DEI’s obscene price tag – Washington Examiner

A new report from the Goldwater Institute revealed that public universities in the United States have wasted an estimated $1.8 billion on DEI initiatives, providing a definitive picture of the extent to which these institutions have wasted taxpayer funds and the tuition paid by their students. At the same time, students have been forced to waste some 40 million hours on fulfilling mandatory DEI courses.

The report is a damning portrait of the extent to which politically captured institutions of higher education will expend the precious resources of time and money to advance a partisan and divisive political agenda.

Attending college is already a gargantuan expense. The average tuition for a public university is nearly $10,000 for an in-state student and more than $28,000 for an out-of-state student. The average graduate from a public university will enter the workforce with some $35,000 in student loans, a significant sum that has weighed down the economic prospects of an entire generation of college graduates.

In short, not only have college students taken on the burdens of student loan debt, but the borrowed money that they spent on their education is being squandered by their institutions to expand the institutional bureaucracy and implement academic requirements that serve only to further a divisive and politically motivated agenda.

Take the University of California San Diego for instance. For more than a decade, students have been forced to take a DEI class in order to graduate. The list of courses that fulfill this requirement has to be seen to be believed.

If your interests are biology and anthropology, UCSD allows you fulfill the DEI requirement with courses such as “Biology of Inequality,” “Climate Justice,” or “Race and Racisms.” Other departments offer more scintillating options such as “Discover Jazz,” “Latin American Studies and U.S. Liberation,” “Hip Hop,” “Mindfulness and Education,” and “The Films of Spike Lee.”

This is not what education is supposed to be about. This is not what higher education is about. Students do not attend college to be told that they must cede their positions to people who can cite more reasons that they have been disadvantaged or oppressed. Students do not attend classes to be told that their skin color is a reason why they succeed or fail.

Students attend college to attain a degree that empowers them to succeed in the workforce and in their communities, to obtain skills that help them be the leaders and entrepreneurs of tomorrow. They attend class and study to absorb information and sharpen their critical thinking skills so that degree means something to the employers and communities that each graduate meets on the long, winding journey of life.

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The money a student spends on his college education is an investment in his future. Likewise, the taxpayer funds directed toward higher education are supposed to be an investment in the future of the nation. Wasting $1.8 billion to fund mandatory DEI courses and growing an already bloated and censorious institutional bureaucracy is hardly the financial stewardship that taxpayers and students expect from their public colleges and universities. That those funds were used to further a divisive and odious political ideology adds insult to injury.

Lawmakers and students should demand greater accountability from higher education and demand that taxpayer and tuition dollars no longer be used as a slush fund for liberal bureaucrats intent on imposing a political agenda in higher education. Banning mandatory DEI courses and shuttering DEI departments would be a good start and would save billions of dollars.