College enrollment more than doubled between 1970 and 2010, but dropped 15 percent between 2010 and 2021. What does this mean for the high school student who is unsure about college?

Imagine you are a high school senior in the United States; it is a big year filled with big decisions. What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Your parents, teachers, and friends are all talking about college and the opportunities higher education presents.

You find the school you want and apply. Good news: you're accepted! The first day of class, you walk onto your college campus and witness a peculiar contradiction. Your classmates carry the latest technology, attend an institution with an abundance of resources, and have access to more information than any generation in history. Yet study after study reveals the same troubling reality: they're more anxious, more depressed, and more disconnected from meaningful purpose than ever before.

The symptoms are everywhere. Average SAT scores dropped from 1060 in 2021 to 1024 in 2024, indicating a consistent decline over several years. Mental health crises plague our campuses. Graduates enter a workforce where only 31 percent in the United States report being engaged at work, while 52 percent are not engaged, and 17 percent are actively disengaged. Despite unprecedented access to formal schooling—a privilege unimaginable to most humans throughout history—we're producing a generation that finds learning "boring" and work meaningless.

Something fundamental seems to have gone wrong with education in America. And it feels like the stakes are civilizational. This challenge isn't only about budgets or technology, but about restoring the foundation of education: character, morality, and meaning. Perhaps the real question is not whether we can afford to pursue this vision, but whether we can afford not to.

Modern educational institutions have become remarkably efficient at producing graduates who can navigate spreadsheets, write reports, and follow instructions. What they've largely abandoned is the cultivation of character: the development of human beings who are both upright and capable, possessing virtue alongside ability.

This transformation didn't happen overnight. Much of it can be traced to the influence of educational theorist John Dewey, whose philosophy shifted education from a focus on character formation toward utilitarian aims. While some aspects of Dewey's approach—such as experiential learning and critical thinking—retain value, his broader impact contributed to treating values as "socially constructed and relative" rather than objectively discernible truths worth pursuing.