Prestige Must Die

Anyone involved in higher education reform might recognize a very particular pattern—an “elite” university, often one of the Ivy League schools, does something inane. Reformers, usually but not exclusively conservatives, then call attention to the issue, and give it considerable press. Numerous elected officials make statements and/or issue public condemnations, and the university in question quickly tries to do damage control. Ultimately, very little truly changes. Repeat ad nauseam. 

None of this is to say that these efforts are pointless—far from it. When elite universities discriminate against students that they do not feel are sufficiently oppressed, they need to be called out. When universities repeatedly fail to protect students from angry mobs that hate them because of their religion, they should be forced to explain themselves before Congress. And when the supposed crème de la crème of our higher education system flirts with radical ideological activism, conservatives should be ready to confront them. 

But whatever the merits of this approach may be, conservative reformers heap far too much attention on a very small number of schools. Private, highly selective schools serve only about 4% of students, yet they tend to dominate the higher education reform conversation. Community colleges, regional public universities, and even many state flagship universities, all of which have far more bearing on a far greater number of Americans, garner a fraction of the scrutiny, ink, or outrage. For a movement that aims to speak to Middle America, this is a bizarre misallocation of resources.  

That said, it’s easy to understand the fixation. For hundreds of years, Americans of all stripes have been told that elite universities are something they should aspire to. That to be a “Harvard Man,” or to have that prestigious pedigree more broadly, means something. And, in this era of extreme political polarization, a conservative with a shiny degree is seen as someone who walked into the Labyrinth of Crete and returned home having slain the Minotaur. 

As such, elected officials like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have touted their Ivy League educations, and nearly a quarter of the Trump administration’s Cabinet selections attended an elite university. Even those who frequently lambast their elite education, like Ron DeSantis, can’t stop bringing it up. William F. Buckley was, after all, a man of the old Northeastern gentry, and all the good he did came with those biases.

But prestige is ultimately a mirage. Research increasingly suggests that elite universities are not any more academically rigorous than your standard four-year university (their efforts to hide lackluster grades or shepherd students into remedial courses are certainly testament to that). Instead, what prestigious universities offer someone is a fast-pass to membership in the political, cultural, and financial elite, particularly in the area between Boston and Washington, D.C. (with a branch along the Pacific coast). 

When conservatives fixate on elite universities, whether out of wistful nostalgia for what they might have once been or out of sheer frustration with what they have become, they indirectly legitimize the very ideas that sustain the prestige economy—that elite universities are more important, more worthy, and confer a mark of social superiority. None of that nonsense prepares students for virtuous citizenship nor does it imbue them with the skills necessary to succeed in the workforce. It merely grants them an invitation to the “right” kind of cocktail party.

If conservatives truly want higher education reform to succeed, we must rethink some of the assumptions and fixations that have guided our perspective on the university system. Most of all, we need to break our attachment to prestige. Put simply, prestige delenda est: prestige must be destroyed.

Indeed, conservatives often gesture towards the destruction of higher education’s prestige economy, but our revealed preferences tell a very different tale. Current students and alumni of elite universities are overrepresented among recipients of the Claremont Institute’s Publius Fellowship, the Fund for American Studies’ various programs and fellowships, and the Mercatus Institute’s Bastiat Fellowship. To be fair, this could very easily be a function of who applies and who doesn’t, but the optics of elitism remain regardless. And frankly, how many conservative parents can honestly say that they would rather their child attend Stephen F. Austin State University over Columbia or MIT?

But even more frankly, maybe they should—especially as elite universities’ costs launch into the stratosphere while affordable options sit just down the road. And as conservatives, we should value Kansas State University or the University of Idaho over a Dartmouth or a Stanford. After all, our regional universities, and even many flagship colleges, educate the vast majority of the business owners, educators, healthcare workers, bureaucrats, clergymen, engineers, and first responders who engender our civic and economic character. Walk into a school, office building, or local government office in Middle America, and chances are many of the college graduates working there grew up nearby, went to school nearby, and built their lives nearby.

These are the institutions where conservative higher education reform can be most effective. If the University of Arkansas has the right people teaching the right material, it helps the city of Fayetteville, the Ozark region, and, ultimately, the entire state of Arkansas. 

