How is it that we have so many for-profit colleges cropping up? University of Phoenix is only one of many, the most recent of which is Victory University. They have cropped up because we have become a culture that requires a college diploma as de rigeur for anyone hoping to land any job of any significance.

Where did this come from? The idea that we need a diploma (of any kind from any institution) to find a job is based on the thought that making a living in this world is the end of human endeavor. That comes from dismissing anything that smacks of eternal-ness. If we as a culture no longer believe in the God of the bible, we no longer believe that our actions in this life have eternal consequences. If there is no eternal aspect to the work we do in this life, what else is there but making this life as comfortable as possible? The way to do that is to make as much money as possible. The way to make money is to have a good job, and the way to weed out the numbers of people applying for "good jobs" is to require a college diploma. This means there is an increasing demand for diplomas. Not education, mind, only the symbol of that education, the diploma.

Why should we then be surprised that the ingenuity of our best and brightest (if not most virtuous) is spent on finding ways to satisfy the demand for diplomas? The problem is that college education is quite expensive. Wouldn't we be doing a good deed if we could find ways for those with few resources to get to go to college? It worked with the housing market -- let's offer low interest government loans to everyone who wants to go to college! First the government evaluates the student's ability to pay and turns the student over to private banks, offering to back the loans with tax-payer funds. But this year, our mental giants in the government have decided the private banks are just in the way -- why not give the tax-payer funds directly to the student -- better still -- directly to the college. The student pays his loans back when he gets out of school and begins earning income. What could go wrong?

Well, the whole system could go wrong because we have forgotten what governments are for, and what colleges are for. Governments are not banks or investors, they are to provide for common defense and establish and enforce the laws the people enact through their representatives. Colleges are not to provide jobs for people, but rather to pass on the accumulated wisdom of our civilization through its cultural inheritance. Ironically, passing on these definitions are what colleges SHOULD be doing, and if they do not, we are left to the whims of re-definition with each passing generation.

The way it goes wrong is that once forgetting and redefining government and college, the student does not have what the college diploma symbolizes. He has the paper and not the wisdom. Strangely enough, knowing these definitions and being a person educated in our cultural inheritance makes a student better prepared for any work he takes up -- so with the loss of this education, he is also nowhere NEAR as prepared for a job as he might be, and the inevitable result is that he finds he can't earn after all, and defaults on his loans. The government, which backed the system to begin with (the road to hell is paved with good intentions), swallows the loans, and bails out the students with money they print or borrow, which has the inevitable result of first inflating the money supply, then adding to the already astronomical debt, and finally one day helps throw our country of now uneducated barbarians into bankruptcy.

We are a rudderless ship. We no longer know the definition or telos of either government or college, and as a result will destroy them both by recasting them. If our colleges were still teaching what these definitions and purposes were, we might have a hope that one day we could put the pieces back together, but without them, we are lost. To continue the metaphor, if the rudder is the definitions, the sea anchor and the keel are the inherited artifacts and philosophies of our culture. The music, art, literature, architecture, history, and philosophy of Western civilization cannot make up for the loss of the Holy Spirit-defined guidance system, but they serve as ballast and drag against the fickle winds granting us time while we pray for spiritual revival and a re-forged rudder. Without a vision the people perish.