I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the voter base that the United States used to have, in contrast to the base that elected Trump in the present. Remember in history class, when you learned about the Gettysburg Address? It was famous because it was an off-the-cuff speech and was unusually short and blunt. And it starts with: “four score and seven years.” A phrase that most people wouldn’t understand today. Compare that to our president in the year 2025, whose speeches are so incoherent that the transcripts seem nonsensical. 

To put it another way, most of the framers of the Constitution were the most renowned intellectuals in the thirteen colonies. It was a fairly obvious decision to pick these people, because, at the time, powerful people and educated people were the same group. Part of why the Federalist Papers were so famous is because they were an explicit and erudite framing of political values by people who would later go on to directly apply those principles to the US government. In contrast, the history of U.S. presidents is that of a shockingly undereducated group of leaders; the majority of them only carrying undergraduate degrees. Some recent presidents have law degrees, but those aren’t seen as qualities that make them fit to lead, but rather qualifications for a job. 

Today, the powerful and the educated are an increasingly separate class. Academic experts aren’t leaders, but rather servants to decision makers. The Gilded Age saw the rise of the “robber baron,” who tended to forego expectations that aristocracy should receive an education befitting their station. Billionaires in the 21st century, on the other hand, are much more likely than the average person to hold a college degree, but this doesn’t represent a rediscovery of the value of knowledge among the ultrawealthy, but rather the shifting role of college in building power. A large proportion of powerful people have attended top universities, especially the Ivy Leagues. As most academics will tell you, the purpose of attending an Ivy League school is not to receive the best education, but rather to foster connections that mark you as a member of the upper crust. This disregard for the actual value of knowledge is the origin of the rot at the heart of American education. And it’s also why the competition for the middle class to get into these top-level universities is so stiff. People either mistakenly believe that a more prestigious college means a better education, or worse—they see through the facade and want the same opportunities the rich reap.

Now, top-level education has always been an incubator for the powerful instead of what it should be: a place for top minds to gather and learn. But this rot has now spread to the rest of higher education. “Apathy” is actually the word that I would use to describe the manifestation of this rot in higher education. The simple fact that so many students use AI to shortcut their assignments shows that they care less about the journey of education and more about the diploma they receive at the end. 

The apathy about the value of education is justified, in some ways. For example, there is a shortage of doctors in America, in large part because doctors’ associations deliberately maintain extremely high standards for receiving a medical license in order to keep their position valuable. Not to devalue the practice of medicine, but most medical doctors will tell you that the amount of training they received was unnecessary. Similarly, the white-collar job market at large generally requires a bachelor’s degree for entry, and often doesn’t even care what you majored in. To what end? Does working in accounting, or HR, or marketing really require skills that can’t be taught in high school? In the context of someone seeking a typical white-collar job, college serves only as a financial roadblock that either locks out the poor or leaves them saddled with debt post-graduation. 

Colleges themselves aren’t blameless, either. Due to multiple causes—including soaring application rates—tuition costs have sharply increased over the past few decades, which only reinforces the perception that college is a scam. Can we blame students for failing to care about their education in this environment? If every semester you spend at college means more debt you’ll have to pay off, of course you’d rush through your requirements and spend as little time as possible on unnecessary distractions. 

But, of course, we can’t lay all the blame at the feet of the callous free market. There are also strong forces deliberately fighting education. For decades now, the Republican Party has targeted education, due to the inconvenient truth that a proper education lays bare all the ugly lies central to Republican ideology. The latest front in this war on an educated public is the Trump administration’s use of executive power, from the direct shakedowns of Columbia and Harvard to the more recent “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which is an attempt to bribe universities into embracing reactionary politics. This fight against education also manifests in more subtle ways, such as “centrist” or “apolitical” podcasters, who focus on the aforementioned problems with higher education to dissuade people from enriching their minds, which just so happens to benefit the people who fund the manosphere. 

And don’t forget that this rot is spreading to K-12 education, too. If you’ve talked to an elementary school teacher lately, they might tell you that they’re thinking about retiring or quitting because the quality of students they’re responsible for is the last straw for an already stressful job with low pay. Many have speculated about the cause for the decline in primary school student aptitude—people are quick to blame the pandemic and screen time for the decline. And I’d agree that screen time is the problem, but it’s not the cause. 

In order for a child to excel at learning, they have to believe that the learning is valuable. We used to motivate our kids to learn by reading to them every night and encouraging them to read books on their own. But now, we inflict standardized tests on our children. We enroll them in “gifted child” programs, which often serve to punish them for their curiosity by giving them more work and separating them from their peers. We demand that they participate in as many extracurricular activities as possible, so as to get into the best possible college. We present their future success as the reward at the end of a decade of drudgery. Is this gauntlet that we run our children through really inspired by a desire to see our children grow into smart, well-adjusted adults? Or do we just want to heap as much prestige on them as possible, so as to help them attain a high-paying job? 

So, with all these grievances in mind, what can we do to redeem American education? Well, first, we need to respond to the most pressing threats by adamantly refusing political demands from the Trump administration that further propagate this rot. We also need to push back against the forces that have directed our places of learning away from community and knowledge and towards credentials and prestige. But, most importantly for each of us individually, we need to rethink how we approach education. Whether or not you have a High School Diploma, a Bachelor in Arts, or a PhD, the primary quality that makes you a scholar is your willingness to commit to the pursuit of knowledge as a lifelong quest. Regardless of any decision you make that balances the cost of education with the value of a credential, that quest’s rewards are valuable, and they will make you a better person. So, when you have the time, push yourself to take that interesting class that doesn’t count towards your major. Read that long article that explains something you’ve never understood. Stop following influencers and start following experts. And never forget that knowledge is its own reward.