Some years back, Louisiana State University unveiled a new addition to its campus. Not a library or a lab — but a lazy river. Part of an $85 million expansion of college leisure facilities, the winding pool is 536 feet long, and flanked by palm trees and deckchairs. Things are just as striking from the air: the river’s outline traces out the school’s iconic “LSU” initials. For students sweating in the Baton Rouge sun, where June temperatures average 32°C, the lazy river is a dream. “We’re here to give you everything you need,” is how LSU’s then-president put it. “I don’t want you to leave the campus ever.”
Not that everyone was impressed. Especially among mainstream newspaper columnists, the lazy river provoked mockery. The river, they contended, was a watery waste of money, especially when student tuition and fees have risen substantially, doubling over the past decade. Yet if it’s easy to dismiss the “student experience” in the battle to attract and maintain talented undergraduates, the fact is that LSU is thriving, with a 17% jump in students over a decade. Nor is Louisiana State alone: right across the Southeast, enrolment has increased by an average of 5%, even as rivals in New England and California have slumped.
This shift, it goes without saying, can’t be explained by a single new pool, even one as magical as LSU’s lazy river. Even so, the new waterway does speak to a fundamental shift in how young people conceive of what college involves. The diploma, increasingly, is a product, and colleges sell experiences, credentials — and joy. And if that offers vast opportunities for “football schools” like LSU, with their sororities and their laidback Southern charm, their more po-faced Northern cousins look set to suffer, especially if they continue to dismiss the white middle classes that used to fill their halls.
When I started as a literature teacher at a New England boarding school, nearly 20 years ago, everyone from the board to the headmaster was serious about college admissions but aware that the prior generation’s college admission experience was no longer holding. Parents, for their part, felt obligated to continue the traditions, but wondered how much the landscape had changed. Since they had graduated from elite Northeastern colleges like Brown, Harvard and Yale in the Eighties, they expected the same for their children, especially when they came of age at a time when the Ivy League was an achievable aspiration for smart prep-school graduates with decent grades. The financial crisis blew up any remaining vestiges of the old expectation, but there were plenty of other “good schools” to choose from right across the Northeast.
These days, though, everything is different. Unless you score in the top 2% on the SAT, the white middle classes have next to no chance of studying somewhere like Harvard. In part, that’s a function of the globalisation of US universities. With the rise of The Common App, allowing students to apply to several colleges at once, US higher education went international, even as soaring prosperity from Chengdu to Chennai meant far more students can now afford the fees. The foreign elite, especially from Asia, was for its part all too happy to send their children to US boarding schools and universities. As for the kids themselves, they were intelligent, motivated, and accustomed to taking high-stakes tests.
The applicant pool for the top universities duly got a lot more competitive — and if that was bad enough for the white middle classes, colleges also embraced more “missional” motivations. Righting historic wrongs, and drafting first-generation students into elite institutions, became an absolute priority. But these selection processes are total black boxes, as jealously guarded as any state secret. Yet the impact is clear: students who would have been shoo-ins a decade earlier were left outside looking in. And all of this was before George Floyd and the BLM riots, when colleges became the epicentre of America’s much vaunted “racial reckoning”. All this came to a head in that pivotal year 2020. Presidents issued statements, faculty found their Selma, and thought leaders demanded accountability.
Certainly, these revolutions have had a profound impact on admission stats. In the early Nineties, for instance, Harvard college enrolment was largely regional, and reflected regional demographics. Now, though, diversity goals reveal the college is shifting focus. As goes Harvard, so goes the American university, with targets aimed to reflect the broad demographics of the country. Between the years of 2022 and 2024, the admission rate for white applicants dipped from 41% to 31%. That’s a far cry from 40 years ago, when the kids at my smart New England school would have looked almost exclusively either to the Ivies, or else to a closed group of regional liberal arts schools. There were a few tacitly approved colleges out West and down South, but no prep school kids went to Southern state schools: those were “football schools” and thus grubbily unworthy. Historically speaking, New England attitudes towards Southern schools can only be described as contemptuous.
