Opinion: Matt Walsh and Many Conservatives Are Wrong About Education

And no, I'm not saying academia is something we can look at with rose-colored glasses, either.

Introduction

Matt Walsh made a video recently discussing the high prices of education. He framed it in a cost-benefit manner, which is a respectable way to approach the subject. He weighed the rising costs of college, which have been rising and continue to rise, with the benefit for it. He considers the cost-benefit to be financial only, which is a fair assumption given that he and many conservatives view academia to have extreme liberal bias. I cannot speak here about private universities, specific classrooms, or celebrity academics, but what I can say is that much of the literature in academia that I study is not affected by these tints, but is actually incredibly open minded, fair, and committed to advancing ideas in a respectful way.

I study at San Jose State University. I graduated with an undergraduate degree in their justice studies program and returned as a graduate student in the same field. I work to get people convicted of criminal records a fresh start, and I spend most of my work-time teaching undergraduates students how to approach record clearance law. What I am taking issue with Matt today is the same issue that many conservatives have gotten wrong about education. They over-estimate the politics, underestimate the actual, tangible value of the potential that classrooms have to improve our dialogue with one-another, and they only view the college degree as a way to advance their earning potential.

University Cost

Walsh mentions that public universities are costing people $100,000 plus on average for four-year public universities. For private universities, the cost is much higher. Data from the Education Data Initiative seems to support these numbers, pointing out that some undergraduate degrees can cost upwards of $500,000. To get to that cost, however, the person would need to travel out of state for school, live on campus, factor in all of their materials and other costs of living; in short, these numbers are highly misleading, but provide an important set of considerations. 

Choose the College Wisely

The majority of costs that Walsh is referencing come from the fact that going to college near home is not ideal for young people looking to spread their wings. They want to do the exact same thing they could 20 minutes from home, but in another state. The cost of tuition to go to school if someone has the opportunity to go in state averages $9,678 per year, while out of state students average a cost of $26,027 per year. 

The cost of tuition out of state drives the price up quickly, as does living on campus. The actual price of securing a college degree without out-of-state tuition and on-campus housing is much more affordable, and guts the figures Walsh brings up in his commentary. 

Why Go to College?

Walsh speaks about college in one way that is agreeable, and one that is disagreeable. His agreeable point is that the current system of college has flaws: undergraduate education has a tremendous amount of fluff, obviously designed to maximize the profits for the university under the guise of selling more classes to students. He also notes the ideology to be problematic, but he's missing an important point: there is little of the ideology seen on Tik Tok and Fox news prevailing in many of these institutions. In fact, I wish there was. The issue is that the students couldn’t give a damn about whatever the teacher has to say, irrespective of what the political viewpoint is. At the height of the Ukraine War in 2022, I remember a teacher of mine put out an extra credit question asking a room full of juniors and seniors to name the Ukrainian president. Only 3-4 of us got it right. 

The point that he did not get right was the purpose of college, which he notes is to maximize the earning potential of the person. In many senses, this is the reason young people are sent to college. For people whose families live in reality it is so their children could earn more money, and for families who make a lot of money it is for their children to have an experience (the family’s influence will cover the job part). I had a professor, a former prosecutor and truly brilliant man explain to me the origins of the college-for-job trend that began under the Reagan Administration. I asked him why people always said just pick a school and go, focusing only on the pieces of paper and not the education. He explained that this started under Reagan’s Administration–this idea that people would earn a degree in whatever, get a job in whatever, and have a gun in their mouth before they knew it. College is not supposed to be about money-making, he told me. This was his advice. 

He told me I was still young, with no children, and no mortgage. He told me to learn as much as I possibly could, explore, try new things, and try not to tie myself down too early. He warned me that many aspects of academia were too limited, and advised a broader, more open-minded perspective on my studies. He effectively took me under his wing, helping me get my first paper published and helped me get into graduate school. College is not supposed to be about earning a degree to make money. Here’s where I first heard the argument that college was to maximize your earning potential. 

An administrative chief of police gave me some college advice. He told me to get my degree in whatever–they would teach me about being a police officer. The degree was just for when I was done being a beat cop, he advised me. Consider this statement at a time when many police departments are requiring more college experience for their new officers. If the point of college is simply to show police departments that you can complete a four-year program, what is the point of doing it? If somebody can make it through four years of college without learning much (something people mention all the time), it is highly recommended that they not be hired to wipe their own ass. 

If Not College, What? 

I have seen many comments from many people recently who have been bagging in college. That’s fine, I do it all the time. They critique the profit-hungry people in the administration: agreed. They critique that there can be shortcomings in the curriculum: agreed, sort of. They believe that colleges are radicalizing their children: disagree. 

There is a problem with faculty that can lead to trouble in the classroom. Universities have “lecturers” to teach a great deal of their lower division and minor courses. These lecturers can be fantastic, and they can also be a complete joke. I had one professor who recorded 5-10 minute lectures while driving in her car, that sounded like a warzone; she never replied to emails, never published assignments: we had our first “module” in the sixth week of class; she had two other full time jobs. I had another lecturer who was a PhD student: these are the worst, because they’re too “busy” to teach you, so they never update their modules. Then there are the lecturers who are so self absorbed, but were never too smart to begin with. Those are the ones that create the meme-worthy content that Fox news can exploit over and over again. Then there’s the teachers in the programs I am in. 

I study currently under an Italian socio-criminologist who is a premiere scholar on the financial and political realities of crime; I study under another who is an ethnographer who studies gangs and crime in the Caribbean, and another who is an expert on all things incarceration. Each of these teachers is downright badass. Prior to this, in my undergraduate, I studied with a lawyer who was a fiery prosecutor, who lectured me endlessly on the origins of policing and early philosophy, and others who were experts on terrorism, human rights, and record clearance law. Yes, we were concerned about LGBTQ rights, because we had documented evidence of these people being horribly abused in prisons and by authorities. Yes, we discussed race, because we had empirical evidence to show that certain sections of the black and brown populations were being savaged by an Orwellian system of punishment. Not for one second would any anchor on Fox News have a fighting chance in hell against these criminologists and lawyers, who are in the business not because they have nothing better to do but because they have important things to say. 

I offer this not to celebrate the degree I am in, although it is laughable to see people in Matt Walsh’s comments saying they dropped out of school because of their rainbow flag teachers. Want to know the truth? They dropped out because their general-ed math class was too hard. I’ve been there before. When school gets hard, you will blame it on anything to get out of it. Learning is the vital part of academia, not the paycheck, not the prestige, but the pursuit of knowledge. The investment shouldn’t be in the prestige of the institution, or the earnings the degree will offer. It should be so future generations can have a fighting chance of speaking civilly to one another. Yes, colleges need work. Yes, our youth need a lot of work. But the solution of ditching learning, going into trades, and humoring whatever unadulterated thoughts come into our minds each passing day is not the way.