Turning Point USA’s final stop of their college tour, at the University of California, Berkeley on Nov. 10, drew more than 900 attendees to hear actor Rob Schneider and Christian author Frank Turek. It also attracted over 100 protesters–many identifying as Antifa members, a group designated as a domestic terrorist organization by the Trump administration.
Both the university and federal authorities had ample warning that Antifa and far-left activists planned to disrupt the event, yet chaos still erupted. Flyers circulated at an anarchist book fair in Oakland two weeks prior, openly encouraging protesters to “shut down” TPUSA. Even with an increased police presence, the situation quickly devolved into a brawl two months to the day after TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk was publicly murdered.
This scene isn’t unique. Campus events across the country now serve as breeding grounds for far-left agitators and intellectually stunted activists. Universities have become incubators for adults who are emotionally volatile, politically indoctrinated, and largely incapable of contributing productively to society.
Institutions that once promised higher learning have now created a generation of self-absorbed idealists chasing status over substance. Students treat their degrees like moral credentials rather than evidence of competence or scholarship.
Higher education has devolved into lower-tier academia. A once-revered pursuit of knowledge has become a cesspool of ideological conformity and academic mediocrity. Many of today’s students are not preparing to build the future–they’re perfecting the art of grievance while expecting the system to reward them for it.
Even elite public systems like the University of California have become three-tiered bureaucracies. As writer Jonathan Keeperman, known as Lomez on X, observed, they now function as world-class training grounds for a small academic elite, credentialing mills for foreign wealth, and remedial extensions of failing public schools for the underprepared.
The first group–the genuinely capable–ends up subsidizing the other two, while the institution bends to the lowest common denominator in the name of “equity.” The result is predictable: diluted standards, demoralized high achievers, and graduates who can’t perform basic math or write at a college level.
Freshman college readiness in America is collapsing–and the consequences are everywhere. According to the ACT’s Class of 2023 report, the average composite score dropped to 19.5 out of 36, the lowest level in more than three decades.
All major categories–reading, math, science, and English–fell simultaneously. More students are arriving at college without the basic academic tools they need to succeed. When high school graduates start behind, even top-tier universities are forced to lower expectations and standards, while weaker institutions simply drown in remediation.
For the so-called “bottom-tier” liberal arts colleges–many of which admit large numbers of underprepared students–the structural decay is impossible to ignore. With national graduation rates hovering around 61 percent, and evidence showing that schools with low completion rates deliver the poorest return on investment, the system is churning out debt-ridden, directionless graduates no more capable than when they enrolled.
When academically deficient students attend under-resourced, low-selectivity institutions, the result is predictable: fewer productive adults, weaker communities, and a shrinking pool of real talent ready to sustain the nation’s future.
The SAT tells the same story–but the decline is more deceptive. In 1995, the College Board quietly “recentered” the scoring scale after years of falling results, raising every student’s score by 60 to 80 points overnight with no increase in ability. Subsequent redesigns in 2005 and 2016 diluted the test even further–dropping analogies, removing penalties for wrong answers, and rewriting math sections to emphasize “real-world” problem-solving over reasoning and rigor. Each change made it easier to score higher while learning less.
What looks like stagnation is actually a systemic lowering of expectations. If the pre-1995 scale were still in use, today’s SAT averages would be significantly lower than those from the 1980s. The illusion of progress survives only because the College Board keeps moving the goalposts.
Our top-tier students are being overlooked and certainly not given the accolades they deserve because they’re being overshadowed not by merit, but by the politics of race and socioeconomic status. America’s most capable minds are being punished for excelling while their underperforming peers are celebrated for checking the right demographic boxes. It’s no wonder President Trump recently told Laura Ingraham that he still supports H-1B visas because, in his words, America “lacks talent.”
It’s not because we don’t have it. It’s because our institutions bury it. The case grows stronger for dismantling–or radically reforming–the weak links in America’s higher-education chain. We should choose the former.
By propping up bottom-tier colleges that confuse equity with excellence, we’re doing a disservice not only to our brightest students but to the nation itself. These institutions don’t produce innovators or leaders; they manufacture entitlement and mediocrity. Shut them down. Restore rigor. Reward intelligence and discipline over identity and grievance. America’s future depends on it.
Soad Tabrizi is a licensed marriage and family therapist in eight states, with a private practice based in Orange County, CA (www.soadtabrizi.com). Soad is also the founder of www.ConservativeCounselors.com.
