Big Education Needs Big Oversight

Big Education Needs Big Oversight

The Wizard of Oz was exposed as a fraud when the curtain was pulled back. The curtain has now been pulled back on Big Education exposing fraud and abuse. The American people are ready to have a critical review of academia and a new level of regulations of Big Education in America.

The spectacle of Congressional hearings on rampant and revolting antisemitism on the campuses of colleges and university was quickly followed by the exposure of Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay as a serial plagiarist.  Dr. Gay was also exposed for having a thin body of academic publications.

This suggests that an ideologically driven faculty at Harvard and other academic institutions have endeavored to cloak like-minded individuals, like Dr. Gay, with the respect and imprimatur of “doctor” with scant academic rigor; certainly, far less academic rigor than would normally be applied to a PhD candidate, or a candidate that does not share the same ideals or biases as the faculty.

Loss of intellectual honesty, the very reason for these colleges and universities, is not the only problem facing Big Education.

First, there is the problem of the massive amount of questionable student loans, many of which will default. The consensus estimate is that there is $500 Billion in outstanding student loans, and the American taxpayers are likely to be left holding the bag for the bulk of those loans. One factor in this massive student loan problem is bloated tuition; tuition that outpaced inflation year after year as colleges and universities padded their administrative staff and paid them quite handsomely.

Second, the Supreme Court of the United States held that Harvard University violated the Equal Protection Clause of United States Constitution with its affirmative action admissions practices. Affirmative action admissions practices are, at their core, a variation of “Diversity Equity. and Inclusion” or DEI. Rather than obey the Supreme Court ruling, and follow the United States Constitution, many colleges and universities sought to circumvent the spirit of that ruling and the Constitutional mandate in novel ways, including eliminating standardized tests and other objective admissions criteria.

Third, rather than focusing on teaching and academic research, the core missions of colleges and universities, many of these institutions have taken to espousing virulent anti-Western civilization and anti-American rhetoric. Indoctrination has replaced education as the core mission for Big Education. In large part this has been driven by large foreign contributions from nations hostile to western civilization in general, and America in particular. That’s a problem.

Clearly Big Education cannot cure the problems plaguing it today, or it would have started to do so in earnest already. So, here are a couple of suggestions to cure the problems ailing Big Education today.

First, there should be taxation of foreign contributions of designated hostile foreign countries. This should be monitored by the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education. Better yet require Big Education to disclose all foreign contributions on publicly filed Form 990’s. That would allow third party watchdog groups to have access to this information on the Internal Revenue Service websites; currently all charities are required to file Form 990’s with the Internal Revenue Service and anyone can view those filings online.

Second, colleges and universities that engage in political activities should lose tax-exempt status. The Internal Revenue Code already has provisions prohibiting political activity by charities, but these rules are rarely enforced against liberal colleges and universities. Hillary Clinton, Bill DeBlasio, Lori Lightfoot, Paul Krugman and many other current and former politicians use college campuses and lecture halls as platforms to promote their political agendas with the imprimatur of legitimacy. Likewise, Columbia School of Journalism has engaged in politics in awarding the Pulitzer Prize. Columbia awarded the Pulitzer Prize to the New York Times and the Washington Post for sensational reporting on the great Russian Hoax, but never revoked that prize after the Russian Hoax was thoroughly debunked. Nor did the Columbia School of Journalism see fit to award the prize to Miranda Devine for her reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop. The common thread is rank partisan politics.

Third, Congress needs to establish an Equal Educational Opportunity Commission (styled after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) to review and sanction colleges and universities that engage in discriminatory admissions policies in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The EEOC should have the authority to supervise, or even take over, the admissions at colleges and universities that routinely and systematically discriminate in violation of the Supreme Court Ruling. In the past similar actions were taken against businesses engaged in insidious behavior and to rectify discrimination based upon race, religion, and other protected categories.

The American people have a vested interest in restoring education to its core mission. Colleges and universities have enjoyed tremendous tax advantages as exempt charities over the years, and taxpayers will soon be bailing out the ballooning student loan fiasco. Clearly Big Education shows no desire to police itself, therefore, it is incumbent upon Congress to enact the appropriate oversight to rein in the abuses.

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Phil Vecchio is a Christian, a husband, a father of three grown children, a proud grandfather, an attorney, and a certified public accountant.

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