The long-overdue reckoning has arrived for America's universities. As many as 25 percent of U.S. colleges could close in the coming years, according to experts including Brandeis University president Arthur Levine and analysts at Huron Consulting Group. Hundreds of private non-profit institutions face financial exigency, with projections showing up to 442 at serious risk of shutting down or merging. This isn't some unfortunate accident of demographics or budgets. It's the predictable result of institutions that long ago abandoned their core mission of truth-seeking, free inquiry, and genuine education in favour of ideological indoctrination, grievance studies, and administrative bloat.
The numbers tell a damning story. Public confidence in higher education has collapsed. Only 46 percent of college graduates now believe their degree was worth the cost, a sharp decline, while 63 percent of Americans say it simply isn't, citing mountains of debt and graduates lacking real job skills. Parents have wised up too: just 28 percent now see a four-year degree as important for career success. Enrolment is cratering, tuition has doubled in real terms over decades, and young college graduates face rising unemployment. The product no longer sells itself because the product has rotted.
What went wrong? Universities traded intellectual diversity and rigorous scholarship for ideological conformity. Campuses became echo chambers of radical politics: courses on "Queering God," "Bad Bunny: Musical Aesthetics and Politics," and endless offerings steeped in gender, race, and empire obsessions. "Healing spaces" for anti-racism activism and DEI resource centres proliferated while graduation rates languished and critical thinking evaporated. Free speech eroded under the weight of cancel culture, antisemitism scandals, and speech codes. Trust in these institutions, once pillars of Western civilisation, has plummeted to historic lows.
This betrayal of their traditional role carries real consequences. A bachelor's degree no longer reliably signals competence or readiness for the workforce. Instead, it often signals exposure to activist dogma and crippling debt. Taxpayers and families have subsidised this transformation for years. The market is finally responding with its harshest verdict: abandonment!
In an age of strained budgets and demographic decline, pouring endless public money into failing indoctrination centres makes no sense. Why prop up institutions that produce baristas and activists with humanities degrees while tradies and apprentices earn solid livings without the debt? The closure wave, already hitting dozens of schools through mergers, program cuts, and outright shutdowns, forces a necessary reset. Resources can shift toward genuine vocational training, apprenticeships in trades, healthcare, and technology, paths that deliver skills without the ideological tax.
Australia should take note. Our own universities face similar pressures: falling public trust, free speech scandals, corporatised bloat, and heavy reliance on international students amid funding freezes and budget scrutiny. The same patterns of ideological capture documented in local reports, from suppressed conservative voices to activist-driven curricula, erode their value. If American institutions are learning the hard way through market discipline, Australian taxpayers deserve the same honesty. We cannot afford to subsidise "no-go zones" for open debate or degree mills that prioritise DEI over merit and truth.
The university model as currently constituted has failed too many students and betrayed its Enlightenment roots. Not every young person needs or benefits from four years of campus activism. Many would thrive in apprenticeships, trade schools, or direct workforce entry, routes that build character, skills, and self-reliance without the indoctrination.
This contraction isn't a tragedy. It's a long-delayed correction. Institutions that rediscover their purpose, pursuing truth, defending free speech, and preparing graduates for reality, may survive and thrive. Those that don't deserve to fade. The era of unquestioned reverence for the campus elite is over. Families, taxpayers, and societies are better off for it. Higher education must earn its place again, or make way for better alternatives. The closures underway in America signal that the reckoning has only just begun.
https://amgreatness.com/2026/06/16/university-indoctrination-centers-are-being-abandoned/