The effects of ten years of political correctness on higher education are now obvious. We have gone from mere reverse discrimination to an environment in which "conservative" student columnists critical of leftist shibboleths (radical feminism, open homosexuality) are being tossed from campus newspapers in record numbers, and faculty are being pilloried for saying anything radical groups find "offensive." In this environment, would-be faculty members who do not endorse the ideologies of postmodernism, radical feminism, the homosexual agenda, and "diversity" engineering are unable to be considered for appointments anywhere except, perhaps, at a handful of private Christian colleges. Students, meanwhile, have actually found themselves having to transfer to other schools to avoid ideological harassment.
What of the opposition? For roughly the same period, a handful of groups such as the National Association of Scholars have provided a significant opposing voice. However, members of such groups report having their materials sent home instead of to their campus addresses because they fear retaliation if their membership is discovered. There are a few programs on Christian and the handful of other conservative-leaning campuses teaching the country's founding principles. But their numbers are small and their influence in the larger enterprise of higher education seems to be negligible. It is fair to say that within the centers of power in academe, political correctness is practically unopposed. Members of “victim groups” are earning six-figure salaries at Ivy League universities, publishing books and anthologies with major academic presses documenting their histories of collective grievance – all the while whining about how horribly they have been treated. But if you are an academic you do not dare communicate these unpleasant truths. That could end your career (especially if you are white and male). The academy has thus been transformed from the oasis of free speech that was propagandized in the late 1960s into a bastion of thought control reminiscent of Communist totalitarianism.
There is, moreover, more and more stress on purely vocational training, even at major universities, as opposed to a traditional liberal arts core curriculum. It is not hard to see why. I don't believe it is just the massive changes in technology we have seen during the past few years, though that is certainly a factor. Some students are fleeing liberal arts and social sciences, favoring subjects where they can have real knowledge and develop a few real skills that will make them employable outside government bureaucracies and "women's studies" departments. While vocational training is not real education, its meteoric rise could be seen as having been helped by many students' desires, perhaps not even articulated to themselves, not to have to deal with political correctness. The liberal arts, where the principles of a free society can be articulated and studied, are dying – if indeed they are not already dead! I do not mean, of course, that they are dead institutionally. They are very much alive in this sense, but as de facto colonies. As vehicles where genuine intellectual diversity exists, and criticism of the new orthodoxies is therefore permitted, fields like history, philosophy, English, comparative literature, and so on, are effectively dead in the water.
So what is the solution, other than simply waiting for the politically correct generation to reach retirement age? I submit that the solution has been developing under our noses for the past several years. It began about the time email systems were developed; it started to come of age with the development of the graphical interface. I am obviously referring to the World Wide Web. The number of web sites continues to explode, and thousands more people are going online every month. Today, colleges and universities are developing programs in distance learning – or distance education – mostly aimed at nontraditional students who work full time. These programs enable the students to sign up for, pay for, and download lectures, lessons, assignments and tests for college courses over their home computers. Communication between instructor and pupil occurs over the Internet.
A few weeks back, Gary North penned an article arguing that the World Wide Web will soon generate forms of educational entrepreneurship that bring down the current academic cartel, the cadres of educrats running accrediting agencies. It is possible to expand on his argument by showing how Web-based higher education, in the form of entire universities existing almost exclusively in cyberspace, their students accessing the universities' web sites from anywhere in the world, is capable of destroying the cartels of the politically correct as well. Its modus operandi would amount to the simple expedient of pursing its activities outside the institutional arrangements and built in assumptions that nurtured the political correct mindset.
Here is how it would work: a small team of scholars, educational entrepreneurs and crack technicians pool their knowledge and know-how into the development of a curriculum which could offer standard majors in subjects ranging from philosophy and political science to computer technology and web site development. This curriculum becomes the centerpiece of a detailed business plan.
Then, instead of undertaking the multimillion dollar enterprise of buying land, breaking ground, putting up buildings, etc., they obtain a loan (perhaps no more than $800,000), rent office space, purchase computers including their own server, and launch their web site. While developing this site and continuing to refine their ideas, they pay themselves and a small staff salaries they can live on (nothing excessive!). They use what contacts they have to advertise the new site by every available means ranging from email and word-of-mouth advertising to professional and trade periodicals. Within a year, our online-only institution could well generate substantial interest from prospective Internet-savvy students, and from potential faculty members willing to teach them. The institution could well be in a position to enroll students within two years, maybe sooner.
It is worth reiterating what Gary North pointed out, that on traditional campuses much of the overhead has to do with keeping the lights on, the grounds looking decent, the facilities operational, and so on. The overhead costs of a cyberspace institution run out of an office the size of a three-bedroom apartment would be sufficiently low that students could obtain a college education for just a fraction of the cost of attending a public university. And the faculty would soon be in a position to earn much more than they ever could teaching in one.