The same is true for countless public universities around the country. While this approach might not impress many people at an exclusive gathering in Martha’s Vineyard or the Hamptons, it will exercise far more influence over American lives than any prestige-forward mindset. 

The obvious rejoinder is that elite networks are monumentally important. These networks, which are nurtured and often outright generated by elite universities, have a long history of producing presidents, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, diplomats, multinational CEOs, and other powerful figures. An ambitious young conservative hoping to rise through a “Big Law” firm, a Fortune 500 company, or a prestigious think tank might feel they have no choice but to attend Harvard or Yale. Those who want to seek elected office, or perhaps secure an important legal clerkship, might be overlooked if their degree comes from a “lesser” university. This is all true, and it is difficult to deny that the incentive structure often pushes talented young conservatives to universities in the Acela Corridor. 

But is this really what universities are for? And are elites truly the only ones who merit such attention? The answer is no, on both counts. The American Experiment does not principally require its universities to produce the next generation of politicos, financiers, and intellectuals for big cities on the East Coast. Those networks are perfectly capable of reproducing themselves. They do not need our help.

What the American Experiment needs are universities that are capable of empowering Americans to live prosperous, virtuous lives in the “flyover country” the elites hold in contempt—places like Boise, Des Moines, and Memphis. Funneling promising, conservative young people to a region and a social structure divorced from where most conservatives actually live and work only further hollows the civil society we so desperately seek to revive. 

As things stand, even conservatives hide or diminish their “provincial” or “boring” backgrounds in order for others to perceive them as more enlightened or sophisticated. After all, the prestige economy not only ranks universities, but places: Cambridge over Wichita, Ithaca over Lincoln, Washington, D.C. over Stillwater. When you accept that hierarchy, whether you realize it or not, a person who leaves for the bright lights or the halls of power becomes “more successful” almost by definition. It is one thing to leave your hometown because there are a greater number of opportunities for personal and financial advancement elsewhere, but another to do so in search of status. 

It is time for conservatives to change the definition of what success in higher education means. Our objective should not be to form elites for the sake of forming elites, but to cultivate contributing citizens in the places that those citizens actually live. We should not be primarily interested in who “drives the culture” or “the doers in the places where things happen,” but in the degreed professionals who populate the church pews, bowling leagues (they are starting to grow again), Rotary Clubs, and civic associations that collectively form the American cultural mosaic. 

A teacher who graduates from Missouri Southern State University, gets married, has two kids, settles in Joplin, and volunteers for the local Salvation Army is just as much of a success as the Ivy League conservative clerking for a prominent judge, even if they won’t get invited to any luxurious high-society functions. 

But what does this look like in practice? 

It means that we must break the prestige-hungry mindset long before a student steps on campus. This begins with high school counseling. Many counselors do not receive the training necessary to properly advise ambitious young adults, meaning that predatory “gurus,” who market themselves as placing students in the best or most prestigious universities, fill the void. They help create the culture in which families, schools, and universities alike consider arbitrary college ranking systems to be gospel, encouraging students to “shoot for the stars” when those stars look suspiciously like the guru’s pockets. Conservatives should promote rigorous training in return-on-investment logic for high school counselors, and ensure that they are prepared to preach success, properly understood, to the next generation of citizens.

Universities themselves can also be the sword that slices through the Gordian knot. The recent wave of civics centers at regional universities has, thus far, been a great success, and it is worth noting that one of the oldest and best of these institutions—the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership—is at Arizona State University, a college often pilloried by the elites for being nothing more than a party school that will take anyone. Institutions like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Utah Valley University, and the University of Toledo also have highly successful programs. This should be the conservative model for all higher education reform. Who cares what Yale or Stanford do when the real work is to be done elsewhere?

For all its faults, American higher education has nearly limitless potential, and conservatives must play a vital role in its future development. But first, prestige must die. 

We must show virtue by refusing to participate in the peacocking behavior that drives many of the status games. The real reform will not happen in elite universities or fancy cocktail parties, but in the thousands of regular universities and communities that American students call home. 

Garion “Gary” Frankel is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.