Now, though, needs must — quite aside from the soaring competition, post-2007 financial pressures made studying at the likes of Harvard far less easy. The soaring costs of tuition make financial aid packages all the more pressing as the price tag outpaces middle-class wages, which pressure enrolment decisions accordingly. Not that the rise of Southern universities is merely down to push factors. On the contrary, Southern universities now look increasingly appealing. As one of my students put it recently: “Why go to school in Massachusetts when I can go to a much warmer state, go to games, and have fun?”
It’s a fair question, especially given the events of recent years. When Covid struck, lockdowns were politicised almost instantly. In a progressive bastion like New England, restrictions were extremely severe, with universities leading the way. Yet for any student with a smartphone, it was easy to see that another world was possible. While they spent the best years of their lives on Zoom, college students further south were not just in real classes — but getting drunk at football games and heading to spring break.
Nor does social media’s influence end there. Spend long on TikTok or Instagram and you’ll soon spot them: the blonde girls dancing at Rush, the annual ritual of choosing a fraternity or sorority, or else “College GameDay” when multiple ESPN trailers roll in for pre-game festivities. Now lasting several days, they’re complete with concerts, celebrities and a chance to howl in support of your team on national television. Then there’s Barstool Sports, a popular pop culture site. Featuring viral videos galore, it showcases clips of bros playing poker with Alabaman sorority chicks. You can almost hear the Connecticut 18-year-old thinking: “I can take my accounting class anywhere!”
Another piece of the puzzle here is comparing how universities on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line have dealt with DEI. Right across the North, students were forced to listen to fatuous lectures on white supremacy and anti-racism. They were told to read Robin DiAngelo and Ta-Nehisi Coates. They were told to “do better” and to “do the work” and to “be a good ally”. These students were told, in short, that they were the problem, no matter what they had individually done. The privilege they enjoyed was systemic, wicked, total. Talking with several of my former students, they describe “cultural bingo” games designed to raise “awareness”. As one of my more thick-skinned former students put it: “Starting off the year being among the worst of the worst was pretty hilarious.”
Generally speaking, the South avoided such manias, even pushing back in law. In 2022, for instance, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill banning DEI across all public Florida colleges. It’s a cultural fork in the road that endures to this day. While many prestigious Northern schools featured tarp-blue “tent cities” in support of Palestinians last year, their Southern counterparts were too busy with the college football season. That’s exactly the kind of “experience” many kids dream of, with their circus-like atmosphere and kegs. Having the former, at any rate, codes weird and alienating — while the latter codes normal.
No less important, Southern universities have tweaked their offerings too. Not for them a catalogue of classic courses, flanked by bucolic photos of rolling country in the fall. These days, colleges have dolled themselves up, kickstarting an arms race in which fancy new buildings, STEM centres, field houses, and student halls became ways of securing applicants. Education, in short, has morphed into a consumer product, something Southern colleges seem happy to embrace. Quite aside from LSU’s lazy river, there’s also major upgrades for residence halls that look and feel much more like luxury condos than the cramped dorms of older colleges. Then there are the fancy dining halls, with their niche grills, and the climbing walls and high-tech gyms.
Their Northern rivals, by contrast, seem unwilling to get in on the fun. In a way, that’s fair enough: college as country club is easy to mock. Yet mission creep runs the other way too, with dubious “studies” departments stalking Northern campus. Nor, of course, was DEI just for students. Consider the Center for Antiracist Research, at Boston University, its celebrity academic Ibram X. Kendi enjoying a $10 million gift from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. Now, though, the centre is closing, perhaps indicative of the new cultural atmosphere under Donald Trump.
Taken together, it’s easy to see why so many kids are eager to head south, with Southern colleges enjoying a 42% rise in applications over the past few years. Numbers aside, these normie, white middle-class students know the dirty secret: the “good schools” do not want them. And where the kids are going, their parents are too. And why not? Their East Coast salaries and 401-Ks go a lot farther down south, with inexpensive housing, a multitude of golf courses and plenty of opportunities for laid-back living. Throw in a few lazy rivers for Boomers, and the Yankee flow could yet become a torrent.
