Latest / The Catholic Current / 2026 Academic Year in Review (Matt Lamb) 6/30/26

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2026 Academic Year in Review (Matt Lamb) 6/30/26 · The Catholic Current

• 0:00
  This is The Catholic Current, with Fr. Robert Mittaig.
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  The question is, is this by accident?
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  Is this a failure?
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  I've got my tinfoil hat at a rakish angle, I will confess.
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  But given what I know about the history of education and education for education in the
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  United States, these seem to be features rather than bugs.
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  What are your thoughts?
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  Yeah, yeah, and if tinfoil is the medium that conveys the truth here, then it weighs me
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  in it, because...
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  Praised be Jesus Christ, this is Fr. Robert Mittaig of The Society of Jesus, your daily
• 0:38
  host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world, and the world to Christ.
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  You're listening to us from the station of The Cross Studios, your local radio station,
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  and the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity
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  and charity.
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  As always, let's start with prayer.
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  In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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  Almighty God, through the intercession of St. Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour
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  forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice and
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  obey your command.
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  In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
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  Well, you know, friends, I describe myself as a recovering academic, and yet I still
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  have a significant interest in higher education.
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  I want the best for it, which means I'm frequently disappointed.
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  I'm hoping there is some good news.
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  And you know, from time to time, we are visited with some folks from The College Fix, which
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  really puts higher education under a microscope, and I want to do a retrospective on the academic
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  year 2025, and to assist me, we have the associate editor for The College Fix, Matt Lamb.
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  Welcome back to The Catholic Current.
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  Thanks for having me back on, Father.
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  Matt, this was not a typical academic year with ups and downs and so on.
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  I really think it was overshadowed by the murder of Charlie Kirk and its aftermath.
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  And I know there's been a lot of controversy about his organization, Turning Point USA,
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  and its place on college campuses and so on.
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  Fill us in on, you know, what was the immediate reaction on college campuses, and how TPUSA
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  has been faring since then?
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  So yes, so I want to start by saying that I actually used to work with Turning Point
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  USA.
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  Charlie Kirk has been in my house, well, my childhood house.
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  And so, you know, I haven't talked to him in a few years.
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  I do regret I actually went to see him at Purdue last April, but I got there on time,
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  which is late if you've ever been to a Turning Point event, because it was, I mean, it was
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  packed.
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  I could physically not see him.
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  I couldn't see so many people at Purdue for this change my mind event that he was doing.
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  So as the collegefix.com reported recently, you know, despite what you would hope would
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  be some sympathy from student government leaders, at least 15 Turning Point USA clubs were still
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  blocked at some point this school year, which means they were blocked pretty much following
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  the assassination of Charlie Kirk since that was September 10th, basically the beginning
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  of the semester.
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  And a lot of these student government leaders, they didn't even have the decency, you know,
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  they used the club application process as an excuse to malign Charlie Kirk and to use
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  that as a reason to stop these Turning Point clubs from starting on their college campuses.
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  You know, one of the things that really scandalized me, and honestly, I thought Charlie was pretty
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  mild.
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  I don't think of him as a bomb thrower or a hater or anything like that.
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  And I watched him a few times on TV interacting with students, and he had the patience of
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  Job.
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  I mean, I was grinding my teeth in the presence of him.
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  And Charlie was unflappable.
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  And he really just tried to have intelligent conversation, which I think should be the
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  hallmark of a higher education environment.
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  And apparently, it's not.
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  How do we explain how, you know, higher education, you know, finding ideas that disagree with
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  ours, you know, dialogue, etc., etc., because people in churches these days, the magic word
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  is dialogue will make everything better, except when someone says something that we
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  don't like.
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  Has there been any, are you aware of any retrospection, anyone said, gosh, we really misbehaved after
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  Charlie died?
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  Did anyone say, you know, I probably shouldn't have celebrated when that father of two young
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  children was murdered in front of his wife?
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  Has anyone expressed any kind of remorse or regret?
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  As far as I know, no.
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  And in fact, there was one student, her name was Julia Berthelot, or Berthelot, and she
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  goes to Loyola University in New Orleans, one of the Jesuit colleges, of course.
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  And she was speaking at the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression Conference,
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  which is to build the movement to defeat Trump's agenda and for community control of the police.
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  A lot going on there.
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  And so she apparently was on the student government or was some sort of student activist.
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  And she was bragging about how she was leading the fight to stop Turning Point USA chapters
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  from getting on college campuses.
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  And you know, the same thing happened at St. John's University, where once again, colleges
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  denied these chapters.
