Reinventing The University

In the 1930s it became clear to the Communists of Eastern Europe and Russia that their plans to foment and foster bloody revolutions as a means to totalitarian power had no chance of success in Western Europe (or the United States of America).

The communists adapted and changed their plans - and we are still living through the aftermath of the extraordinary success of their schemes in the West and around the world. Through the “Frankfurt School” and other groups, the plan became to infiltrate the Universities and places of learning and then from within, to subvert, undermine and change generational values bequeathed by the Christian civilization, over millennia.

Elsewhere, I have described how the postmodernists in the 1950s joined the project of the Frankfurt School - and how by the 1980s, the takeover of our universities was essentially complete. These are now the same universities that were the flagships and cheerleaders of the unscientific, irrational tyranny of the covid era; and the same universities who for at least a generation, have been producing the teachers and professors who are pushing and preaching “wokology” and the demonic doctrine of gender ideology.

But no tyranny lasts forever and every tyranny has a defined lifespan. This is as true of the tyranny of the modern University as it is of the tyranny of Trudeau’s creeping totalitarianism. Both have begun the process of dissolution and self-destruction - they cannot end too soon.

Two headwinds are picking up speed; they are of “gale force” strength now - but sooner than most of us think, the storm will intensify, the winds pick up an irresistible, destructive speed. The edifice of the modern university may huff and puff in protest, but will be blown down and “great will be the fall of it.”

The first, major headwind was admirably and urgently described by the Substack author, “Ignatius of Maidstone.” In his prophetic essay, “Collapse of The University,” he describes why the days of the modern university are numbered - demographics, economics, ideology, management and artificial intelligence.

The writing is on the wall - and as in the days of the prophet Daniel, so we may say to the modern University: “mene, mene, tekel, u-pharsin.” Which today can be interpreted, as Daniel did 2500 years ago,“You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting; God has numbered the days of your Kingdom and brought it to an end; your Kingdom has been divided.”

The other major headwind is the growing irrelevance of a University degree in the pursuit of a career or livelihood. Companies and corporations are increasingly realizing that University graduates have very few real world skills. More and more, they are asking the question, “what can you do?” and not “what degree do you have?” And for those who don’t yet have the knowledge or skills, the companies are willing to recruit them as apprentices and teach them the skills they will need - the relevant question being, “are you willing to learn?”

The first sentence of the executive summary of a landmark recent Harvard study, “The Emerging Degree Reset” reads:

“Employers are resetting degree requirements in a wide range of roles, dropping the requirement for a bachelor’s degree in many middle-skill and even some higher- skill roles.”

The Harvard study points out that this trend to make a University degree irrelevant was well under way before the covid pandemic, but was accelerated during the pandemic years - and is irreversible.

In the era when our Universities first were established more than 800 years ago, students not only paid their teachers directly, they also (together with the teachers) elected their own rectors (chancellors/presidents). The early Universities, including Oxford and Cambridge (and the earlier University of Paris) did not own any permanent buildings or properties. Teachers were directly judged by their own students, who paid their fees and if the students and teachers were not satisfied with the particular University, they could switch to another city and establish a new centre of learning there. In 1209 for example, a small group of dissatisfied students and teachers moved to the market town of Cambridge from Oxford, and established Cambridge University. Twenty years after this, Oxford (by then chastened by this emphasis on quality!) gleefully received dissatisfied students from the University of Paris!

The third part of the judgement against the established order that was interpreted by the prophet Daniel addressed the “dividing of the Kingdom.” In the present era, the kingdoms and domains that were ruled by the University are teetering and tilting in the tumultous storms that have enveloped them. They are being dethroned, decentralized and divided - and a new type of University, modelled on the old University is taking shape.

Not all intelligent and capable young men and women can be absorbed by the work place right out of high school. But in the meanwhile, teachers and students together can create their own centres of learning and in time, their own Universities. The courses and real world skills they offer will equip their students directly with life skills for the workplace. Private investment (often by the very companies that wish to recruit) can then create the laboratories and workshops where these students of the new University can train and practice their skills. The new University will then become a prep school for real life - not the ivory towers of privileged isolation that they have now become.

This is already happening - and teachers and students together are creating new centres of learning and new ways of imparting knowledge and skills for the new generation. For example, three brilliant, multiple award-winning Canadian scientists and professors are offering a Certificate course in Immunology and Infectious Disease beginning October this year. The course sold out within a few days of offering and is being offered again in the new year. My friend and colleague Dr. Byram Bridle describes this exciting course and his new laboratory in this engaging, eloquent Substack article.

Governments now pour billions of dollars into sub-par, non-performing universities which have morphed into centres of indoctrination and conformity. This will change as both universities and governments run out of money. And this is also changing rapidly everywhere, according to the inexorable law of competition, supply and demand - the hiring agencies demand real world skills that the existing Universities are increasingly unable to supply. And the former are turning elsewhere - to their own apprentice programs and to the new model of the University.

It is an exciting time for education. There will still be a place for the traditional university - but only if it embraces academic freedom, free inquiry and the pursuit of truth. These latter will be like the the man who built his house upon the rock in Jesus’ parable. But most of the existing universities are built on sand and will be swept away within a generation.

The very few, true Universities still standing will be joined upon the rock of truth and academic freedom by many “upstart” centres of learning like those offered by the brilliant Canadian scientists I have described. There are many more that are newly built upon this rock or waiting in the wings to join the growing ranks of those students and teachers who know that they live in a new era which must rediscover its academic mission.

To the young people reading this essay I say: “Take heart. Your deliverance is near.” To the teachers and professors who love truth and teaching and research and the academic life I say: build afresh, build bold, build new and build upon the rock, knowing that the sum total of truth and reality is backing you. You owe the next generation nothing less. And you owe yourself the excitement and energy of this new and eminently worthwhile project.

The old wineskin of the existing university cannot receive the new wine of truth, academic freedom, free inquiry and free enterprise. The new wine needs the new wineskin of the new and reinvented University.

For, as Jesus said:

“Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”