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SubscribeAs a Northern Leftugee, I can attest that Woke Flight is real and SEC football is bar none the greatest weekend spectacle on earth. The only downside of the South is July and August which is a good time to vacation up north.
It’s getting a little overcrowded though. Many of the roads down south didn’t prepare for so many people. Home prices are spiking quite a bit. But the people are just awesome. Sure it has crime and poverty like anywhere else but for the most part, it’s been an exceptional decision to flee the contemptuous north.
While I’ve enjoyed visiting other places on occasion, I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else but Texas.
It will be 50° and sunny in southern Virginia today – in the dead of winter. We’ve had our two little snows for the year; daylight greeted me at 6:30 this morning. I’ll spend the day working outside on my little 10-acre slice of heaven, something that I can do nearly all winter long. What’s not to like?
My question is where do the children of ordinary people find an entry level Toyota in the higher education sector?
Where is the unpretentious university that doesn’t build fancy dorms, gyms, cafeterias, rivers, etc, with the cost passed onto students? Where is the university that emphasizes effective teaching, primarily of marketable skills, and charges a fair price that doesn’t burden graduates with massive debts?
Young people will always make friends and find a party if that’s what they want to do. They don’t need to pay a university premium prices to create a social life for them.
Perhaps the author of this enjoyable article might consider writing an article that addresses my question. Perhaps he might begin by analyzing my assumption that there’s a substantial market for bare-bones universities minus many of the fun amenities. Perhaps I might discover that students and their parents really don’t mind paying for all that stuff.
Plenty of large universities still have good specialty departments. The first year programs might not be on par with the past. There’s definitely more bureacracy and pointless departments but you can put your head down and specialize if you’re not distracted and have the discipline. I couldn’t but I hear it’s doable
There are enough small public and private colleges less focused on the social aspect. You generally don’t build same level connections though. The ingroup social aspect of the university helps do that.
That’s actually part of why DEI tries to address representation through quotas. If you increase minority representation in the educational and business sectors, it’s likely to create more of a connection chain for minorities after graduation. I’m guessing, most people here would say any “equitable advantage” should be given by socioeconomic background not race or etc. Or like you said, just bypass the social nonsense in the first place.
If you’re prepared to travel, there are a lot of universities in the EU, bits that technically aren’t English-speaking, where you can basically do your degree in English, pick up another language along the way, and do so for far less money, both in terms of fees and living costs, than even third-rate universities in the anglosphere.
That’s what state universities were supposed to be, but now many have joined the amenities arms race as well. When I attended the University of California, it cost $1600/year. Now it’s $15,000 for in-state students and $40,000 for out-of-state. They’ve got climbing walls though.
The problem with college costs has less to do with amenities and the like and more to do with the free-flowing spigot of cash coming from student loans. Colleges and universities have jacked up prices simply because they can. Some of the universities in the colder regions are the biggest offenders.
Funny, when prices get too high, the Left is quick to point to “Big _____” (insert whatever industry you’d like here — Pharma, Oil, Food, etc.). Yet the college loan debt that that same Left decries as a huge burden on our younger citizens is there precisely because the price of the product has skyrocketed beyond any economic reason to do so. Yet mysteriously, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and their ilk are selectively mum on blaming the universities themselves (supermarkets are supposedly gouging Americans but universities aren’t?) Hmmmm, why might that be? Perhaps it is because these institutions are indoctrinating their students to become their future voters (especially at these Northeast “elite” institutions) — nothing to see here, move along…. We’ll just get a bunch of people who have already paid their debt, or worse, those that never went to college to pay your bills for you.
The funniest part is that during all the debt forgiveness nonsense, the protesters were camped out in front of the Supreme Court, when it is actually Congress that has the authority to spend money for your cause (and had failed to do so). All of that money spent on college and you don’t even know which building to yell at. Hilarious.
Administration has grown exponentially. Tenured faculty teaches less than ever. Teaching assistants and adjunct lecture for peanuts. Yet tuition skyrocketed. Welcome to the progressive lead education racket.
