Colleges and the collapse of Generation Z

Jonathan Haidt has been an insightful critic of our social malaise, despair and schism, from his position at NYU.

Jonathan Haidt on the ‘National Crisis’ of Gen Z - WSJ.pdf

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Based on this interview, he attributes much of the blame to social media. While I agree that idiot Internet influencers play a major negative role in the tears in the social fabric, the more enduring social influencers are the teachers these Gen Z students will listen to for sixteen or more years, with the typical final four years in that chain to be well outside the control, understanding, influence and discipline of parents.

Much of the blame can be traced to the college culture today, infused with woke rhetoric, anti-capitalist rants, socialist professors, safe spaces, revisionist history, self-confessed institutional racism and a bloated, overpaid virtual signaling administration, while leaving the students with communist fantasies, meaningless majors and degrees, few marketable skills, poor job and career prospects, inflated self-esteem, heavy debt loads, and poor or non-existent critical thinking. The result: poor mental health, tremendous anxiety, fear of the future, and opportunity and the best elements of the fabled "American Dream" destroyed before they even aspire to pursue those important, sustainable values.

Here is one of the hundreds of comments on Haidt's interview: