Contemplating the story I mentioned Monday, I think there’s more of significance than the relative academic merits of a Baptist college’s homemaker curriculum and a secular university’s women’s studies program. The sad reality is that the homemaker curriculum, by including a classic liberal education with vacuuming tips (or whatever), is better than anything available at most American institutions of higher education. In short, it’s not just the feminists’ fault (though the comparison is delicious).

Higher education has been commandeered by two forces, neither of which is conservative. The first is the political and social radicalism we on the Right have been criticizing since God and Man at Yale (before that, really, but Buckley’s book serves as a useful milestone). The second is a consumerist, materialistic, market-driven society, and here the Right has been too hesitant in its condemnation. Sure, plenty of commentators have denounced declining intellectual standards, but not enough have made the connection to the market.

I don’t mean to get into a discussion of conservatism and capitalism now—that would take far too long. It is sufficient here to say that however much we defend free enterprise we must recognize it as only part of a healthy society. And higher education, properly understood, should be kept away from the market, along with other portions of human life, such as religion and family.

Unfortunately, as college became seen as a sure ticket to white-collar prosperity it has become a feeder for the job market. Employers use it as a screening device and majors like exercise and sports science, communications, business management, interior design, journalism, and marketing come to dominate. These are trades, not academic disciplines.

The traditional humanities have been ravaged by political correctness and deconstructionism or pushed out as irrelevant—hence the lack of classics programs at most state schools. Knowing Latin and having a thorough understanding of Plato’s Republic may be an impressive, but it doesn’t provide many marketable skills. And most people go to college so they can get a middle-class job after graduation, not because they are intellectually curious.

Ironically, the great push for egalitarian education in service of market meritocracy has not elevated the masses, but pulled down education. It was complained that everyone should have access to a good education, not just scholars and the moneyed leisure class. That is, only those able to be unconcerned with the market could get a good education. We may be coming full circle, as once again those outside the market, in this case housewives, are the ones getting a good education.