Getting ready to send junior off to college in the fall? Or maybe still researching all the options? Before you or your kid commit to several years – and lots of $$ – you should read Dennis Prager’s recent re-cap of the post-modern pabulum that most colleges are preaching today;

…most American parents and/or their child are going into debt in order to support an institution that for four years, during the most impressionable years of a person’s life, instills values that are the opposite of those of their parents’.

 
For example:
 
• The United States is no better than any other country, and in many areas worse than many. On the world stage, America is an imperialist country, and domestically it mistreats its minorities and neglects its poor, while discriminating against non-whites.
 
• God is at best a non-issue, and at worst, a foolish and dangerous belief.
 
• Big government is the only humane way to govern a country.
 
• Human beings are animals. They differ from “other animals” primarily in having better brains.
 
• There is no objective meaning to a text. Every text only means what the reader perceives it to mean. 😯
 
[That last one kind of makes college a moot point doesn’t it?!]
 
This is what passes for “higher learning” at most universities across the country these days. It’s a trend that started 100 years ago ~

As Woodrow Wilson, progressive president of Princeton University before becoming president of the United States, said in a speech in 1914, “I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.”

 
So (with the exception of a career in the hard sciences) if you’re hoping for a classical education in the western tradition, you might want to avoid most major universities. That really narrows your choices down. But thankfully, there are still a few good options.
 
Young America’s Foundation, has a list of the country’s top 10 conservative colleges – updated annually – HERE. Most of these have a Christian foundation (no surprise). Enrollment ranges from a few hundred students to Liberty University’s(VA) 60,000 (includes distance learning). All sound like great alternatives to most government-funded schools which peddle revisionist history and empty philosophies.
 
Another post-high school alternative for many young people is trade schools.
 
Last month Rick Santorum was castigated by the media and political elite for having the audacity to suggest that a typical 4-year university “education” might not be the best choice for everyone;

Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands. Some people have incredible gifts and use and want to work out there making things. President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob. There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to the test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his.

 
Well, whaddya know.. a recent article at CNN Money seems to support Santorum’s position that not everyone is best-served by a four-year liberal arts degree: Nine months in trade school. Job guaranteed.
 
For a lot less time (1-2 years) and financial investment, these training programs offer focused instruction in high-tech machining and manufacturing. Demand for skilled workers in these areas is growing, and in some cases the pay isn’t too shabby: $100K manufacturing jobs.
 
There’s also an old-fashioned, yet now radical, option available to today’s high school graduates: get a job. Any job. Not only will a year or two of full-time work afford real-world experience and enable young people to mature, they’ll gain a better sense of what they want to be when they grow up.
[Think I’ll start a new campaign: “Don’t be a snob – get a job!”]
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According to an analysis by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), more than 40 percent of each year’s new crop college freshmen will not graduate within six years – costing billions of dollars in lost earnings for the students and millions of dollars in lost tax revenue.
 
That’s an awful lot of wasted time, effort and dollars.
 
So before you proudly ship the kids off to the nearest state college, find out which values/philosophies will be foisted on them when they get there. And give some consideration to all the other options – or you just might be paying for your kid’s indoctrination into a bankrupt worldview.
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Related:
Rick Santorum, Higher Education, and the Jacksonian Politics of Liberty and Respect