Professor Anthony Esolen writes in the most recent issue of Touchstone about the public universities (no link available):
We encourage you to put your homes in hock, for the privilege of a "loan" from ourselves; we ally with one another in a price-fixing cartel, and call it Financial Aid; we reserve our sticker prices, like old-time used-car salesmen, till we size up your wallet and see what we can fleece you for; we whine for more of your tax dollars and then use them to float the price of tuition, buying a new dean here or a swimming pool there, or reduced loads for professors; at some places we hire flunkies to do much of the actual teaching, while we sip wine and discuss our Marxism; in return, we separate your children from their common sense and their faith; we curdle their love of country, alienate them from their parents, and corrupt their morals. . .
. . . We pride ourselves, all of us, on attracting students from all fifty states, though all fifty states are rapidly becoming as homogeneous as we want them to be, and from all fifty countries, or however many countries there are. . . .
. . . Every community in the United States will lose its brightest young people to Elsewhere. Elsewhere A will lose to Elsewhere B, and Elsewhere B to Elsewhere C, and so on, in one great big unproductive circle. Lose, and not gain: Roots never do thrust down as deeply as in the place of one's birth. . .
