Catholic Candle note: The article below concerns the best education, a Catholic Liberal Education.  Do not confuse it with many university programs called “liberal arts” but which are full of fluff, falsehood, and aimless so-called “enrichment” courses and “humanities”. 

A liberal education also does not refer to liberalism nor is a true liberal education an indoctrination into that error of liberalism or political correctness.  In fact, a true Catholic Liberal Education is the best antidote to the errors of liberalism.

Part 1

The Heart of a True Education is Thinking, Not Merely Memorizing

Let us start by reflecting on a problem that has existed for many decades but which is now worse than ever before and continues to get even worse.  This problem to which we refer is how common it is for people to graduate with a university degree without much (or any) real discernable improvement in their minds and thinking ability.  This is true whether the degree is a bachelor’s degree or a doctorate.

In their course work, students primarily learn how to “talk-the-talk” of their field.  An engineer learns engineering jargon.  Accountants learn accounting jargon.  Lawyers learn legal jargon.  Financial analysts learn their field’s jargon.  And so on.   And, usually, they also learn the jargon of political correctness, such as “social justice”, “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, etc.

Their diplomas, and being fluent in their field’s jargon, are the two ways these graduates show themselves to be members of their profession or field.  Even if those people are rather marginal or inadequate for engaging in the work of their field, they are trained to speak the jargon.

So, being a professional in his field often means being someone with a credential in that field and who is skilled at sounding like someone in that field.  Such jargon often might make a member of his field look and sound clever or learned, even when he is neither.  It makes him look like he is a man of understanding when he has merely been taught to parrot the experts’ statements – which have been “drilled into his head” through repetition and memorization.

To take one example: we saw how a great many physicians showed themselves to be unfit to practice medicine during the Covid scare.  They took the comfortable, lazy, conformist path of saying and doing whatever they were told by the medical establishment, even though it was contrary to what the eyes and experience of a thinking physician would show.[1]  These conformist physicians followed evil protocols which harmed their patients.

One reason for the way they acted was because (for many of them) they were too cowardly to exercise their independent judgment for the health of their patients.  That is a sufficient reason why these physicians are unfit for the practice of their profession – they don’t value the truth. 

In addition to physicians like these who are simply cowards, other physicians were ignorant of the harm they did to their patients because they were not accustomed to engaging in the true practice of medicine.  Instead, they slavishly followed the directives of the medical/political establishment, regardless of what those directives required.  These physicians followed the rash and lethal covid protocols and rejected the common, safe, inexpensive, and effective mitigation treatments of prudent doctors.

Based on their medical training, these physicians were conditioned to merely follow the medical establishment’s flow charts, checklists, and handbooks.  They did not use their independent judgment to treat the health of their patients.

They were accustomed to following the standard patterns such as ordering a medical test and then prescribing whatever pill was indicated by the flowcharts/protocols, depending on the test results. 

Although it is true that the treatment for the same health problem tends to take a similar path in many persons, the problem is that those physicians did not use their own professional judgment but merely deferred to whatever the medical/political establishment told them to do, no matter how unreasonable.[2]

It does not take a real physician to simply unthinkingly, uncritically follow the medical establishment’s treatment flowcharts/protocols.[3]  A professional (or someone who is proficient in whatever field) should be someone who uses his own good judgment and knows how to act independently and to practice in his field without anyone needing to tell him what to do.  He should not merely be someone who is trained to follow the rules and flow charts, as the modern “professional” is so often trained to do nowadays by the professional establishment in whichever field he is in.

Learning how to follow the flowcharts does not “make” a physician (or any professional).  Such medical treatment could be as adequately done (if it were legal) by a nurse, by a lab tech, or even, perhaps, by an eighth-grader who had been taught the medical jargon and how to follow the treatment flowcharts.

In this way, many physicians abdicate their responsibility to exercise their independent judgment, to reason carefully about a matter, and take full responsibility for their actions and the results.  So many physicians were (and are) unable to think critically since they never learned how to do so, because critical thinking is no longer taught in most schools.[4]  Instead of teaching students how to think, schools nowadays only teach students what to think – that is, the schools fill the students’ heads with the conclusions presented to those students to memorize.

The example above is about physicians, especially during the covid alarmism.  But a similar situation exists in other fields and disciplines.

An Example in Another Field, of Professional Conformity which Masquerades as Education

Above, we reviewed the incompetence demonstrated by physicians who blindly followed the deadly Covid flow charts and protocols issued by the political and medical establishment.

This conformity, and a lack of careful thinking and of exercising responsible professional judgment, is a much broader problem than merely among medical doctors.

Let us take another of countless examples of credentialed “professionals” who cannot (or do not) think on their own and merely speak the jargon of their field and mimic what the establishment tells them to say and do.

During the housing bubble of the early 2000s, risky, “subprime” mortgages of borrowers with bad credit histories, were packaged into bundles and were sold in the financial markets as AAA-rated securities.  (The “AAA” rating is the highest rating, reflecting the best and safest of all investments.)

Let us look at how this practice resulted in a major financial crisis.

