It is a discouraging article. It also reminded me that this trend has been in the works a very long time, over generations, so it is frightening to think how difficult it will be to reverse it meaningfully, if it is possible at all. Harvard is only a small part of the crisis.
I remember my experience with an intern I had at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an Economics major from the University of Michigan. She was eager and hard-working, but she was a terrible writer, her research was sloppy, and her critical thinking skills were sub-par. One day, she came into my office after work-hours angry and tearful. She said that she was a straight A student in her major at the university, and that she had never had a B in high school, and couldn’t understand why I was so critical of her performance in my foundation. I told her, “Well, Vicky, they lied to you. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault, but you have a great deal of lost time and under-developed skills to overcome, and it’s not going to be easy. I’ll do what I can to help while you are here.”
She eventually became a lawyer. I don’t know if that’s a happy ending or not.
The song above, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Gondoliers,” astutely sums up the flaw inherent in all of the factors that led to the crisis: the socialist obsession with equality in outcomes, the ludicrous desire to make everyone a winner so nobody loses, the anti-American delusion that it is cruel to reward individual excellence, the distribution of college degrees to as many people as possible as a predicate to “getting a good job,” the warped logic of seeing affirmative action as a remedy for racial discrimination rather a continuing catalyst for it. As Don Alhambra sings (in the 19th century, Victorian comic opera), “When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody!”
How could our culture forget that?
Ethics Alarms 
The labor market will instill some discipline here. Employers know that a degree from Harvard and other colleges do not have the same value as fifty years ago. Additionally, the grade inflation does not allow prospective employers to tell the excellent students from the poor students. Also employers are aware of affirmative action, rendering all the straight A’s from graduates from certain minorities suspect. This all makes it harder to gauge the value of the degree a prospective employee is holding. So if you read or hear about graduates who have a hard time finding employment, the decrease in value of college degrees is a factor.
I am afraid you are wrong. There are very few capitalists left in this country. Most companies are run by hired managers who report to a board staffed by the CEO’s of their competition. No one cares if someone is competent or not. They only care about their personal power and clique.
Remember the “nerds” who were “good at school”? They weren’t really good critical thinkers, but they could play the school game. They don’t know how to interact in the normal word, so they enjoy the cocoon of the university that has developed its own weird subculture where people now have to pay attention to them in classes.
History, English, Philosophy, Educational leadership, and the like. Subjects that can be rigorous but often aren’t because the measurements are less clear. You can still find sharp thinkers in these fields, but they are more often the exception rather than the norm. Law is now being infected with DEI, as a current Supreme Court justice is a direct DEI choice.
These people, high on their own mediocrity, are the ones in charge of most educational institutions. In the place I work, the Arts, English and Humanities faculty get to evaluate themselves on performance reviews because of faculty pressure.
On one hand, the issue makes sense because incompetent people evaluating you is one of the most degrading feelings in the world. On the other hand, many of those evaluated also aren’t great either. They do really prefer to do what they want. “You’re professionals so you can evaluate yourselves” is almost a direct statement from the current dean.
The DEI stuff here wasn’t quite as bad. We had those pointless trainings where you watch a short video and then answer questions, but they did include DEI stuff on evaluations (though checking the box was pretty easy).
Recently, someone passed an introductory English class that had absolutely no business doing so, but it had nothing to do with DEI. It was really just misplaced compassion. I worked closely with her, and she was given a pity grade because she tried so hard and she’s a very sympathetic person. Besides DEI, those cases are the ones that will really break your heart, but to uphold standards, sometimes they have fail.
It’s hard as hell, but the part of the equation where you have to fail someone who is honestly trying isn’t talked about enough because it’s painful. It’s not the students who don’t care, don’t try, and don’t show up that kill you; it’s the ones who just aren’t ready.
That kind of “hard edge” really needs to slowly come back. People may need to take a more reasonable interest in their own reputations as educators. If this kind of student passes your class, I question your standards.
For those who aren’t race hustlers, the misplaced compassion is really a large part of the driving force. Misplaced compassion has put people in positions above their competence, and the standards continue to fall because the incompetence just continues to spread. If you are a liberal and you have to fail a young black girl who tried, you need to be able to stomach it and do it. Some liberals can, but many can’t because of how extreme their ideology has become.