Ch14 — Summer Conference 2030 pivots to college crisis

Women’s Conference, June 2030 — Days one and two. 1,100 women attending live. 2,000 attending online worldwide

[Serializing Insight Colleges, how Women In Congress re-invented liberal arts college curriculum and teaching methods to produce graduates capable of redeeming-restoring SpaceShip Earth.]

It used to be liberal arts colleges were where, the best, most up-to-date-thinking and methods on how to make the world better, were passed on to each new generation.

Starting with identity politics in the 1980s-1990s; then after 2008, high schools and colleges very publicly retreated backwards into identify politics, wokeism and (fear of) cancel culture.

The original theme for Women’s Summer Conference 2030 was “Creating Healthy Boundaries between Self, Others, World and God” it was to feature interactive partner exercises in each of these domains to explore and clarify boundaries in each of the four domains of human experience.

Two weeks before Conference 2030, the whole agenda was scrapped. Staff hired were re-assigned to facilitate large and small group discussions on the topic: “What to Do about Liberal Arts colleges?”

Day 1: College crisis in a nutshell

Day 2: Powerful listening, bring your questions

Day 3: Powerful listening, bring your questions

Day 4: Cost of doing nothing discussion

Day 5: Next steps?

Without any media filters between them, sitting side-by-side, sharing stories about their college-age children face-to-face, women together realized colleges were in much worse shape than the media was willing to portray.

College crisis in a nutshell

It used to be young adults who skipped college were the ones feeling lost, directionless, apathetic. This “cancer of lostness” was now spreading rapidly to those attending and graduating college. Was this trend reversible?

There seemed to be be no way around it. More and more colleges were closing due to shrinking freshman enrollments. The most significant male-founded, male-led institution of Western culture: liberal arts colleges, second only to traditional churches, was dissolving, disappearing, lights going out, one by one, before our eyes, with no end in sight.

Analysts said, “Well, there are multiple factors for this:”

- declining relevancy to learning,

- high cost of inefficient administrative fiefdoms causing…

- high tuition costs causing…

- high student loan debt after college,

- declining relevancy of curriculum to the current job-scape.

In 2029 Greta Hoffa’s student protests precipitated a college crisis. When Greta Hoffa spoke out publicly, she was only pointing out the elephant in the room no one felt able to discuss. Colleges were in crisis. College-age students were in crisis. Colleges were “circling the drain.”

Speaking at high schools and colleges, listening to college learners, elected officials in Congress heard growing dis-disillusionment about college. When they came together at Summer Conference 2030, women began realizing:

- environmental collapse,

- Male Gender Collapse,

- Fatherlessness…

This was a silent creeping crisis-collapse-cancer in the lower 90% of colleges. Women were even not too sure about the top 10%. The vast majority of colleges were already an unbearable kind of youth ghetto: clean, safe, emotionally and intellectually dead. This was neither easy to foresee; nor, easy for anyone to address. Not one Women talked to, knew a recipe for success.

Becoming powerful listeners

The 2030 Women’s Summer Conference began with an event sponsored by Mothers Against Suicide on the college crisis. The event was a two-hour panel with 12 elected Senate and House members, two men, ten women. They were empaneled to be “powerful listeners;” and, as a “sounding board” for what consensus — if any — might emerge among attendees.

The format was questions from the floor. Prior to Conference opening day, any registered attendee, elected, reporter or the public, could submit a typed, double-spaced question to the facilitators of this panel, along with contact information. Those submitting approved questions were notified of the day and approximate time to get up and read their question to the panel and hear responses.

What was heard

Audience questions to the Panel covered many topics described in this text:

- Yes, it did appear if nothing was done, the future of liberal arts colleges, as a national institution, as the capstone education, for those entering adult life and career, was very much in doubt.

- Yes, mainstream K-12 education and college education were both victims of decades of neglected and ill-conceived reforms.

- No, it did not appear colleges could reform themselves. They thought of themselves too much like corporations to think creatively.

- Yes, it did appear if nothing was done, higher education would be limited increasingly to only children of economic elites.

- Yes, this crisis was accompanied by spiking suicide rates of high school and college age students. Was an entire generation of 18 year olds “circling the drain”?

- No, colleges run as hedge funds, primarily to manage endowment funds, was probably not good policy, not supporting the moral-ethical health of the Public Commons of higher education.

- Yes, Women In Congress is hosting conversations and Monday Lunch experts on topic of credible models and alternatives, sufficiently radical for:

- How colleges could be run profitably and sustainably as business, AND

- Appeal to 18 to 25 year olds, AND

- Convey healthy moral-ethical education for a lifetime.

- Yes, this is a lot to ask for. Yet, an effort to re-make colleges is probably not worth attempting, unless we can achieve most or all of these items. Remaking colleges the way they were in the year 2000 would be pointless.

- No, no existing colleges seem to offer any credible alternative model meeting the criteria above. If you know of one, please tell us.

- Yes, the cost of in-action is high. The cost of ill-conceived acton is also high. Who knows what distorted Frankenstein monster might arise from a half-baked effort at college reform?

- No, we don’t know of any outside consulting body thinking creatively about college reform; nor, with any track record of success. If you know of one, please tell us.

- Yes, the collapse of colleges, if we allow this, will mean the collapse of college sports as we have known them.

- Yes, the “golden handcuffs” pattern exists here very strongly. Students, faculty and administrators are each caught in a web of financial self-interest with seemingly “no alternative.” Faculty and admins are pushed to soldier on at often stressful or very dull jobs, led on by retirement packages and hoped-for buy-outs.

- Yes, everyone associated with the system seems handicapped, crippled by lack of enthusiasm, imagination, inspiration and humanity.

- Yes, some parents push their kids to attend college for primarily greater earning power over a lifetime. We do not view this as a bad thing necessarily.

- Yes, if a way to redeem colleges can be found, corporations eager to exploit youthful energy, optimism, and ideas will still try to control colleges to outsource worker training. We are conflicted about how to address this.

Financial bailout for failing colleges?

In earlier legislation, 2023–2029, Women In Congress had drastically reduced student debt and eased college entry for low and middle income students. However, fewer and fewer high school grads chose going to colleges. Liberal Arts colleges, the whole paradigm of how young learners are educated for a lifetime — was now thrown up into the air.

One of the earliest proposals was to bailout failing colleges with Government loans. It had worked for commercial banks in 2008, hadn’t it? Ultimately Women decided against bailing out the lower 90% of colleges. Why? Problems went too deep. It wasn’t just the financials:

- Group process among adults at colleges, faculty and admin, was stultified, rigid, hierarchical and not fun,

- Teaching methods were still tied to Scholasticism, from Europe in the 1100s, still tied to a centralized church-state kind of thinking, outdated centuries ago,

- Due to on-going Male Gender Collapse, freshmen college classes were increasingly female. The more female-heavy classes were, the more oppressive un-transformed male-dominator content and teaching methods became for co-eds.

- Compared to the year 2000, 15% fewer girls age 18 went on to college. College with few boys was less fun for co-eds. By 2029, male college enrollments declined to 3%. When college classrooms were overwhelmingly female, young women found everything designed for males — with almost no men — not much fun.

If you were a party girl, you’d put up with a lot; because, that’s where the boys are. Without hardly any healthy boys, subtle, narrow-minded male-dominator bullsh** felt even more oppressive. As male students drained out of colleges; and, most college professors became female, more and more freshmen women dropped out after their first year. Why? when interviewed they said, “This feel too much like a Catholic girls school. I didn’t sign-up for this.”

The four year college-university experience, cried out for new ways to engage the best and brightest women.

Band-aids were not going to halt the slide of a major Western culture institution into oblivion. There seemed to be be no way around addressing colleges as a whole, making changes top to bottom.

Women In Congress took the magnitude of this problem seriously. They accepted administration, teaching methods and core curriculum all had to be massively overhauled. Making this many changes at an existing problem usually meant existing staff and faculty quit on you. This multi-headed hydra scared women.

Any ideas from female college administrators?

Since Male Gender Collapse, more and more women found themselves managing colleges, universities and faculties. By 2025 most college presidents were women. Female college top CEOs were booked to speak at Monday Lunch with Experts. Women In Congress wanted to hear, “How did you manage?” and, “What kind of change, how much change is possible?”

