Today’s system of higher education is fundamentally broken. The recent college admissions scandal in the United States powerfully illustrates this. A federal investigation, known as Operation Varsity Blues, uncovered college-admission cheating and bribery. The main perpetrator is alleged to have conspired with wealthy parents to help get their high-school-age children into some of America’s most prestigious colleges and universities.

According to reports, the mastermind behind the ruse bribed college coaches and administrators to boost the likelihood of these children being admitted to their chosen schools by making them look like star athletes in sports they had never played. He also hired people to take college entrance exams for students and paid off insiders to make sure they had the correct answers.

In exchange for these illicit activities, some parents—including lawyers, financiers, clothing designers and Hollywood stars—spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. One paid as much as $6.5 million! These inappropriate favors have resulted in widespread public outrage and felony charges for those involved.

Many were able to recognize the obvious misconduct related to college admissions that took place, but virtually no one saw the scandal’s connection to the overall crisis within the modern educational system. The Varsity Blues scandal is only a microcosm of a much greater problem—that of the overall system utterly failing the next generation.

Confused by the conflicting influence of blinded religious leaders and deceived educators, colleges and universities have not succeeded in carrying out their greatest responsibility, which should have been to teach their students how to live, and to instill in young minds the marvelous truths of God’s Word and the Supreme Purpose for which they were born! Again, they have failed to meet the challenge!

There is a cause for the conditions of the world. Ultimately, it is found in wrong education—education based entirely on the wrong foundation!

Modern education has set aside right knowledge. The education of this world is chock-full of false values, principles and the doctrines of “no absolutes” and “situation ethics.” Colleges and universities are pumping out millions of young people who have no moral compass to

direct them in making the many decisions they must face. Students leave these “education factories” with no idea whether there is a God, whether that God has a purpose, and whether they are included in it. They are ships without rudders!

Almost none know why they were born—what is the supreme purpose for human life. Most have no idea there even is a purpose for human existence. Philosophers are not explaining it because they do not know whether there is a purpose for your life—and if so, what it is. Educators are not teaching it because no one can teach what he himself has not been taught. Scientists do not speak to this subject because it lies outside their field. Moralists are ignorant—and so are the theologians of all the world’s supposed “great religions.”

Biased Against God

The nations of the world possess a vast sum of knowledge, and this fund of knowledge increases every day, but they are ignorant of the right kind of knowledge—spiritually revealed knowledge. This is because the modern system of education is morally and spiritually bankrupt! Deluded educators have been biased against God and His Word by having had the atheistic teaching of evolution funneled into their minds from childhood. They have been responsible for teaching young people for decades that there are “no absolutes” and that they must follow “situation ethics” in all circumstances. These young people have then grown up into several generations from which the world’s leaders have come.

These educators have led the world into a kind of secular humanism—where people are driven by how they feel rather than clear definitions of right and wrong! This has led to a level of immorality and kinds of perversion never before seen in history. But there is right and wrong in life—and the educators of this world have cut themselves off from this knowledge (Isa. 59:1-2). They cannot teach what they were never taught. And neither could their parents, who were also indoctrinated in the same false thinking!

If a tree is known by its fruit, look at the fruits of modern education: cynical skepticism, rejection of values, widespread immorality, drunkenness and endless partying, protests, an inordinate focus on “diversity,” political correctness, and an emphasis on being “cool” and accepted—and rebellion in general—in place of acquiring necessary important knowledge.

Such a system is doomed! Again, this is because the institutions of education spawn society’s leaders. It becomes clear that a cycle of worse and worse leaders is generated from a system entirely wrong from the ground up.

Most of the values that people hold were acquired during basic education. The Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th edition defines education as “an attempt on the part of the adult members of a human society to shape the development of the coming generation in accordance with its own ideals of life.”

The true ideals of life have been passed over by societies cut off from God. Plato, the Greek philosopher who founded the academic system, expressed the direct aim of education in terms based upon false pagan ideas. The injection of pagan thought has been integral to education for many generations.

The greatest indictment of modern education is that moral teachings and character training have been left out of the curriculum of public schools and universities. Under the guise of separation of church and state, the Bible—God’s instruction manual for mankind—is not open to discussion. It is lampooned, ridiculed and rejected, and viewed at best as merely “Hebrew and Greek literature.” The result has been that students have not been taught how to live, but rather only how to earn a living.

Millions of students are taught that higher education exists for the purpose of cramming heads with what is largely sterile, dead knowledge that they must “have” in order to get ahead. True values are left out—because most have no idea that there even are true values. The few who may still believe that such values must exist have no idea what they are, have no idea of the path to building a life on values that last and that bring them the peace, happiness, financial security, success in marriage and childrearing—and the sure knowledge that they are pleasing the Creator who gave them life in the first place.

Modern education has not helped stabilize masses of youth under assault by the media and the mass disintegration of families. Without the traditional influence of unified, proper families, including the guidance of both parents and all grandparents, children lack even the basic moral compass that guided previous generations. Education stoutly refuses to address moral training.

The institutions producing the leaders of industry and society have slowly been designed to be poorly equipped to address the awesome challenges that face mankind. And, while the need has never been greater, real leaders with moral backbone have almost vanished.

