My liberal college made me conservative

Yikes that wasn't supposed to happen

Like most 18 year olds who attend college for the first time, I was nervous, excited, and vastly unaware of the impending deception. Completely disinterested in the politically charged climate that awaited me, I imagined that as someone who enjoyed the world of academia, and possessed a genuine passion for learning, my experience in higher education would be a combination of healthy debate and the exchange of free thought and ideas that would ultimately prepare me for today's job market.

And for a minute, it seemed that it was.

Unlike high school, professors offered up real-world issues for discussion, often taking the time to individually validate the thoughts and feelings of those who chimed in. In my naivety, the continuous affirmations as a substitute for accountability felt refreshing as an 18-year-old. 'Finally,' I thought, 'an adult who not only wanted to engage in meaningful conversation with a young person, but who also convinced me that every thought I shared was reasonable.' But never did these professors suggest any practical solutions to the problems they proposed. Instead, they blamed every societal flaw on systemic issues, or the inherent evils of capitalism. You're having financial troubles? Well, that's capitalism for you. Mental health issues? Capitalism. Your boyfriend dumped you? Capitalism.

It was shortly thereafter that I became sucked into the consistent, suffocating mantra that we were all oppressed by the white man. Next, I bought into the systemic injustices, and of course the rhetoric of political correctness that seemed to follow me everywhere. At the time, these new concepts seemed fresh, sensible, empowering and compassionate.

Until, it wasn't.

As a college freshman, I didn't know the first thing about politics and if you had asked me back then to define the values that distinguish conservatives and liberals I would have given you a blank and lethargic stare.

I took a sociology class my first year of college, just a year prior to the 2020 presidential election. We were tasked with asking random students on campus about Trump's presidency and what they looked for in a presidential candidate. I was surprised by the overwhelmingly negative reactions from students who possessed such a deep hatred for Trump. Due to my political ignorance at the time, I had no preconceived opinions about the president or Republicans. Before college, I thought only old people got worked up over politics. I assumed the headaches I experienced from my Dad forcing me to listen to Rush Limbaugh on long car trips was how all teenagers felt about the matter.

But when you're saturated with liberal ideologies on a daily basis, you almost have no choice but to take the blue pill.

Gradually, I found myself beginning to agree with leftist views, not because I thought they were credible or sound, but because some part of me believed that maybe I was choosing compassion over over cruelty, but mostly I was just afraid to be the only one in the room who rejected their so-called logic, thus leading to a long road of self-censorship.

I admit that liberalism is incredibly appealing as a young person. Wrapped up in feelings and carefully disguised as compassion, independence and freedom, liberal ideologies garner the attraction of the average, innocent, politically disinterested, self-absorbed teenager far more than the temperate values of conservatism.

When the left consistently prioritizes personal pleasure and choice, while conservatives favor duty, obligation and responsibility--- It's not so difficult to guess what a 17-year-old will gravitate toward more.

So, then what was it that prompted me to adopt the conservative values that today's college students are taught to despise?

I'm not sure if I can chalk it up to just one great awakening. Perhaps I grew fatigued by the political correctness, or maybe the natural skeptic within me had finally surfaced. Most plausibly however, was that my own common sense had just finally kicked in.

I can still recall the anger of the students who sat around me in the classroom that day as they took turns describing their opinions on Trump's presidency to our professor. Some called him a racist, others labeled him a misogynist or a rapist. If this was all true--- and I had no idea at the time---I then began to wonder why more than half of the country voted for him in 2016.

Suddenly, the world of politics which I had fought to avoid for so long, had become increasingly fascinating to me.

One day a student in that class raised his hand and challenged them all. While everyone characterized the former president with every slur under the sun, the student pointed to some of Trump's accomplishments like the unprecedented boom in the economy, the tax relief for the middle class, or America becoming energy independent. Immediately, the room filled with mumbling and scoffs as his adrenalized classmates accused him of being a racist and a bigot for merely offering up an alternative perspective for his time in office. The most astounding and revealing part of the situation was that the student never mentioned he supported Trump. In fact, he prefaced that he hadn't even been old enough to vote in 2016.

I began to wonder where their anger really came from, which led me to contemplate why every lecture turned into a political speech. Why did every practice question, essay prompt, debate topic, group discussion, and assigned reading have to be about race, sexuality, or climate change? Why were conservative ideas unworthy of discussion? Was I missing something? My questions were always met with more questions, until one day I concluded that all of this was not by accident, but by design.

A 2012 study from the National Association of Scholars, concluded that several colleges in California's UC system did not require students majoring in political science to take a course on American politics. Additionally, many colleges did not require English majors to take a Shakespeare course to graduate with a degree in English. Over a decade later, a quick Google search can confirm many of the NAS's findings still hold true, especially within the CSU system. Since the survey, several California state universities have decided it was not enough to simply edit the curriculum to exclude civics proficiency and teachings of Western civilization. By swapping them out for Critical Race Theory courses and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, professors began teaching students to be agents of social justice, thus a decrease in quality education and subsequent erasure of Western teachings.