In the search for greater profits, banks made huge numbers of mortgage loans, at higher interest rates, to borrowers with poor credit histories.[5]  The banks lowered their loan underwriting standards in order to originate more mortgage loans and the banks sold these mortgage contracts to investors (so those banks would not have to suffer the consequences of their lax standards).

Because there was a housing “bubble” at the time, housing prices were increasing at an unsustainable rate.  So, at the beginning of this “bubble”, when the subprime borrowers failed to pay their mortgages, the houses were (in the short run) increasing in value fast enough so the lender could sell the loan’s collateral (viz., the house) without suffering a loss after the borrower defaulted.

But this housing bubble (like all such “bubbles”) popped.  When the housing prices did not continue their unsustainable rise and when the economy took a downturn, then these subprime mortgages went into default in large numbers, causing massive losses as the prices of houses went down.

These subprime loans had been bundled into large groups and the three big credit rating agencies (Fitch, Standard & Poor’s, and Moody’s Investors Services) had rated these investments as AAA (the highest investment quality). 

Investors had been told that, although those subprime mortgages were risky investments individually, nonetheless, because they were bundled together, collectively those same mortgages became of the highest investment quality.[6]  The fallacy was that, if you add enough bad investments together, it becomes the best quality investment.

The certified financial analysts and the “whole financial world” parroted this nonsense.  The idea being (as it were) that if you pile enough manure in one heap, it becomes gourmet food.

Writing in hindsight, Investopedia.com stated:

The packaging of mortgage debt into bond-like financial instruments, was a key driver of the 2007-08 global financial crisis … that brought many major financial institutions on Wall Street and around the world to their knees when the U.S. real estate bubble burst.  …

The banks that held these … investments lost tens of billions of dollars which almost caused the US banking system to collapse.[7]

Here is one report from the period shortly before the risky mortgage bundles started to suffer huge losses:

Subprime mortgage bonds carrying the highest, “AAA,” rating have not eroded in quality despite price declines in the securities in recent days, Fitch Ratings said on Wednesday [August 8, 2007].

"We continue to be confident that “AAA” ratings reflect the high credit quality of those bonds ….”[8]

In this foolishness, “everyone” went along with the herd.  “No one” thought for himself, and “everyone” accepted the AAA credit rating for these bundles of junk mortgages because the “experts” told them they were ultra-safe.

While this foolishness was going on (and before the crash which later came), only a very few thinking people remarked that “this is nuts”!

Where did the Financial Analysts Go Wrong?

The financial analysts and other “professionals” who followed the herd on these mortgage investments had the academic degrees, spoke the industry jargon and could read spread sheets and charts.  But they did not use their own independent judgment and think clearly about the assertions being made that risky junk mortgages became ultra safe (we would say “magically”) if there were enough of them bundled together.

This results from the “institutions of higher learning” lowering academic standards and not teaching students how to think.  Instead, these students and graduates merely do what everyone else does in that field without exercising independent judgment in their work.

Such bachelor and doctoral degrees have much less value than they appear.  These considerations remind us that we cannot be sure of the competence of a person by merely confirming that he has the “correct” credential and sounds like he knows his field.

As we will see below, academic institutions have degraded their standards to lure more students (to gain students’ tuition dollars which are subsidized by federal government handouts – given either as grants or as subsidized loans).

When the overall number of students greatly increases (as it has in the last seventy years), this necessarily includes those students who are less qualified/unqualified because the more qualified students would generally already be college-bound (or entering graduate school).   Those underqualified students would not enroll at the particular school (or would not stay), if the universities did not greatly water-down their academic standards.

So, with diluted standards, academia pushes those students through the courses by teaching the students the jargon of their field and teaching them how to follow the flow charts and protocols of what they should do in their future work in their field, without really teaching the students how to think and without equipping them to act proficiently as independent professionals who practice in their field by exercising their own good judgment and acting on this judgment.

The Problem of Degree Inflation in Modern Academia

Not only do universities admit many, many, unqualified people in order to expand the class sizes and increase their tuition inflow, but this watering down also fits in other ways with the universities’ goals, since those institutions are captured by the leftists and promote leftist goals.

The leftists seek to eliminate meritocracy, which is the recognition and rewarding of superior objective performance.  Meritocracy is the opposite of the modern leftist idea that “everyone wins” and “everyone gets a prize”.  Obviously, this unrealistic mentality (viz., that “everyone wins”) deceives the students about the real world, which has real winners and real losers.  Thus, students are deprived of life-lessons which would foster in them resiliency of character and help them learn how to handle disappointments in life.

Further, the “everyone wins” mentality results in students not trying as hard as they should have – or would have – if they had not received good grades with little effort.  This discourages superior accomplishment and striving for excellence.

One of the reasons there is so much protesting (on college campuses) about political causes (such as related to the Gaza war in 2024) is because colleges are full of persons who are unfit for learning deeply and reflecting carefully – which are the activities of a true education.  Thus, many of these students are instead looking to live the life of action (not reflection).  They are not looking to improve their minds but to “make a difference” in society, as that phrase would be defined by “political correctness”.  Such students and faculty often demand that their college commits itself to social and political action in lieu of the life of education and knowledge.