Five female college presidents spoke. These women were sympathetic to college reforms How did they cope? They relied on other women professors, deans, presidents and admins and on professional summer conferences in their field to ask for feedback on their performance and decisions. At professional summer conferences, they could learn what other college admins were doing, what was working and discuss common problems.

After their speaking, in the Q&A, each one of them was asked, “Madame President, on the possibility of remaking colleges, if YOU were in charge of a pilot program to re-boot colleges, what would you definitely keep and hold onto? What would you definitely want to do away with?; and lastly, what would you definitely leave-as-is?”

Yes, they had reform ideas. Yet none of them — nor all their ideas together — amounted to a coherent Plan, a way to create system-wide improvement for college-age learners, faculty and administration for the next seven generations.

Mass-media pundits were no better. No one could imagine HOW or WHO was in a public position; or could be promoted into a “College Czar” position, where a pilot program to re-boot colleges would be easy. When asked if they had any Ideal Scene for what liberal arts colleges could be made into, media pundits were all found to be desperate for words. Clearly none of them had given much thought to this. The practicalities were miles beyond their imagination. Nor could any of these college-educated pundits imagine — other than abstractly — what more workable colleges could be and might be.

Turn them into vocational schools?

Why not replace liberal arts colleges with more and smaller vocational ed schools, geared to job training? God knows, learners need somewhere to be trained into stewardship jobs for running, maintaining, preserving and upgrading SpaceShip Earth. Problem solved. Maybe the college experience should be separated from the American Dream bundle.

On the other hand, if you wish to make SpaceShip Earth more livable, more sustainable, for the 99% of the crew, not for only the 1%, the biggest lever around to do this is to reform liberal arts-humanities education. You’d have to reform it away from limited, one-sided education of the male intellect. Towards what? Towards a more expansive, feminine, multi-sided education of the whole person

Additionally, college-level classes are the only institution where it’s possible to change the mythology of a culture. It’s not just the old white male myths, intolerance of difference, and all the rest which have to go. New healthier myths have to be elevated, held up as better myths and role models for the 99% worldwide. A college-level liberal-arts-humanities education is the most natural place for this activity.

Women had noticed part of the attraction of a Paid Year of National Service was the positive idealism of the program. This was often cited by 18–25 year olds as their reason for signing up. Women understood the dynamic. 18–25 year olds disliked the atheism, nihilism and emptiness of corporate consumer culture their parents almost always fall into. The Paid Year was a lifeline to express and embrace their idealism. For people wanting to farm, the RegenAg Colleges also offered attractive idealism.

Again, the old dilemma — no way to go backwards, no way to stand still. The only way possible is forward. The first three days of 2030 Conference opened many women’s eyes, to how the Emperor of Colleges was naked. If nothing was done, this was not going to end well.

Day 3 (evening) pause

Days Four and Five did not work out as planned. In days Two and Three, attendees were exposed to the depths of multiple problems, the whole gamut of current crises:

- the “Heads-down generation,”

- the lingering damage and scandals of the vaxxed generation,

- spiking suicides,

- spiking high school and college drop out rates,

- low public opinion of the value of a college education (via polls), and

- the desperate plight of the lower 90% of liberal arts colleges.

After this comprehensive airing, many women felt beaten down. Their mood was understandably downbeat. For many mothers, this was too much to bear.

The Evening session of Day three, “Cost of doing nothing” was cancelled. Women needed a break. There was only an optional evening of open bar, dance music and finger food. Since the first Conference, Women’s Summer Conferences were known as places to come and dance and meet other like-minded people. The DJ led long DJ dance sessions for free-form and partner dancing. No formal topics at all.

When women did talk, many attempted to process by summarizing what they had heard and felt. Later many did some journaling. One summary in written form:

begin quote

It was not only colleges who were unable to evolve in a positive, sustainable direction. It was the whole of male-led Western Protestant-capitalist culture.

Especially since the 1990s, male-led culture had become a culture based primarily on denial and avoidance of solutions and innovations to make the culture more diverse, more resilient, more two-sided, more fair, less of one class dominating all other classes.

This bigger deficit was why colleges were failing, unable to evolve. The larger Western Culture had been evolving randomly, irrationally, with no healthy Father, no healthy leadership, few healthy role models. Western culture had become anti-evolve, anti-change, “circle the wagons.”

