Financial Reform and the American Higher Education System

Capitalism and College Shouldn't Mix

Collège Saint-Michel in Fribourg, Switzerland. It was established in 1582 by St. Peter Canisius.

I write this today for two reasons: because I myself  am struggling in College Math (kill me if you would be so kind) and I am afraid it might hamper my progress, and it's also something I've always felt very strongly about.

The coat of arms of Pope Leo XIII.

I'm as critical of capitalism as I am of communism, and I have good reasons for this. The Church has always been very critical of both; while either one can have its merits, they both have glaring problems the least of which are that they have little to no basis in tradition but instead they are Revolutionary Ideologies that threatened the good order of society and have not only destabilized Christendom but thrown innumerable secular orders into chaos. How any countries can cling to them is beyond me, particularly any country that professes Catholicism.

The Imperium, in union with the Catholic Church, professes Distributism, Integralism, and Corporatism. They neither strangulate the free market or throw it absolutely to the rule of Robber-Barons who make wage-slaves of man, woman, and child. These philosophies neither deny the necessity of putting the community first or tear down the social order and seize wealth for forceful redistribution to the lower classes like casting pearls before swine.

G. K. Chesterton, by E. H. Mills, 1909.

Catholic Economic Philosophy creates a well-ordered system based on tradition that before Adam Smith or Karl Marx's family lines even existed were running empires and creating well-ordered societies. The free market thrived but the rule of order was not given over to a Merchant Oligarchy in which even the State was forced to do homage to businessmen with no loyalties to any but themselves and no heart for anything but profit. The ruling class had a stake in the economic welfare of not just the nation but their neighbors and the world; if they did poorly, their nation did poorly. Rather famously the famine-stricken people of France during the Perfidious Revolution were shocked to discover upon plundering Versailles that there was no food to be found anywhere in the royal palace therein. The French State was as poor as the People of France; what opulence they had amounted to inheritance and imports which they were only barely affording. In the Old Order, not just divine motivations and national loyalty mixed with responsibility kept economic injustice at bay, but also lower decentralized feudalities with substantial clout in the system and a deep care for their lands and subjects - their welfare was the lord's welfare - who would not be cow-towed by the sovereign unjustly - and had no obligation to allow themselves to be treated as such - maintained the wealth of the realm. I have not even mentioned the Church, which was the suzerain moral check for the rulers of Christendom.

Banque de France, Paris, France.

The other noteworthy difference about Pre-Capitalist Europe was the role of the Church in economics; monasteries and clerical feudal states were largely untaxed and therefore unrestricted in their business ventures. This created an important niche in the economy for wealthy landowners to operate without restriction; however, vows of poverty among religious orders and the ever watchful eye of the Inquisition almost as if through a divine "invisible hand" kept things in check. Not to mention the religious mandate to give alms, these days lost on the Church as to its full scope and meaning. Almighty God has always provided for the poor of society, going back to the Old Testament, when farmers were ordered to leave a tenth - specifically the borders - of their fields unharvested for the hungry and poor. In business ledgers in the Catholic Netherlands, it can be seen that a tenth of all the earnings are designated "Te Deum," in our English, "To God." These were donated to the poor through Church-run charity efforts. Adam Smith in his Proto-Darwinist economic view saw these institutions as a hindrance to his view of a Capitalist society, encouraging people not to work and instead rely on charity.

St. Nicholas giving alms to the poor and needy of his diocese.

However this doesn't seem to have been the case. There was no pervasive "Welfare State" in Christendom, as many proponents of Capitalism declare with religious repetition would occur. Because in the economic model Catholicism proposes, advocates, and thrived under, every man held his own resources. Men were expected to not only be self-sufficient but use that self-sufficiency to give back to the community. In this way was economic freedom was maintained without sacrificing personal freedom.

What has replaced this system? Either Crony Capitalism which naturally without any restraint leads to the oppression by the people at the hands of the elite few, or Hellish Communism which leads to the oppression of the people at the hands of the elite few. One does so in the name of liberty for all, as does the other. I once heard it said that if one goes far enough Left one finds himself on the Right; if nothing else illustrated this, the economic systems either side proposes does.

The Miracle on the Vistula.

Communism has been critiqued to death; we live in the aftermath of its defeat in the personification of the USSR. But Capitalism has largely gone un-critiqued, and considering the insults its founding philosopher lobbed at charitable Christians I think that's just not fair. I think our own Higher Education system illustrates this better than anything else.