There are many organizations in society (some good, some bad) which are dedicated to organizing and engaging in political action, promoting social causes, and focusing on practical pursuits.  Such “students” really belong (temperamentally) in those organizations.  If they are unwilling to postpone their life of action, then they do not belong at an institution of reflection and deep study (as a college should be).

Faculties should be largely communities of scholars, and the students should be apprentice-scholars.  But modern students are so often not docile disciples of wise teachers but instead are “change agents”[9] for social and political causes, often egged on by their leftist professors who do not belong at a real institution of learning any more than these students do.

The universities are inundated with frivolous sham “degrees” awarded for successfully memorizing sufficient leftist indoctrination – fields such as “black studies”, “women’s studies”, “ecological studies”, “sociology”, “psychology”[10], etc. 

The universities compete against each other for the same tuition dollars and so they offer students a curriculum which is attractive, easy, and “relevant” to them instead of offering a true scholarly education perfecting their minds through the pursuit of the highest universal truth.  Instead of a real education, students can elect to study  “theater arts”, “casino management”, “jazz performance”, “film production”, etc.  Through these activities and “relevant” courses, students and faculties can flatter their self-image and “check the boxes” which result in a four-year degree.

Instead of a college producing careful, reflective, wise, and analytical thinkers whose minds are perfected by the highest truths, colleges produce graduates who can superficially talk the jargon of the field and function by following the protocols of the particular industry.

What should happen is that colleges would enroll only those who can learn (and who are committed to learning) what colleges must teach – viz., the higher truths and wisdom.  THIS would make colleges truly institutions of higher learning and would make their students truly educated.  This curriculum would be a true Catholic Liberal Education (the elements of which we will examine in a later part of this article). 

But instead, colleges enroll those who are neither prepared for a true education nor are interested in true knowledge and wisdom.  So, the colleges give students what they want: functional, practical, “relevant” and (largely) shallow courses which are job training and social activism.

The Problem of Grade Inflation in Modern Academia

Grade inflation increasingly is widespread and a grade of “A” often really should mean “average”.  For example, roughly 79 percent of the grades awarded at the prestigious Yale University in the 2022–23 academic year were A’s or A-minuses.[11]  Likewise, almost 80% of Harvard students get an A, A-, or A+.[12] 

With such grade inflation one could say that everyone (more or less) is at the top of his class.  This means that the cum laude designation often deserves little praise and those who graduate with distinction are often distinctly average.

The watering down of academic standards is shown to be even worse when we consider that the average student coming into college can read at only the 7th grade level.[13]  Thus, if we were to assume that the student will make four years of reading improvement in the four years of college, then he would read at approximately an 11^th grade level (junior in high school) when he graduates from college.  This means that this average student would graduate from college still unable to read at the grade level of a high school senior.

Misunderstanding What True Education Is

We should perfect our intellects (as God created us to do).  This is done through genuine education in universal truth, especially the highest truths.  (We will see more about this in a later part of this series.)  But in our perverse and carnal times, few people do that, or want to do that, or even know that this should be their goal.

Most people go to college to get job training and to memorize what they are told to memorize, not to genuinely perfect their minds.  Because the college life is no longer about the truth and no longer about developing the mind, it has become political and involves the concealing of racial and other types of performance disparities.  The focus is on money, power, prestige, and self-interest. 

Instead, without ever learning how to think carefully and critically, the students imbibe the politically correct conclusions and learn to become “social justice warriors” without ever learning how to evaluate the leftist garbage that is crammed into their minds.  Such students neither are capable of, nor interested in, leading the life of a scholar, pursuing the truth, and perfecting their minds.

Whereas universities should be offering a student precious years in which to gain wisdom and learn deep truths, instead those institutions compete for students by offering the cheapest and quickest road to an “academic” degree to be used as a tool with which to get a “good job”.  Thus, degrees nowadays are largely mere job training – which is not real education.  The idea is that with a degree, they can command a higher income in the job market.

A big part of the problem is that the government subsidizes education (including taxpayer subsidized state schools).  When something is subsidized, more people “buy” it – including many people who would not value it enough to “buy” the item if it were not subsidized.  So often students go to universities (at least in part) in order to grab government tuition freebees/handouts, have “fun”, and delay the time at which they must support themselves. 

Thus, it would help reduce degree “inflation” if the government stopped pumping money (subsidies and freebees) into the universities.  If that happened, there would be fewer students and more real education.  (There would also be other benefits such as a reduction of the injustices that society suffers, through the elimination of this socialist wealth-redistribution which occurs by such government subsidies).

Whereas, for hundreds of years, until recent decades, an academic degree indicated that a person had a somewhat exclusive intellectual formation, now those credentials have been so debased by a proliferation of low-standard college credentials that they often mean little else besides marking a period of four years of leftist indoctrination.  Moreover, during those four years, the focus is increasingly on “student experience” rather than on student learning.  In other words, the focus is on the “student as customer and consumer” rather than as a seeker of the highest knowledge and wisdom.

As we will see in a later part of this article, this highest knowledge and wisdom is truly beyond all price and should be valued “more than kingdoms”!

To be continued