In some ways I think the solution to quite a few of these problems is to make education a true free market experiment. What do I mean by this?
Well, first, the government should not be in the business of student loan guarantees. This inflates costs and provides incentives for padding education with expensive coursework that nobody values.
Degrees should not force non-degree coursework on students. While I tend to discuss STEM, I am sure this could be applied to other degrees. For example, my sister got a degree in Social Work at a major US university. She had to endure courses such as Statistics. Why? Even people in STEM fields hate statistics.
Yes, of course, I agree with you regarding courses such as English being important for STEM graduates. However, it would be my requirement and expectation that high school should graduate people who are able to communicate and express themselves without having to pay thousands of dollars in university for the same learning.
> an environment for challenging the status quo and not being afraid of controversy
Sure. And yet, when you have classes like "Young Karl Marx" forced upon students in direct opposition with reality, well, what the hell is that?
If we are to speak about delivering culture, we have to talk about the Greeks, the great philosophers, the law and other matters. Art, music, history and religion with as little bias as possible. Yes, of course, teach about Karl Marx. However, any reasonable treatment of the subject would clearly have to also deliver the conclusion that these are ideas the world has tried and determined to be disastrous at many levels. To be clear, the world has still to discover perfection --which likely does not exist-- however, teaching failed ideologies at a mass scale as if it were utopia only serves to destroy society.
> I don’t think there’s a secret group of people deliberately making universities more monocultural
Correct. Of course. No, this is like a control system with no feedback that, once it started to go off the rails had no feedback loop to correct it. It just happened.
I think Niall Ferguson provides good insight as to how this happened. Here's one of his interviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdeFJ4WCqhk
> she got to attend a series of university lectures when she was in high school, covering a broad range of topics designed for her age group to help them figure out what interested them. She attended a physics lecture on dark matter, and it genuinely sparked an interest in a topic she had previously found hideously boring. She now has a PhD and a prestigious career in that field, and it never would have happened without that generalized exposure that universities provide.
That's beautiful and that is precisely what school should be about, K-12 and university. However, at a mass scale, it has been broken for a long time. Sure, there are corner cases, but I think I can say this is the exception rather than the rule.
My own kids have always told me they learn more from me than what their public school education has exposed them to. Having been educated both in and outside the US, I understood precisely what they were telling me. I exposed them to all of the great philosophers, discussions about all religions and open discussions about political thought and history. And I always encouraged them to not take my words (or anyone else's) as ground truth, to think critically, learn and arrive at their own conclusions. And, yes, of course, I also exposed them to STEM subjects not covered in school or before they came up in school. Business and economics were subjects of frequent discussion, because you need this as an 18 year old entering the world. Etc.
In the end, what we choose to teach our children will determine our future. If we put them on the wrong path and don't give them the skills necessary to thrive and be competitive with others, our future will take a turn for the worse. It really is that simple; has been for all of humanity's history. These are important opportunities that should not be wasted.
This is what is sad about what has happened. The people focusing on ideological extremes do damage to society at a large scale, in terms of both time and lives.