Flash forward to 2021, where 14 million students attended four-year institutions across the U.S. with over 4 million receiving a bachelor's degree in that same year, yet in a recent survey, 40% of business leaders thought that college graduates were unprepared for the workplace, attributing their lack of readiness to inadequate communication skills, work ethic and overall sense of entitlement. The survey even concluded that 94% of business employers tend to avoid hiring recent college graduates.

So what does college actually do in 2023?

If not a place to discuss, challenge and share ideas and different perspectives, or to prepare students to be marketable, career-hungry graduates who are ready to excel in the real-world, what were these systems actually doing?

College became the perfect place to fashion unsuspecting teenagers into activists. These institutions know this. They understand that a 17 or 18-year-old has yet to have fully formed thoughts and beliefs, so they inundate them with classes about the latest social justice cause. They make students believe America is worse than bad, and that we are all being oppressed by the patriarchy, capitalism, the justice system and so on. The best part of it all? Not only do they make you believe you are a perpetual victim of your race or gender, but they make you pay for every bit of that victimhood mentality in the form of tuition.

For example, one of the causes that really grabbed hold of me when I first entered the college scene was feminism. Besides a few history classes in high school, I had never given much thought to what a feminist actually was. Lucky for me, nearly every class I took in college brought the topic to the forefront of its discussion. We watched videos on the modern day feminist movement, listened to feminist speakers, read feminist essays and explored feminist theory. By my second year of college, can you guess? Yep. I would have considered myself a feminist. Although, this supposed empowering and unifying term never made me feel happy or powerful the way it was sold to me. In fact, after believing I was a victim of my irrevocable gender circumstances, I became quite bitter, angry, rebellious and more argumentative than I had ever been in my entire life. Why? Because I believed my professors and textbooks when they told me I was being oppressed by every man in my life.

Then, one day someone asked me if I had ever experienced misogyny first-hand. I told them I had not. They followed up by asking what law in this country prevented me from doing what a man could do. I had no response.

Turns out many of these students are just being taught these things, rather than actually experiencing it themselves.

The truth is these ideologies that are being spoon fed to young people in universities across the U.S. are incredibly harmful and are designed to make us believe that no matter who we are, what we look like, or where we came from, we are oppressed, and that despite living in the most free and privileged country in the world, we will never amount to any subsequent success.

Rather than gaining practical job skills, students are being buried beneath the rising cost of tuition and confronted with political interference at every turn. The college education system is no longer the aspirational one-size-fits-all solution to achieve the American Dream. Don't get me wrong, I think college is still necessary for the lawyers, doctors and engineers of the world, but there are too many students taking out thousands of dollars in student loans to pursue useless majors only to meet the unfortunate reality that there are no job opportunities awaiting them in the real world. I utterly reject the idea that college is beneficial for everyone; or that in obtaining a degree you are somehow smarter or more superior to those that don't have one.

I don't mean to sound like a hypocrite. When I tell people that I am an English major the first thing they ask me is, "So, what do you plan to do with that?" It's a fair question. I didn't choose the major because I wanted to become an English teacher, or be the next J.K. Rowling. I was 18 years old and loved to read and write.

Today, I get told by blue collar workers who never went to college, and college graduates alike that I was conned, that I wasted five years of my life, or that my degree in English was a bad investment.

It's an unpopular opinion in conservative circles, but I wouldn't change my degree or college experience even if I could go back. Without having attended college, I would have likely never had adopted these beliefs so young in the first place or so staunchly rejected the victimhood mentality that was inculcated in me for so long, nor would I have come to truly appreciate the value of free speech. For nearly five years, I have watched as these institutions promote bad is good and good is bad. I have had a front row seat to the useless protests, the debates over the ever-evolving politically correct language, the mocking of Christianity, the not-so-subtle jabs toward conservative ideals, and it made me realize two important things:

One, for a group that espoused tolerance, nothing about their progressive ideologies were accepting. Rather, their false compassion was wrapped up in self-centered impulses.

As American economist and author Thomas Sowell aptly said, "Those who promote an ideology of victimhood may imagine that they are helping those at the bottom, when in fact they are harming them, more so than the society that the left is denouncing."

The second thing I realized was that the students who believe in the values of the left, are not bad people, they aren't an enemy, and nor are they inherently hateful. These students are simply just starved for a cause and diluted by a system who told them if they just followed these steps, took these classes, became social justice warriors, and got a degree they would be fine in the real world. For all of the systemic corruption they purport to exist, there is only one system that has seemed to truly fail them--- America's higher education.

Sources

Ted Talk: the moral roots of liberals and conservatives

https://www.calstate.edu/csu-system/news/Pages/New-CSU-Students-to-Benefit-from-Changes-to-Developmental-Education.aspx'

New CSU students to benefit from changes to developmental education

10 Facts About Today's College Graduates

College Graduation Statistics

Back-to-school statistics

America's "No Confidence" Vote on College Grads' Work Readiness