Adams State University. Alamosa, CO. Com’on down. We would love to help you learn.
Visited the US many times over the years. While every part of the US is special in some way, the rise of the South is undeniable. Tennessee is my favourite state. Twenty years ago stating that out loud would get you weird looks. The tertiary education sector in Texas and Florida in particular is booming. Even Georgia is noticeable. If you want something a bit more traditional without the DEI rubbish, there is a good selection of institutions in South Carolina and Virginia.
As the South continues to outpace the North, my one hope is that the new internal migrants do not bring their woke ideologies with them. A good sign is that most people moving south are fleeing precisely that.
I live just a few miles from the University of Virginia. If you want to avoid DEI rubbage, then avoid Charlottesville like the Bubonic. I’m sure Mr. Jefferson is spinning in his grave like a top. Otherwise, it’s just lovely here.
God bless you man. Have people like you been in hiding?
It sounds fabulous. If I was 18 again and had the money I would send myself to LSU.
Our Big Ten university seems more interested in Chinese oligarch’s children. Another Porsche or Ferrari driving by? That is just another Chinese student. Game days we try and keep up the traditions we grew up with and hope for the best on the next generation. It is just that that those required Woke courses might get in the way.
Personally, I’d advocate Vanderbilt, Nashville, Tenn. But then I had a great time as a Post Grad there. Starting, but not finishing…a history of an Indian War in Early Colonial times. These days, just describing my efforts in those terms would see me cancelled in any Northern Ivy League University…
The south has largely avoided the academic hyoereokeness because black people are not an exotic species. They’re the people we grew up with, played ball with, hung out with, and so forth.
And yes, when academia (like the military) tells a specific demographic not to bother, eventually those folks stop. Then what? Enlistment fell dramatically before Trump and the so called prestige schools no longer impress hiring managers.
“hyoereokeness”
What college did you learn this at?
It’s just a typo. At which college did you not learn that it’s better to respond to the substance of the argument?
Not mentioned: State schools always have subsidized tuition for in-state students, but out-of-state tuition much more expensive though usually still less than private schools: two to four times the cost of in-state tuition. Every university wants to boast that it has students from all 50 states, even though most students are in-state or just over the border. Since out-of-state kids pay the full-fat unsubsidized tuition at state schools (with a few exceptions), the university financially benefits from having out-of-staters. That generally means your odds of admission go up if you’re an are out-of-state applicant.
The northeast has relatively poor state schools and is therefore dominated by private colleges and universities. So if you’re in the northeast, you can go to an underwhelming state school at discount prices, or go to an expensive private school if you’re lucky enough to get it, or go to your choice of big fun state schools anywhere else in the country for a mid-range price tag. And if you’re an angsty teenager who can go anywhere you please, are you really choosing the Michigan winters over places like Georgia?
Very good point. Some states have laws that enforce a minimum level of in-state acceptance. This practice may need to become more widespread to ensure greedy state schools aren’t accepting too many out-of-state applicants with their full tuitions. After all the residents are the tax payers underwriting the state school systems.
As an employer who used to regard a college degree as the bare minimum to work in my company. Today I am much more open to potential employees who’ve pursued less traditional educational tracks. In fact I would absolutely steer clear of graduates from the Ivy League and many other schools like University of California’s that have embraced DEI and identity politics in general. You can see the corrosive effect it has had on society and I don’t need that in our business. It’s challenging enough without “social justice warriors” championing causes through our communication and collaboration networks that have nothing to do with our organizational objectives.
Again, I suspect that ambitious Ivy League or UC graduates are not breaking down the door of whatever miserable little business you happen to operate…
You really are a nasty piece of work. I wish there was a way to block you on this site.
Of course , when you can’t rebuttal in a logical way, you have to be nasty. Additionally , does champagne and socialism go together ? Give up the champagne and drink cheap vodka like your other comrades.
I wouldn’t go to an Ivy League school for love nor money. The gloss got rubbed off those old shit holes a long time ago.
I suspect the point is moot.
There is, however, a serious fear that the northerners, having moved to the south, will pollute it too.
University should be fun.