We’ve been wondering the very same thing. Why continue supporting an outdated higher education system that is at least 2/3rds of the way to becoming a scam? Why are American families being forced into massive debt by universities and the government to pay for increasingly worthless pieces of paper that do little more than certify that they are suckers? Why do prices keep going up while the economic benefits of a higher ed degree have flatlined? Why are colleges giving grades for term papers that everyone knows are being written by AI? Why are university faculty being hired on the basis of unreadable “scholarship” that AI now shows us is often simply plagiarized? So what’s the new model? It would be easy for a motivated billionaire to set up a high-end online university with lectures by the best professors in the country backed by AI tutors who would teach and quiz students and measure their actual mastery of the material. Identify the student taking the quiz or test by a retina scan through their laptop camera. All curricula and test results would be entirely transparent to prospective employers. Think about it. Actual learning. Actual mastery. No more bullshit. A fraction of the cost. Available to everyone regardless of where in America you live or your age or the color of your skin. America’s online university, equipping citizens for the century we are actually living in. Price tag? Under a billion. Thomas Jefferson would have loved this idea. Call it Jefferson University. Yes, students will “miss out” on the precious experiences of drunk fraternity binges and in-person ideological indoctrination by weirdoes, and having their classrooms barricaded by sympathizers with middle eastern terror groups. Boo hoo. College football and basketball teams are already paid professionals with massive TV and NIL contracts. You are free to watch them play on Saturday at your leisure. But stop pretending that it’s part of higher education. As for the rest of it, parents can pay for whatever they want. They can send their children to work on a ranch or to live in crackhouses or at Club Med. But everyday families and employers shouldn’t have to participate in an outdated system that is clearly becoming a scam.

America is uglier, dirtier, more fragmented, more addicted, less informed and less hopeful than it was a decade ago. It is also richer, more powerful, and further ahead of other Western countries. Both stories can be accurate at the same time. There is nothing wrong with our economy or our military. The problem is us. We are spiritually sick and socially fragmented, lacking in connection to our own history and culture or to a sense of a higher power and purpose. There are no shortage of bad actors who are responsible, beginning with state-sponsored demoralization campaigns (China, Russia, Qatar) and the domestic elites on both the left and the right motivated by money, greed, power, and ego. There are the fragmenting effects of new technologies that overwhelmed our social immune systems. There are the social effects of immigration from regions of the world where the vast majority of people do not share our values or our culture. Our brains have become playgrounds for techno nihilists and foreign spy services. Yet we are still the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet and the unique guardian of ideas of human freedom that are essential to our future as a species and produce cool stuff. Unplug yourself from the demoralization machine, and learn how to think like an American again. countyhighway.com/subscribe