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  In some cases, these universities had a history of denying the Turning Point chapters.
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  So to be fair, you can't say they only denied them because of what happened in September,
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  but that they had a pattern of denying Turning Point USA clubs.
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  And so this just continued to happen.
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  And there was also at least 13 different attacks on Turning Point USA clubs.
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  So various events, people have coffee thrown at them, signs were stolen.
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  And these were in both blue states and red states where this was allowed to happen.
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  It just pains me as someone who has a great reverence for university life and higher education.
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  This is this is painful and humiliating for me, this shouldn't be.
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  Yeah.
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  And so one of the worst things too, is that in some cases, these universities said, okay,
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  we're going to step in and we're going to protect these clubs.
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  And then it sort of went away.
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  So at the University of Oklahoma, there was like tons of videos of students stealing signs
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  from this event in October 2025.
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  And the university said, I mean, they released a statement in the name of their president
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  and said, we're going to get to the bottom of this.
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  The police are on this, we're investigating this, we take this seriously.
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  So we followed up in like April, May 2026, hey, whatever happened to that?
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  Because you have tons of pretty clear videos of students clearly saying we stole the signs.
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  And they said, oh, we don't have any records on that.
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  Well, how do you not have a record of a police report?
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  Right.
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  And what they ended up telling us is, well, it was transferred to student conduct.
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  But that still doesn't explain why there wouldn't be a police report.
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  Because I give the example, if someone comes, breaks a window on my car, I call the police.
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  They check it out.
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  They're like, hey, you know what, it was actually like a 10 year old that did it.
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  He threw a rock through your window.
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  And I say, OK, you know what, I'll just deal with the parents.
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  I don't want him to get a criminal record.
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  Right.
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  No problem.
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  There'd still be a report of what initially happened.
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  So eventually, a police officer came back and said, OK, yeah, there should be a report.
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  We're looking for it.
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  So hopefully, maybe by this time next year, we'll find it.
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  This time next year?
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  Yeah.
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  Well, it took them seven or eight months to, you know, they said seven or eight months
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  that they didn't have any records.
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  So I'm being a little sarcastic, but hopefully we'll get an update on whatever happened to
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  these students beyond that they were treated, they were student conduct took care of them.
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  Well, you know, for for these institutions that now pride themselves on being welcoming
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  places of inclusion where every voice is heard, unless you disagree with them in some way.
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  That seems to be the trend.
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  How is Turning Point USA doing overall?
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  Well, they reported a lot of interest at both the high school level, the college level.
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  And then they also have these sort of like community groups sort of thing of like a tea
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  party group kind of brings people together.
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  So I think they're still overall doing really well.
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  OK.
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  I do know, for example, in Indiana, that their Turning Point action was pretty successful
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  in defeating various candidates they thought were not conservative enough.
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  So I think overall, the organization's doing pretty well.
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  It's just disappointing that at a lot of these colleges, they're still facing obstacles to,
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  frankly, being allowed to have a table where they talk to students about being pro-life
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  or why we should cut taxes, not necessarily like extreme fringe positions in my right.
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  Right.
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  Do the universities or colleges give any rationale for that?
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  I know in some places they say, oh, we can't guarantee your safety, so therefore.
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  And I thought to myself, is that just an excuse or do they admit that in shame?
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  Do universities give any official rationale for why these, why Turning Point isn't welcome
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  on their campus?
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  A lot of times the university officials, they sort of pass the buck and they'll say some.
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  And I, by the way, so I used to work on these issues for Turning Point USA, where a club
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  would get stopped and then I would have to intervene or get fire or Lions Defending Freedom
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  involved or get media pressure.
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  So I'm very familiar with the ways of university administrators.
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  And a lot of times they'll say, well, it's not really up to us.
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  The student government votes on it and we want to respect what the student government
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  does.
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  Well, actually, you're the university administrator.
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  So your job by the title is to administer the university.
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  And while the student government can be a great place for people to learn, I guess,
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  how to talk to one another and and pretend to be politicians and all, it's not really
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  someone has to step up and be the adult in the room.
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  We're talking today with Matt Lamb, who is the associate editor of The College Fix.
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  And we're talking about the academic year and review.
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  Matt, one of the stories that I followed, I know is very much interested our listeners
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  is, there was a drag mass as a graduate project on campus of the University of Nebraska.
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  Can you tell us about that, please?
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  Well, in August, April, so April 2026, there was a doctoral student, M. Joseph Willett,
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  who identifies as some combination of the alphabet letters.