Statue of John Carroll in front of Healy Hall on the campus of Georgetown University.

I suppose this is the part where the article becomes a bit more personal; let me preface by saying I am grateful for the opportunities afforded to me by even attending university in the first place. However, that doesn't mean I'm going to just ignore glaring problems with the system I see. I respectfully have some qualms and misgivings about how things are done, and that's my right as a law-abiding, loyal, patriotic American citizen.

My misgivings generally start with not exactly the price of admission or anything like that. More specifically it has to do with how pricing is done and with a certain facet of how one must obtain their degree. You see, to obtain any College Degree, the State - and most others - mandate you take and pass certain courses for your hours. I myself am a History Major. The problem is while I'm pretty much in the top range of the state for History and English/Writing, my Math scores have always lagged behind. In fact if I wasn't at the top of my game for History and English/Writing and my scores hadn't reflected this, I might've not gotten into the University I'm in now (mind you, I'm a history major, and I intend to spend the better part of my life teaching history in some form or another and/or writing about it).

Miniature of St Matthew in the Carolingian gospels presented by Æthelstan to Christ Church Priory, Canterbury.jpg

That alone to me sends up red flags; why keep someone from pursuing a history major when they're clearly competent in the field over something absolutely unrelated? Do people who go to Technical Schools get flack because they're poor writers? No offense intended to the Working Man, but I'm trying to make a point here. Even now my math scores are a point of contention; I'm passing, but not with flying colors. I'll get my hours, but it's going to be difficult. To me it's a difficulty I shouldn't have to undergo in the first place.

We've all heard the argument, "you need to be well rounded!" I even had a fellow History Major tell me once that they want everyone to be a, "Renaissance Man" and versed in all subjects. I said, "Well that's great and all, but those guys were like the 1% intellectually as it was. Even then education wasn't the same as it is now for a scholar. Why are we trying to make people who know what they're doing and where they're going in life suffer over an unnecessary standard?"

The death of Leonardo Da Vinci by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.

Here's the other thing: Leonardo DaVinci was already a genius and enjoyed what he did; he became who he was because he wanted to be that person. Why make people who don't want to be that, be that, of all things? People have gotten along fine without any of that knowledge and ability; why waste the effort?

St. Thomas Aquinas

But then I started thinking; hang on, Higher Education is run like a business. I've seen it myself in action. It's that way because it is a business. It's about making money off of a market that's not going to go away. Students need Colleges, and Colleges need Students, but only the former can exploit the latter. It's like an abusive marriage where neither party leaves because their spouses have something they still need/want and/or can't live without. It works, but it's not healthy for either party, and there's a better system.

If I may be a bit Tinfoil Hat for a moment, it essentially boils down to this: you can't really get kicked out of college except for a select few offenses. Even if you're outright failing, you've still got time before they utterly lose patience with you and expel you. If you can pay, you can make stay.

It was at that moment I had an epiphany concerning the college system at present: it's not about higher education, it's about exploiting the current job market and hiring climate to get as much money out of people as possible. I mean in the process (sometimes) good things happen, but it's an exploitative system and doesn't have to be this way. So what do I propose in its place?

I propose we return education to the purview of the Church. It would flourish best under the old system in which the Church's economic ventures were largely untaxed. The Church has a true magnanimous stake in education to form moral individuals and good Catholics. For those not of a Catholic persuasion, it could at least serve as an introduction to the Faith different from the biased on they might have received. Run by religious and lay employees, the motive of personal profit is pretty much nixed. Certain expenses for students would be unavoidable, but nothing beyond maintaining the university would be necessary. The only ambitions guiding the institution would be the ambition of obtaining, collecting, and disseminating more knowledge.

It would assure standardized education as well. Who better to reform our broken and greedy higher education system than its forefathers who founded the very concept of the university and the college and who ran them prior to their present secular incarnation?

This is just one example of how amok Capitalism has ruined and tainted certain aspects of our society, and how a return to the former system would fix present day problems - or at least a few of them.

I strongly encourage all of you - Imperialist and non - to learn the economic philosophies of the Catholic Church, and to think of ways in which they could improve our own society.

Patronage of Saint Joseph, c. 1737, Painted by Gaspar Miguel de Berrío, at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Chile.