According to statistics, between 60 and 80 percent of college students admit to “hooking up”—having sex with either casual acquaintances, near strangers, or complete strangers. In other words, as many as four out of five will sleep with others they barely know or do not know at all. One in four has a sexually transmitted disease.

Forty percent of U.S. college students—two in five!—are now considered alcoholics. How many others drink too much? Most binge-drink at least once per month. The average male student (not the average college alcoholic) has 82 drinks per month. The average woman has 59. And over three million of them drive drunk on America’s roads each year.

A third of college students have tried marijuana. Fifty to 60 percent admit to abusing prescription drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin.

Studies also show that students only spend an average of 7.2 hours per week studying. With the addition of classes and certain other academic activities, the number reaches 30 hours. But they spend 10-plus hours “partying,” and another 30 hours in recreation. In other words, about 18 percent of a student’s time is dedicated to education, with only 4 percent in active application.

Seventy percent of college students admit to serious cheating. Forty percent admit to outright stealing the right answers. These numbers are staggering—and they represent just those who admitted it! How many more did not? Just recall the college admissions scandal that we opened with.

Shockingly, professors are increasingly posting both the questions and answers for final exams before they are administered, stating that too many students would fail otherwise! Some professors who have taught the same material for years observe that the exams that once resulted in the standard bell curve—a few As, a few Fs, and everyone else in between—now often result in the majority of a class failing.

Jesus said, “You shall know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16) and “…by their fruits you shall know them” (vs. 20). These are the fruits of today’s “higher education”!

Modern education is now corrupting its last generation—with religion having done little or nothing to stop it!

Universal Re-education Ahead

Estimates show that approximately 20 percent of all human beings cannot read or write. After Christ returns and the Kingdom of God is established, replacing mankind’s failed systems, basic education will become absolutely essential for almost a quarter of all people on Earth.

The rest of mankind has been “educated.” This means that they have been steeped in the world’s false values, pagan religions and customs, the atheistic concept of evolution—and all the ways of Satan’s nature instilled into people as human nature. They have much to unlearn. They will not have to receive basic education as much as they will have to be re-educated! People will learn that much of the knowledge they swallowed as fact was little more than false indoctrination and propaganda.

Humanity will have to learn that there is right knowledge and there is wrong knowledge—and how to know the difference. People will also learn the difference between spiritual and physical knowledge. It will be universally taught that the Bible is the foundation of all knowledge. (Satan is the true father of today’s education.) At that time, men will learn that they can no longer eat of the Genesis 2 “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (vs. 9, 17), which is rooted in their thinking.

All true knowledge comes from God—and mankind will understand that peace, happiness, abundance and universal health and prosperity spring from divine revelation. The fable that mankind is continually evolving into a “higher order” will be debunked and replaced with the knowledge that for 6,000 years man continually became more degenerate, decadent and depraved—in conduct and thought.

Life is a process of education—learning to develop character by obedience to God’s laws, which in turn yields every good, fulfilling and favorable result. Education in the world tomorrow will explain how to live—and how to learn a productive trade. Of course, all academic subjects, including wholesome art and music coupled with science and mathematics and a host of other necessary and important academic disciplines, will produce well-rounded people. Life will become invigorating, exciting and fulfilling.

All error will be exposed for what it is. The truth of every matter—in every field of knowledge—will be taught in place of error. Manmade definitions of political correctness, situation ethics, human rights, discrimination, alternative lifestyles, and proper education will be scrapped and replaced with God’s definitions.

The Only Way

The jury has come in. Modern education has failed, and it is too late to do anything about this corrupt system. Rotten from the beginning, it was based on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was forbidden by God from Creation. The Restored Church of God, through the vastness of its available free literature, as the largest religious publishing operation in the world, is teaching—re-educating!—great numbers in every nation and territory of the world with the truth of God’s Word. The missing dimension of true—spiritual—knowledge is being disseminated to a world desperately in need of it, and in advance of when Christ will administer God’s government and truth to all nations.

Every human being was created to live a life of radiant happiness. Yet millions today view Christianity as little more than a series of “Thou shalt nots,” rather than the path to enjoying a wonderful, abundant life. These same millions often think of sin as the fun that will end if they obey God. They think that “accepting Jesus” also means accepting a life of almost morbid gloom and doom. Most have thought Christianity primarily means an end to fun, pleasure, excitement, thrills and leading an interesting life.

All of this wrong “education” exists because almost no one equates Christianity with enjoying a true zest for life!

God’s Educational Philosophy

In a proper education system, students are educated on the true purpose of life, based on the authority of the Word of God—the foundation of all knowledge. In place of the wholly materialistic focus of this world’s colleges and universities, God’s Way balances physical pursuits with spiritual instruction, and the all-important teaching of right character. Social and cultural enrichment as well as personality development will never be neglected.

In the right system, students are taught the rules of, and importance of, good health. And they are taught how to properly date and court on the way to a happy marriage, one that will include respectful, obedient children. They learn to live and reflect the abundant life. Finally, they are taught the all-important principles of real, effective, true leadership. This permits them to live—and teach!—the give way of life to the full.

God’s future educational system will teach students not only how to earn a living, but also how to live. To learn much more, read my free book {%646}