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  And he, for his Ph.D. dissertation, created this so-called drag show mass.
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  So The College Fix started following this story and reporting on it.
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  And things really picked up last year when Bishop Conley of the Diocese of Lincoln condemned
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  it, asked the university to get involved.
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  And so at the time, Chancellor Rodney Bennett said, we're going to look into this.
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  We're going to and President Jeffrey Gold, we're going to look into this.
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  We're going to create this blue ribbon task force of all these experts.
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  And we're going to look into the Ph.D. project.
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  And we're going to look into, you know, controversies and how to respond.
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  So that's great.
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  Like for months after months, we were asking questions.
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  We were filing public records requests.
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  It was a little suspicious because we would file these public records requests for pretty
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  basic things like, does the committee have a mission statement?
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  Who's on the committee?
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  How do you contact the committee?
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  This committee was called like community engagement, but there was no way for the community to
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  engage with that.
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  And it was like, well, how do you get on the committee?
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  Like pretty fairly basic questions.
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  Right.
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  Without going too much down the rabbit hole of like public records law.
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  Right.
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  The university said, well, we're actually like a nonprofit and this donor privacy law
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  protects us.
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  They hid all the records from us.
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  We kept asking.
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  Bishop Connolly's office was asking.
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  Eventually, after about a year, the university said the council met once.
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  We kind of regret the drag show performance.
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  We're not really going to tell you anything more about the investigation.
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  Father Mark Hendrickson at Creighton College, along with a few other experts who were not
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  going to tell you their names, looked into this issue and we're sorry.
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  And the president of the University of Nebraska said, we're sorry.
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  And that's good.
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  I mean.
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  OK.
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  That's the first step.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  It's a first.
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  Yeah.
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  Contrition is the first part of it.
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  And acknowledging your faults.
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  I think the broader problem is, why did the University of Nebraska music department think
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  that was an acceptable academic project?
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  The musical composition doctor program has the lowest return on investment of any program
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  at the University of Nebraska.
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  It has a negative eight hundred thousand dollar projected return on investment.
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  I'm sorry.
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  Could you say that again?
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  Eight negative eight hundred thousand dollars.
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  Yeah.
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  So there's a group.
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  I'm going to get the name wrong.
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  It goes by free up foundation for research on equal opportunity.
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  Anyways, you can look it up.
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  It's our articles.
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  Right.
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  Press.
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  Cooper used to work there.
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  Now he's at A.I. and they ran the numbers a few years ago unrelated to this story on
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  all the college degrees, all this data they have.
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  And of all the programs at the University of Nebraska, the one that granted a Ph.D.
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  on the basis of a drag show, quote unquote, mass has the lowest return on investment of
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  any degree the university offers.
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  But they're trying to cut the statistics program.
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  Oh, why is that?
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  Kind of maybe makes sense.
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  They don't understand statistics if they're keeping the worst degree.
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  Yeah.
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  But anyways, my my broader question is, why?
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  Why did why was why was there a committee of professors that said, you know what?
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  This guy gets it with musical composition.
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  He gets it.
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  We should totally mock Catholics.
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  That's a really smart idea in the state of Nebraska, deep red state, historically pretty
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  strongly Catholic, as I understand it.
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  He gets it.
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  So that still is never answered by the university is why was he allowed to get a Ph.D. based
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  off that performance?
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  If you listen to it and you can watch it, if you really have to do penance, OK, you're
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  going to be like that music's terrible.
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  Like the music is is truly bad.
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  It's not just like offensive to me as a Catholic, not offensive to just like Christians because
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  it mocks God and mocks religion.
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  It hurts the ears to listen to how bad this music is.
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  Oh, but I would have to believe that it has a certain cachet because it's anti-Catholic.
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  I'm going to go out on a limb here.
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  This is just speculation on my part.
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  But if he were trying to mock the ceremony of other religions that shall not be named,
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  the approval would not have been forthcoming and the decree would not have been granted.
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  You know, I mean, historically in the U.S., nothing is as American as apple pie, as as
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  anti-Catholic bigotry.
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  And that's certainly the case in higher education these days.
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  And God bless Bishop Connolly for for stepping up and and holding their feet to the fire.
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  And I'm grateful that that you did as well.
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  So in the view of the University of Nebraska, that this is this is a dead issue.
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  This is this is done and we don't need to talk about it anymore.
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  Shut up, he explained.
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  Is that is that a fair, a fair assessment?
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  Yes.
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  So I that's that's that's basically it.
