George Leef writes for the Martin Center about an academic’s new examination of the higher education system.

There are lots of people in our higher education system who claim that it is “the envy of the world” and just needs more money to graduate more young Americans with the degrees that are supposedly in great demand. One naysayer who disputes that rosy picture is Professor Warren Treadgold, who teaches history at Saint Louis University. He has just written a book entitled The University We Need that gives readers a decidedly negative assessment of our higher education system.

Something like the mafia’s code of silence—the academic omerta—keeps most professors from speaking unpleasant truths about the system, Treadgold argues, leaving the desperately needed criticism to outsiders who don’t really know what’s going on. He has stepped in to rectify that criticism gap with a book that lands solid punches on every page.

“Universities,” he writes, “have lost interest in teaching great literature and art, empirical knowledge, and critical thinking, which used to be considered the main functions of universities. Instead, our universities want to teach only leftist writings and ideas, most of them very recent, while teaching other writings and ideas only as examples of oppression that should be condemned.”

At very few colleges and universities do students gain anything resembling a coherent education. What they are offered instead is a smorgasbord of mediocre courses, often very narrow in scope (because professors prefer teaching their specialties), taught mostly by faculty who have been molded by the “progressive” and “postmodern” concepts that have smothered most academic disciplines and are gaining ground even in hard fields.