context of what has happened to Cornerstone University under his tenure. It rings hollow.]
Both industry and moral skills are essential for our students and for the future of our country, and a serious focus on these would go a long way in re-igniting the confidence in America’s colleges and universities.
[It is sad for me to say it, but I don't have any confidence in Cornerstone University under its current leadership. I know that good people remain, although many good people have been fired or forced out since President Moreno-Riaño took over, but this current direction is watching a train-wreck in progress.]
To learn much more about how Cornerstone University has been reduced to a shell of its former glory (I don't say that flippantly) through censorship, firing, and politics, please listen to the podcast of Pastor Noah Filipiak a fellow Cornerstone graduate as he interview Dr. David Turner, former professor at the seminary: The Flip Side podcast
