Assad Meymandi is a psychiatrist, a scholar and someone who gives money to worthy causes. In a recent piece at the John William Pope Center, he explained his frustration with higher education.

The Sad State of Higher Education in America

America’s greatness is in danger, not because as a nation we are economically bankrupt. Not because China owns us and could cash in their vast holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds and send us in a tailspin. Not because we keep borrowing without restraint and spend the money, among other things, to buy oil from our declared enemies in the Middle East and pollute the air we breathe, but because America is in mortal danger of ominous decline in education.

Every day some flagship university announces that it is doing away with teaching foreign language and revising its curriculum to include more courses on cultural diversity and women studies and fewer courses in math, history, and liberal education.

The latest such diatribe comes from the University of Arkansas. Inside Academe, a publication of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) reports that the University of Arkansas is going down the slippery slopes of academic mediocrity. Until now, in order to graduate from the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Arkansas, all students were required to take English composition, philosophy, mathematics, world literature, Western civilization, American history, fine arts, science and foreign language. ACTA reports that the university is planning on gutting its stellar core. The university has announced that the foreign language requirement will be eliminated, along with Western civilization, philosophy. and literature. Math and science will be trimmed, too.

These actions have borne disastrous results. For example, in a recent survey, 78 percent of University of Illinois students surveyed did not know the author of the phrase “of the people, by the people, for the people.” America is losing its memory. We are denying the type of education that imparts love of learning and prepares graduates to become effective workers and informed citizens. The late Senator Fulbright is turning in his grave…

We have replaced studies in chemistry with healthy cooking and trigonometry with understanding mortgages. A student will be more likely to read Harry Potter than anything by Thomas Jefferson.