American Meritocracy: A Tipping Point?
- sofiapbaker
- Jun 10, 2020
- 1 min read
It will probably take many years before we will be able to grasp fully the devastation left behind by 2020’s perfect storm of pandemic and civil disorder. On Wall Street analysts have for months been assessing the damage done to the American economy, while others view with alarm and foreboding a new wave of radical challenges to the rule of law, backed in too many cases by government officials who should know better. To those of us in the world of higher education, it’s already evident that the wreckage suffered by our enterprise will be the worst since the annus horribilis of 1968. Even Harvard, with the world’s largest endowment—larger than the GDP of the thirty poorest countries in the world combined—is reporting a likely deficit of $750 million for the year and is sharply curtailing its activities. Colleges, universities, and technical institutes were already closing down permanently at a record rate when the coronavirus began shuttering higher education in March. It seems likely that the pandemic will only intensify the recession afflicting American higher education, which some analysts are predicting could last for a decade…