Soon Everyone Will Be a Uni Graduate, and the Greens Will Love It

New graduates toss their hats in the air at their commencement ceremony at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., on May 27, 2018. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images

Commentary

Too often, we hear conservative politicians trumpet a phrase like this: “Radical ideologies have hijacked curriculums and teaching practises in our schools, and our children’s futures are in grave peril.”

Of course, they are absolutely correct—but their prescription misses the mark.

We are told that schools are the root of Australia’s socio-cultural degradation and that if schools return to simply teaching knowledge and civics then, socio-culturally, the next generation might just have hope.

However, every radicalised school teacher, in addition to all those involved in administrating a school or implementing a primary or secondary curriculum, holds some kind of tertiary teaching degree—so where do you think their radicalism was sown and cemented?

My contention is that it is not the schools but the universities that are responsible for the destructive political and socio-cultural crisis that plagues Australia today.

Today’s universities seem to have two competing priorities above all others.

The first is to make money.

The second is to disseminate radical sociological ideologies underpinned by, amongst other things, pseudo-morality, irresponsibility, hedonism, and victimhood—as quickly as possible.

The former is self-explanatory. Our universities have sold out on the advance of knowledge and bought into an old human vice: greed.

The latter is more nuanced. There seems to be no one-size-fits-all answer for why our universities are indoctrinating their students into the radical political culture they are.

What we do know is that this is most definitely happening. Ask any objective tertiary student, particularly if they study within the Arts faculty, and listen as they relay to you horror story after horror story.

A university graduate is seen outside Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Oct. 1, 2015. AAP Image/Lukas Coch

For but one example, I can recall an undergraduate class of mine, which purported to concern English grammar.

In this class, I was encouraged to submit my preferred pronouns, asked to cultivate a safe learning environment for my peers, asked whether I required any trigger warnings, permitted to allocate 10 percent of my grade myself so long as I was honest (give me a break), and assured that if my mental health were impaired one week I could, incredibly, consider some of the course’s assessment items as optional.

When we finally did come to discussing semantics, one of the very first things the class was taught was that English grammar arose to separate the rich from the poor.

And, I’ll reiterate, that is but one example.

Everyone Will Be a University Graduate Soon

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, approximately 5.5 million Australians hold a bachelor’s degree. About 11.5 million Australians hold a non-school (vocational or tertiary) qualification, like a certificate.

Since 2016, the number of bachelor’s degree holders has increased by 30.7 percent—so the claim that more and more Australians are enrolling in tertiary studies is a true one.

In fact, the Department of Education’s current data (which is due to be updated any moment now) shows that in 2021, approximately 1.16 million domestic students, or 4.5 percent of the national population, were enrolled in tertiary studies.

Ten years earlier, in 2011, 888,000 domestic students, or 3.97 percent of the national population, were enrolled in tertiary studies.

Over this period of a decade, university enrolments by domestic students have increased, albeit fractionally, at a faster rate than the national population.

How long will it be until the majority of Australians hold a tertiary qualification?

Students walk around Sydney University in Sydney, Australia, on April 6, 2016. Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

I do not think all that long, particularly as, in 2021, 62 percent of school-leavers said they intended to commence university studies, whereas approximately only one-tenth were committed towards TAFE or college studies.

The consequences of all this are far-reaching.

Not insignificantly, student debt can only increase; Australian tertiary students have already accrued a collective debt of more than $74 billion.

This can only serve to inflate and overcrowd the rental market.

Young Australians, in particular, are going to be negatively affected by high student debt and rising rent prices.

Young Australians, too, in their impressionability, are the most at-risk class of tertiary students to absorb the radical ideologies taught to them by the universities. Inevitably, this indoctrination will translate at the ballot box—if it is not already.

Enter the Australian Greens.

Nowhere are radical ideologies more at home than in the Australian Greens—this is not at all a contentious claim—and the party’s disproportionate prioritisation of the education sector, particularly the tertiary education sector, is telling.

Universities are the new Green unions, and with more and more Australians attending university, which in itself is perpetuating the very dilemmas that are central to the Greens’ manifesto—namely, student debt and housing—the once-obscure, now-militant movement is set to take the country by storm.

This should terrify the politically aware Australian.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.