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  They did say it's all right.
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  I said Mark Hendrickson that he was a pitcher for the Tampa Bay Devil Ray's father, Daniel
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  Hendrickson.
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  OK, they did.
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  They did say that, I guess this council could be reconvened.
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  However, we're really not going to know if it ever is because of how secret the university
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  was about this whole committee.
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  I really think the only reason they ever put anything out there publicly is that thankfully
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  Bishop Connolly and his staff kept asking about it and they probably felt a certain
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  amount of pressure to at least respond to him.
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  But I really don't think we're going to learn much more about this committee.
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  And I frankly don't have much confidence that something like this won't happen again.
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  I want to shift a little bit because I know that I believe higher education has been in
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  a bubble for a very long time and bubbles expand until they don't and they burst and
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  then they contract.
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  I want to speculate about whether or not the higher ed bubble is starting to contract because
• 19:15
  I see here on your site there's a reference to the University of Oregon that has been
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  rocked by low enrollment and they're looking at cutting $65 million from their budget and
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  closing their dorms.
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  Are you starting to see more and more institutes of higher education either in extreme belt
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  tightening or even shuttering up for good?
• 19:42
  We're definitely seeing that at the college fix.
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  So the University of Oregon several years ago, the University of Portland, which is
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  a Holy Cross college, I believe also said they're making cuts.
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  There's regularly colleges that are closing.
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  I think there was just a prediction from a consulting group that 442 colleges or so
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  could close in the next five years.
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  There was a year or two ago, a similar prediction from Federal Reserve economists.
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  And there's, I mean, there's a couple of reasons.
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  One is just a declining fertility rate.
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  There's just fewer people.
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  Demographics.
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  Yeah.
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  The graduating class of 2025 was predicted to be the largest high school graduating class
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  now for the coming future.
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  I mean, things can change, but basically the number of high school graduates is going to
• 20:42
  continue to decrease in the coming years.
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  And so I know Loyola University, Chicago, my alma mater has spoken about this.
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  I think there's also just with changes in artificial intelligence and technology and
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  really also President Trump and others shining a light on a lot of the, and I think we should
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  take some credit too, me and you father, shining a lot of light on the rot on college campuses.
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  I think there's a lot of backlash.
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  People are realizing that you don't have to go to college or you don't have to go to big
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  colleges anymore.
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  So yeah, absolutely.
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  University of Oregon is not an outlier.
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  It's going on across the country.
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  Well, you know, a week or so ago, my niece graduated from high school and went to high
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  school graduation. And I started to think about, you know, when I graduated from high
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  school, I'm looking forward to going to university.
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  And I was in a great books program.
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  And I was just captivated by the idea of a university campus being almost a sacred place
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  in the classroom, nearly a liturgical place.
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  And you would have, you'd be reading great books with with learned men and with people
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  who, you know, colleagues, contemporaries who really wanted to know and achieve.
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  And they were going to put their life on hold to immerse themselves in the best of
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  what was thought and said.
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  And I carried that with me through, you know, I was in school till 23rd grade.
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  And then I carried that with me into my classroom as well.
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  And the idea that somehow the university is really just pre-professional credentialing
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  and that has devolved into the idea that the university is just a late adolescent spa and
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  play date, I find heartbreaking.
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  I also think it's scandalous that young people who can't calculate compound interest are
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  allowed to sign for student loans that they can't discharge even in bankruptcy.
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  And we tell parents that the only way your child can have any possibility of a happy
• 23:08
  life is if he goes to college, because, you know, college makes everyone above average
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  and college makes everyone elite.
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  And we don't talk about the growing number of students who need remedial math and
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  English and who can't write a coherent paragraph who've graduated from high school or
• 23:29
  now at university and sucking up debt.
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  I find that profoundly disturbing.
• 23:35
  Matt, I had heard that DEI on college campuses had fallen on hard times.
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  It was no longer what the cool kids were doing.
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  And yet we hear that DEI has kind of gone underground and has begun to emerge again.
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  What's the status of the cult of DEI on college campuses these days?
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  I think there was a lot of hope when President Trump came into office and was releasing
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  various executive orders.
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  A lot of that was attached to federal funding and would limit gender ideology and DEI,
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  especially limiting DEI focused research through the NIH and other places.
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  But a lot of that has continued.
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  It hasn't slowed down.
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  And I think the University of Michigan is a prime example.
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  If you remember, Santa Ono was up for the presidency at the University of Florida.
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  But it was last year.