This was why Women intuited re-making colleges was maybe a job they did NOT want. It wasn’t going to be possible to fix colleges without addressing much larger issues:

- What kind of graduates do we want to produce?

- What values are sustainable and how do we teach these? What replaces competition and greed as driving forces? How do we teach these?

Women seriously questioned their competency and wisdom as changemakers.

“Could Women In Congress remake colleges? Would they?” First, they had to mourn their losses.

end Q

Day 3: Women begin the stages of grief

By the fourth of five days, the reality of losing healthy colleges, the good memories of colleges, most attendees had, which now had to be revised, impelled women into grief. Colleges were not the only grief.

Goodbye, American Dream

Women were challenged to think two ways about colleges. They had to separate the dream of attending college from the larger American Dream (college, homeowner, 2.5 kids, dog, car, TV, etc). At the same time they were challenged to see multiple aspects of the American Dream dissolving simultaneously, especially for younger generations.

In 2007–2024, the bottom 90% of the USA, went thru a protracted national grieving over the loss of the possibility of owning their own home. Serviceable, homes nationwide, those foreclosed on, or abandoned, after the 2008 housing bubble collapse, were bought up by hedge funds. Then acting as landlords houses were rented back to the public at “market rates,” the highest rents the market could bear (Where was Congress on this?). Home and home-owning was distorted from a necessity into an investment commodity, for high rate-on-return by hedge funds pretending to be landlords.

Taking home-ownership off the table was a psychological blow to the American Dream of 18–35 year olds. Now. a college education was going to be taken off the table for the bottom 90% of the population. What was the message high school grads were receiving? “You are on your own. Sink or swim.”

Mothers and parents needed to grieve these losses. Summer 2030 Conference was a safe-supportive place to do this. The grieving was not for current generations only. If colleges were allowed to shrink to only elite schools, where would the next seven generations learn the best from past cultures?

The Stages of Grief pattern:

INDENT

In 1969, a Swiss psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described five popular stages of grief:

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.

Based off her work with terminally ill patients, Kübler-Ross introduced her five stage grief model in her book, On Death and Dying. Unfortunately, many people studying her model mistakenly believed this was some formula, a linear order in which people grieve; and, all people must go through all stages. Kübler-Ross corrected this. It’s now more common to conceive of the Five Stages as a flexible template-archetype of the grieving process, not a “recipe” for grieving. Each person navigates each stage somewhat uniquely.

END Q

What good came of this? The grieving process begun continued into the Fall of 2030 and spread to many groups of women around the country and around the world. Conference 2030 had surfaced, addressed and begun a process a very large fraction of women felt. It triggered support groups around the country. Parents, and anyone else, who wished to process their grief about the loss of their economic dreams were invited to attend. Few thinkers, male or female, had considered how central to our national identity was the expectation, the dream, the hope, the possibility of advancing yourself and your family thru higher education.

Days 4–5 processing grief

Conference organizers had the wit to start Day Four with interactive exercise opportunities for attendees to process their grief. After a confidentiality talk; and, several warm up ice-breakers, in-person dyads and finally triads were used for attendees to explore — resolve, and release old and new griefs they were carrying.

Online audiences were divided into pairs, in online breakout rooms, to do partner processes, to acknowledge, address and unburden each other on “the death of colleges for the lower 90%.” Over 45,000 persons participated in online and live sessions around the Five Stages of Grief.

This went on for two whole days of interactive exercises

After the grieving, Women began perceiving how:

- Environmental collapse,

- Male Gender Collapse,

- Fatherlessness,

- Loss of home-ownership,

- Loss of the college education experience…

…amounted to a heavy burden of woes all college-age people were carrying. All these contributed to the “heads-down generation” and to the “college crisis.” Many colleges were becoming unbearable youth ghettos where all students carried — yet had no opportunity to talk about — the heaviness of having no workable future to look forward to. It was more than just colleges deteriorating. When Greta Hoffa spoke out publicly in 2029, she was only pointing to the elephant in the room no one felt safe to discuss. College-age students were in crisis.

At the close of Summer Conference 2030, “Dare we remake colleges?” felt like a threatening sword hanging over the heads of Women in Congress.