The University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point is experiencing a budget shortfall to the tune of $7.9 million. A year ago they cut $12 million from their budget. But with enrollment continuing to fall, six liberal arts majors are now on the chopping block. Including history.

Students in these majors would be allowed to complete their programs. Many of the faculty would stay to teach liberal arts courses to students in other disciplines. But some layoffs are expected.

The proposal has caused alarm. In 2015, Governor Walker supposedly tried to remove the phrase “search for truth” from the university’s mission statement. He wanted to add language about meeting workplace needs. No language changes ever materialized. But after budget cuts and a tuition freeze mandate, opposition to UW’s proposal is not a surprise.

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Katie Reilly, for Time magazine, writes that “Record Numbers of College Students Are Seeking Treatment for Depression and Anxiety — But Schools Can’t  Keep Up.” An excerpt:

“Between 2009 and 2015, the number of students visiting counseling centers increased by about 30% on average, while enrollment grew by less than 6%, the Center for Collegiate Mental Health found in a 2015 report. Students seeking help are increasingly likely to have attempted suicide or engaged in self-harm, the center found. In spring 2017, nearly 40% of college students said they had felt so depressed in the prior year that it was difficult for them to function, and 61% of students said they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the same time period, according to an American College Health Association survey of more than 63,000 students at 92 schools.”

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Do we really need another book about entitled millennials? Or about the helicopter parents who raise these precious darlings? Senator Ben Sasse’s The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis — and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance exceeds expectations. It challenges both parents and our culture, offering compelling and timely solutions.

The Problem

Sasse has no issue with adolescence. The problem is one of perpetual adolescence — an indefinite period in which youth are passive and aimless. Why is this so common? In part because teens today are used to an unprecedented degree of comfort. Raising kids once meant adding small (but necessary) workers to the family.

Teens today are used to an unprecedented degree of comfort. Our kids may be safer, but they’re also softer. But our wealth, technology, and digital economy have radically changed this pattern. We now emphasize the protection of our children rather than their productivity. While our kids may be safer, they’re also softer — more hooked on comforts like AC, their own bedroom, an Xbox, etc. They are unfamiliar with manual labor at a time when lifelong learning and flexibility are more important than ever in our disrupted economy.

Read the rest of the review here.

How can employers be simultaneously unhappy with the quality of recent graduates and more desirous of hiring people with greater amounts of formal education? Ryan Craig, founding Managing Director of University Ventures, writes:

What we’re seeing from employers—the ultimate consumers of higher education—is the result of dissatisfaction with the current level of talent being produced by colleges and universities. Employers are dissatisfied and are flailing about for answers. For many employers, this means credential inflation—requiring certain degrees for jobs that previously didn’t require them. An equally logical response for others is openness to alternative credentials.

Read the whole thing.