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  And what ultimately killed him was that people like Christopher Ruffo and others were
• 24:43
  highlighting how he did push DEI pretty strongly.
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  In March 2025, he said he was going to close the university's office of DEI, Office for
• 24:56
  Health Equity, and discontinue its DEI 2.0 strategic plan.
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  But reporting by the College Fix and research by economist Mark Perry has confirmed that
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  it's still going pretty strong at the University of Michigan, as it is at other
• 25:17
  campuses. So, for example, the University of Michigan continues to fund anti-racism
• 25:25
  grants. The law school talks about DEI.
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  Even the School of Kinesiology maintains an Office of Culture, Equity and Community.
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  So all of this, they've changed around some of the words.
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  They maybe dialed it back a little bit in some places.
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  But it's still going strong at the University of Michigan, as well as other universities.
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  It seems to me to be a very stubborn kind of ideology.
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  You know, if you hire me, for example, to root out racism on campus, OK, fine.
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  And so we get rid of all the overt racism.
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  I don't say my job is done here.
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  Well, then there's the subtle racism.
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  And let's say we get rid of all that.
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  And then I say, well, now my work is done here.
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  Well, no, because now there's the unconscious racism.
• 26:21
  You're racist in ways that you don't even know.
• 26:24
  It seems to me we've set up a program where it's, you know, if I were the DEI provost,
• 26:31
  so to speak, it's in my financial interest to always find fault.
• 26:37
  Isn't it?
• 26:38
  Absolutely.
• 26:38
  That's how it happens, because like you said, if everything's fine at the university and
• 26:44
  there's no racism, there's no sexism, then you're out of a job.
• 26:51
  And that's really unfortunate because my theory that I cannot have not studied this, not
• 26:58
  tested this, but my theory is that a lot of administrators were told if they received a
• 27:04
  graduate degree in higher education or something similar, they would be very successful
• 27:10
  and well-liked.
• 27:12
  They found out that was a waste of money.
• 27:14
  And so then they become administrators, DEI officials, and then they just sort of take
• 27:20
  out their anger about wasting a bunch of money on students.
• 27:24
  I want to interject from this.
• 27:27
  We're talking about spending money.
• 27:29
  And in particular, we have universities who really have their back against the wall
• 27:33
  financially in some of their closing year.
• 27:35
  You've got a story here from the College Fix that the University of Minnesota Sexuality
• 27:40
  Center spent $800 on gender affirming haircuts.
• 27:47
  I'm looking at and you could go to the channel Queercut.
• 27:53
  I think I know what that means, but what does it mean?
• 27:57
  I assume it's primarily for women who say they are men and want shorter haircuts.
• 28:06
  So this is part of the Gender and Sexuality Center for Queer and Trans Life, which is
• 28:13
  at the Twin Cities campus, University of Minnesota.
• 28:17
  Nice campus, by the way.
• 28:18
  I like to spend some time up in Twin Cities.
• 28:20
  But anyways, so we filed a public records request for the the center's just the check
• 28:28
  registry, so not like salaries.
• 28:31
  This won't surprise you.
• 28:32
  They have three employees and their pronouns are any, all, he, they and they, he.
• 28:37
  These are two different combinations.
• 28:40
  And yeah, so they spent $800.
• 28:42
  They do these events where you can get a free so-called gender affirming haircut.
• 28:49
  They also spent a lot of money on food, as you can imagine, for campus group, a lot of
• 28:55
  events. They also spent at least $250 on protein shakes.
• 29:00
  They have this trans and queer strength group and it's a weekly program, supports trans,
• 29:07
  non-binary, gender non-conforming folks as they plan and work towards their strength
• 29:11
  training goals. A little interjection probably aided by the extra testosterone shots some
• 29:16
  of them take. They spend $600 on pride flags, $200 on drag bingo, and then $800 for a
• 29:28
  speaker who's a trans femme, non-binary actor who started an off-Broadway play called
• 29:35
  Prince. And then the next part is a homophobic slur.
• 29:40
  Right, right. So, yeah, well, it seems to me that people need to come with with a bar
• 29:45
  code so you can have the pronouns and the nomenclature.
• 29:48
  So it seems to me that, you know, colleges are growing broke and then spending money on
• 29:53
  haircuts and protein shakes.
• 29:55
  We're talking about a more serious issue.
• 29:56
  And this is an article that you wrote just a few days ago about a student who burnt a
• 30:04
  cross on campus at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
• 30:08
  But it was OK because he put a MAGA hat on top of that.
• 30:14
  Tell us about that story, please.