Moreover, with the number of nontraditional students on the rise – older students changing careers, married or divorced students (often with children to take care of), students working at full-time jobs in addition to going to school – distance education solves a myriad of scheduling as well as financial problems. Educational packages can be dispensed in any number of ways, ranging from web-based lessons or lectures uploaded to the web site at given intervals, e.g., three times weekly, where student could access them, to relatively inexpensive CD-ROMs which could contain courses or years of coursework or even entire majors. North observed that for all practical purposes we have the technology to deliver education this way now. And privately – without a single dollar taken from the federal government, either for start-up costs or by way of student loans.
I envision at least one such Cyberspace University that is deliberately organized as a niche institution. Its vision would endeavor to present the kind of liberal arts education envisioned by the Framers, that necessary to sustain the institutions of a free society. That is, it would offer courses on how our conception of law has developed from the days when the kings did as they pleased to the idea of individual natural rights as seen in the writings of, for example, the British philosopher John Locke. From there, the core curriculum would contain a central component on the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Federalist Papers (also the widely and unjustly neglected Anti-Federalist writings), and so on.
Cyberspace University would, that is, stress individual natural rights, personal responsibility, limited government, the rule of law, and – where relevant – explore the role of the Transcendent in human life. It would stress such skills as logic and critical reasoning, and encourage independent thought (students and faculty, that is, would not be required to sign "statements of faith" in this or that specific doctrine). This is the kind of framework necessary for opposing political correctness. It does not challenge PC in public universities or the Ivy Leagues. These institutions are clearly lost causes. The founders of Cyberspace University will have set up an alternative kind of institution, publicized it to set up a flow of information, and then allowed market forces to take over. Students would be able to study both web site development, if that was their interest (for there would be plenty of it going on that they could observe first hand), or study the writings of the Framers. They might even be able to develop their own insights and perspectives on a very threatening subject: secession, i.e., whether those of us who want to live as we see fit and be left alone are better off if we separate from those whose entire existence revolves around power.
How much interest would such a project generate? This, of course, depends on factors ranging from how much publicity could be generated to how fed up potential customers of distance education are with political correctness. It depends on whether would-be university students are out there who would sign up for curricula that did not ram "ethnic studies" down their throats. I believe there are such people. My correspondence proves it. How many, of course, is another question. Therein lies the element of risk, which is bound to be present in any entrepreneurial venture. There are also plenty of people who believe that the introduction and widespread acceptance of programs in "ethnic studes," "gay / lesbian studies," etc., in public universities constitutes progress, that science is sexist because so many of its practitioners are men, that opponents of race-based admissions are motivated by racism, and that Bill Clinton has been a great president.
Of course, there would be obstacles. There is the accrediting agency problem, and the more serious one of whether potential employers would recognize degrees obtained from Cyberspace U. as valid and legitimate. The initial graduates would have something to prove. There can be no doubt, moreover, that such an enterprise would generate opposition as soon as it was perceived as a threat. This would be particularly true if it became the prototype for more such institutions providing slightly different philosophical orientations and slants, but sharing a rejection of the new status quo. We should never underestimate the control the politically correct mindset has over the media and the legal system. Cyberspace U. could find itself an immediate target of bitter attacks just like those directed against independent political movements such as the League of the South today. Openly politically incorrect institutions ought to have at least one good libertarian lawyer on retainer, as they could easily find themselves swimming against a tide of legal challenges.
Gary North, I believe, pointed the ultimate way out of legal and accreditation difficulties when he noted the number of places outside the United States that could serve as potential home bases where Cyberspace U. could continue operating outside the reach of the long arm of Big Brother.
In the last analysis, Web-based higher education in one form or another is here, now, and here to stay, with or without the approval of accrediting agencies. As a medium for opposing political correctness, the World Wide Web has already proven itself formidable by having given rise to sites including WorldNetDaily, NewsMax and LewRockwell.com, where one can find an abundance of information and perspectives that often simply go unreported in the print and network media (reports of reverse “hate crimes,” unabashed defenses of property rights, open discussions of secession movements). What remains is to shape this medium into a vehicle for breathing new life into the traditional liberal arts curriculum – updated with healthy doses of high technology.
We need not call it Cyberspace U., of course. I personally prefer the name Internet University of the South. IUS, for short.
HTML, anyone?
September 23, 2000
Steven Yates has a PhD in philosophy and is the author of Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1994). A frequent contributor to LewRockwell.com and The Edgefield Journal, he lives and freelance writes in Columbia, South Carolina. He is at work on a new book entitled The Paradox of Liberty.
