JOHN HINDERAKER: Down with colleges and universities. “It seems that their net effect is to make their students dumber. A case in point: American college students think their country is going downhill. Not in the ways it actually is going downhill, but in the ways it isn’t. . . . No doubt these students also have no idea that billions of people worldwide have been lifted out of poverty by the transition from socialism up to free enterprise. I seriously think the country would be better off if fewer of our young people went to college. And it would be much better off if young people were getting a decent basic education through high school, as they once did, in which case the remedial function that most colleges now play (badly) would be unnecessary. But that is looking like a pipe dream, for now.”