• 30:16
  So there is a student.
• 30:17
  So he goes to the University of Illinois, Chicago.
• 30:21
  So not the prestigious one in Hyde Park, but the other one on the West Side and nearby.
• 30:28
  So at Grant Park, I think is where President Obama gave some famous speech when he was
• 30:33
  elected president the first time.
• 30:35
  Just a nice park in Chicago.
• 30:38
  His name is Merlin Liu.
• 30:40
  He grew up in the wealthy suburb of Naperville, went to Neuqua Valley, which is a very
• 30:44
  good public high school.
• 30:47
  And he put up a burning cross in Grant Park.
• 30:52
  And immediately everyone said, of course, Trump, Trump, this is why this is what happens
• 30:56
  when Trump's elected.
• 30:58
  There's all this racism in Grant Park, this burning cross.
• 31:02
  Some people are like, I don't know.
• 31:04
  That sounds suspicious.
• 31:05
  Turns out it was this Asian student, Merlin Liu, and he put the cross up and also put
• 31:12
  like a red hat that was supposed to look like a Make America Great Again hat.
• 31:16
  And he said it was to protest Trump, the MAGA Christian nationalist base.
• 31:23
  And he also said he didn't know that the burning cross was a sign of racial hatred.
• 31:30
  Four years of high school, pretty good high school, four years at University of
• 31:34
  Illinois, Chicago.
• 31:36
  And he told a reporter, I didn't go to college for history.
• 31:41
  Why would I know what a burning cross is?
• 31:43
  Oh, well.
• 31:46
  And, you know, this is a mile from, by the way, where Jussie Smollett was attacked the
• 31:53
  early morning hours by two Nigerian brothers who said this is MAGA country.
• 31:59
  So, right.
• 32:00
  Something going on on the south side of Chicago.
• 32:03
  I don't understand that as well, but I saw that when it happened, it was like Christmas
• 32:10
  in June because people could run to the microphones and become histrionic about racism
• 32:16
  and Trumpism and, you know, the screaming million hordes of Christian nationalists and
• 32:22
  white supremacists who, you know, have their meetings on Thursdays and Saturdays.
• 32:27
  And then it turned out, no, it was just this this Asian kid who didn't know what the
• 32:33
  heck he was doing.
• 32:34
  Did anyone say, oops, sorry, our bad.
• 32:37
  We kind of jumped the gun.
• 32:38
  We should have waited for an investigation.
• 32:40
  Then did anyone self-correct at all?
• 32:43
  You know, not that I've not that I've seen so far in covering this.
• 32:48
  Hopefully they did because the governor of Illinois said that this is what happens when
• 32:54
  the seeds of racism and fascism grow unchecked in our country.
• 32:59
  There was the local prelate of the Archdiocese of Chicago who said it was shocking but not
• 33:06
  surprising to see a burning cross.
• 33:09
  And then, of course, Gina Samuels, the faculty director of the Center for the Study of
• 33:15
  Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago, said, I do think we're living in a
• 33:22
  time when we have a president that stokes this kind of thing and invites this type of
• 33:26
  stuff. So I'm looking forward to their apologies and, you know, would be happy to
• 33:32
  publish it if they apologize for it.
• 33:35
  Just for clarification, Matt, have there been an outburst of cross burnings on college
• 33:43
  campuses in the past year?
• 33:44
  And I just haven't heard about it.
• 33:46
  I don't think so.
• 33:48
  There haven't been. About 10 years ago, I remember this when Trump was running and there
• 33:56
  was all these rumors of the Klan was on campus.
• 34:01
  Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 34:02
  And I remember in one instance, it was it was a Dominican friar, you know, just and, you
• 34:08
  know, his hooded garment was actually his white habit.
• 34:13
  And the whip he had in his hand was actually his rosary beads hanging from his belt.
• 34:20
  And there was there was a fair bit of hysteria about it.
• 34:26
  So my concern is that people are responding and thinking in terms of memes and tropes
• 34:35
  and they're generating a form of emotional hysteria rather than clear thinking.
• 34:42
  Is that your read on it as well?
• 34:44
  I think so. I always like there is a good quote.
• 34:47
  A few years ago, there was allegations of a racist slurs being used at Penn State during
• 34:55
  a basketball game. And I really like the coach at the time.
• 34:58
  His name was Michael Shrewsbury.
• 35:00
  And he said he said something like, yeah, you know, he said, if anything did happen,
• 35:06
  we're checking into everything.
• 35:08
  But if anything did happen, that's completely unacceptable.
• 35:12
  And I think that's a good way to approach it.
• 35:14
  And I turned out to be a hoax, but he looked smart because he said, well, if it did
• 35:19
  happen, it's terrible.
• 35:20
  But let's let's actually like get into it first before we rush into judgment.
• 35:25
  Unfortunately, that's usually not what happens.
• 35:29
  There was a Virginia professor.
• 35:32
  There was some white teens who happened to be outside of his house.
• 35:36
  They stopped. It had snowed.
• 35:38
  They were clearing snow out of the pickup, the bed of their truck.
• 35:41
  They were listening to a rap song that had some obscenities in it, as they often do.
• 35:48
  And he said these white teens were targeting me.
• 35:50
  They were throwing snow at me.
• 35:52
  They they didn't even see him.
• 35:54
  He was hiding in his house behind these blinds.
• 35:58
  And the police said there's no proof they were attacking him.
• 36:01
  They were just cleaning out their truck and they were just listening to rap music.
• 36:05
  That's what concerns me is we've got everyone on a hair trigger.
• 36:11
  And it's not a good way to live.
• 36:14
  Matt Lamb of the College Fix, thank you for a very enjoyable conversation.
• 36:19
  I'm grateful for your good work, you and your colleagues.
• 36:22
  And I do look forward to next time.
• 36:24
  Thanks for having me back on. I appreciate it.
• 36:26
  Episodes like this need the support of listeners like you.
• 36:29
  If you want to hear more of the Catholic Current, please make a donation at the
• 36:32
  station of the cross dot com.
• 36:34
  Thank you. Another timely Tuesday here at the Catholic Current.
• 36:38
  We're at the last segment, you and me sharing timely thoughts, reflecting.
• 36:41
  We've heard today we're talking about the academic year in review, especially in
• 36:46
  higher education with Matt Lamb of the College Fix.
• 36:51
  What are the lessons to be learned?
• 36:55
  My niece just graduated from high school.
• 36:59
  I know that there are a large number of folks whose kids and grandkids are going
• 37:03
  off to college for the first time.
• 37:06
  A lot of folks have kids and grandkids who are becoming high school seniors
• 37:10
  thinking about their future.
• 37:13
  And here's my best advice as someone who loves education, who thinks that the
• 37:20
  university venture, which really was founded by Christendom, by the way, make
• 37:25
  no mistake, is a is a very great, grace, privileged venture that candidly has
• 37:35
  fallen on really hard times.
• 37:39
  So here's my advice in no particular order.
• 37:43
  Let the buyer beware.
• 37:46
  Be very, very discerning.
• 37:50
  About your relationship with higher education, be very, very discerning as to
• 37:58
  whether or not higher education is worth the investment of time and energy and
• 38:06
  money.
• 38:07
  If you're visiting schools, if you're discerning with schools, ask lots of
• 38:12
  questions about the employment experiences of recent graduates.
• 38:18
  Talk a lot about return on investment.
• 38:20
  Now, I know higher education is not meant to be an employment program.
• 38:26
  And yet, and yet, very often it's marketed that way.
• 38:34
  That if you really love your kids and you want your kids to have a good future, the
• 38:39
  only way to do that is if you spend four to six years on your four year degree on
• 38:48
  whatever.
• 38:49
  Because only then can you graduate and at 22 get your corner office at Goldman Sachs.
• 38:56
  Otherwise, you are completely unemployable and you won't have a good life.
• 39:05
  And candidly, none of that is true.
• 39:09
  None of that is true.
• 39:11
  You know, I can go off and cite all sorts of numbers and so on.
• 39:18
  But in my experience, listening to someone read lists of numbers in the hopes of getting
• 39:24
  you to do something is a really bad approach.
• 39:26
  So we're not going to do that.
• 39:28
  But if you just want to read great books and hear great lectures, I mean, my goodness,
• 39:33
  I can give you a list of books that will keep you busy until your great-grandchildren
• 39:40
  retire.
• 39:40
  That's not a problem.
• 39:41
  In fact, I'm going to ask Madam Producer to add a book to the reading list called
• 39:46
  Another Sword of Learning by the late, great Jesuit Father James Shaw, a friend of mine.
• 39:52
  And there's a whole lifetime reading program there.
• 39:56
  If you want to hear great lectures, YouTube, Hillsdale College, there are lots and lots
• 40:03
  of places where you can get lifetimes worth of really solid lectures.
• 40:08
  For free, or next to nothing, or, you know, you can get great courses on Spotify.
• 40:15
  In other words, you have options.
• 40:17
  Also, you're investing time.
• 40:22
  You're investing time.
• 40:25
  And that time can be used learning a trade, or starting a family and having children 18,
• 40:33
  19, 20 years old, or peak fertility.
• 40:36
  And so I think that the, look, the very idea that going to college makes everyone above
• 40:45
  average, I mean, just mathematically, that's nonsense right there, and treating college
• 40:52
  as a second-chance high school, which is what a lot of people do.
• 40:55
  I was startled and scandalized, even at, you know, good schools, the startling percentage
• 41:02
  of students in remedial math, reading, and writing classes.
• 41:09
  Something is broken.
• 41:10
  Something is broken.
• 41:11
  So when you visit a school, ask to meet with professors.
• 41:17
  Ask for the syllabus for classes.
• 41:21
  That's very important as well.
• 41:25
  Talk to students about the contact hours they have with professors.
• 41:31
  There's a lot of professors who teach grudgingly, because they have to, and their first love
• 41:38
  is really doing research, because that's, you know, candidly, that's where the government
• 41:41
  grants are.
• 41:44
  And also, let's not forget debt.
• 41:48
  The idea that, well, you know, if you go to college, you get a better job, and you get
• 41:52
  ever so much more money and salary.
• 41:54
  Well, that's maybe.
• 41:56
  Not always.
• 41:57
  It's certainly not as good as it was, you know, back in my day.
• 42:03
  And compound interest is a cruel mistress.
• 42:07
  Make no mistake about that.
• 42:11
  And college debt is not something you can discharge, even in bankruptcy.
• 42:17
  And I'm a big fan of various Catholic ventures.
• 42:22
  I know there's one in Steubenville, and there's some, I think it's the College of St. Joseph
• 42:27
  the Worker, and there's the San Damiano College of the Trades, where you work for, you get
• 42:35
  a really great reading list.
• 42:37
  You get a deeply Catholic humanities, liberal arts education, and you learn a trade like
• 42:43
  carpentry, or electrician, or plumber, and so on, and you graduate, and you're a Catholic
• 42:50
  gentleman who believes and who is literate, and also is trained well enough to start a
• 42:55
  small business and start a family.
• 42:58
  And I think we need to, we need a whole lot more of that.
• 43:04
  I mean, my parents, God bless them, in a lot of ways they were naive, and perhaps their
• 43:10
  naivete was justified.
• 43:12
  Well, you know, you just drop the kid off at public school, and he comes out 18 years
• 43:16
  old, ready to be a good citizen, and he can read and write.
• 43:20
  And maybe that naive belief was justified when I was growing up.
• 43:27
  I don't think it's justified now.
• 43:30
  Maybe there was a time where if you drop a kid off at college, and four years later,
• 43:36
  he comes out employable and is somehow magically above average.
• 43:41
  Maybe at one time that was true.
• 43:45
  I'm not sure that it is now.
• 43:48
  And believe me, friends, it pains me to talk this way, because I spent most of my adult
• 43:52
  life on college campuses, first as a student, and later as a professor.
• 43:56
  I saw the college classroom almost as a liturgical space, so I have a very great reverence for
• 44:03
  Catholic higher education.
• 44:05
  I just think that before you invest so much time and so much money, that you go in with
• 44:15
  your eyes absolutely wide open, that you know what's a legitimate and reasonable expectation,
• 44:24
  and what is wishful thinking, and what is flat out erroneous.
• 44:28
  So ask good questions.
• 44:30
  Do your homework.
• 44:31
  Do your homework.
• 44:32
  Do your homework.
• 44:33
  And ask repeatedly for reliable numbers on return on investment.
• 44:40
  And take note if they're reluctant to discuss that with you.
• 44:44
  I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day of the Catholic Current.
• 44:47
  Join us tomorrow for another episode of the Catholic Current.
• 44:50
  Great topic, great guest, great conversation.
• 44:52
  That's how we roll here at the Station of the Cross and the Catholic Current, where
• 44:57
  we strive mightily to be more than merely relevant.
• 45:01
  After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audio
• 45:06
  as podcast, or if you can find audio, you can find us.
• 45:09
  Take us to your family and friends.
• 45:11
  Together we'll take it to the whole world.
• 45:12
  Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may God our Lord surround you with
• 45:16
  a legion of angels with flaming swords to light your path, to protect you from harm
• 45:21
  and every evil, to reach the happiness of heaven.
• 45:23
  May Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• 45:26
  Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.