'Big Boys' and Broken Promises: How Bureaucracy Bankrupted the American Academy

What supports the mortarboards?

The British sit-com Big Boys is, on the surface, a clever office comedy. But beneath the laughter lies something far more corrosive: an indictment of institutions that have abandoned their purpose. This theatrical satire, paired with the London Review of Books’ sobering essay “A Sector in Freefall” (29 April), forces a reckoning with a truth many still deny—higher education systems are collapsing under the weight of their own contradictions. America is not alone!

Once the envy of the world, U.S. colleges and universities are now often cautionary tales. At the heart of this implosion lies a vast, sclerotic bureaucracy more committed to image management and administrative aggrandizement than to education itself. The Department of Education, conceived to elevate national performance and equity in learning, has become a model of fiscal irresponsibility. Over the last two decades, this federal agency has diverted billions of taxpayer dollars toward promotional summits, boutique conferences in resort cities, and politically fashionable pilot programs—all while reading and math scores among U.S. students have stagnated and declined.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card,” student achievement in core subjects has flatlined since the early 2000s. In some states, proficiency rates in math and reading for eighth graders hover in the low 30th percentile. Meanwhile, the Department of Education’s budget for conferences, travel, and public relations ballooned. Such spending routinely escapes public scrutiny, it is buried within broader budget categories. From multi-million-dollar conferences at luxury venues to multi-year grants for “equity-based rebranding” initiatives, the Department has focused on self-promotion while the foundational literacy and numeracy of the nation’s children continue to erode.

This culture of extravagance is often mirrored at the state level. In Maryland, for instance, the annual teachers’ conference held in Ocean City has become less a forum for professional development and more a publicly funded retreat in that participants attend during normal school days for which they are paid. Teachers themselves openly acknowledge attending not for pedagogical enrichment, but for shopping, beachgoing, and a respite from their regular duties. Such misaligned priorities reflect a broader failure: while policymakers polish institutional reputations with public dollars, students are left to navigate an increasingly inadequate educational system. The optics are damning. Why did a Department meant to elevate outcomes devote so much effort to ideological pageantry and institutional theater while pursuing its real focus, Department growth and income?

The global impact is also increasingly evident. Once the undisputed worldwide pinnacle of technical education, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) now has arguably ceded its crown to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Ranked by international recruiters and peer institutions for producing the most competitive STEM graduates, IITs have emerged as the new standard-bearers of intellectual rigor and meritocratic excellence. At the same time, U.S. institutions are embroiled in litigation over admissions discrimination, pay-for-entry scandals, and bureaucratic capture that diverts faculty energy from teaching to compliance. My own Ph.D. advisor had to revamp his teaching syllabus for an advanced statistics course because the committee, comprised of faculty members representing all the departments, disapproved his initial submission. Why? Because it failed to credit enough female contributors. The fact that no male contributors were credited in the submission was ostensibly irrelevant.

Big Boys succeeds not only as art, but as metaphor. The play's absurdist take on office life, in which junior employees navigate a maze of meaningless rituals, mirrors the plight of American academics, trapped in a system that increasingly prizes metrics over meaning, diversity statements over scientific insight, and brand visibility over intellectual substance.

What is at stake is not simply prestige or international rankings, but the soul of a republic that once saw education as its democratic cornerstone. In 1862, the Morrill Land-Grant Acts imagined universities as engines of national advancement, open to all and devoted to the public good. Today, those ideals lie in ruins. Politicians like Bernie Sanders would have them open to all at taxpayer expense, with a foreseeable result of more toga parties and spring break invasions of popular beach resorts.

As tuition rises, student debt soars, and performance metrics falter, we are left with a chilling irony: a government agency meant to foster learning instead accelerates its decline.  I, for one, will not miss it!  There are certainly government responsibilities that are best kept at the federal level, but education policy fails to qualify!  The temptation to aggrandize the Department proved to be insatiable.  Lest I neglect naming all the conspirators, Congress and the Teachers’ Unions played principal roles in this tragedy!

The collapse of American education is not inevitable. But neither will reform come from within the current hierarchy. It will come only when citizens reclaim the moral purpose of education, not as a credential mill, not as a culture war battleground, but as a shared investment in human capability. IT must start with the 'customers' of education. The customers are not the children, as educators like to pretend. The customers are the ones paying for the service - taxpayers. Regaining control of education, in general, must begin with those customers exercising appropriate control of school boards and paying attention to what is being taught in their schools. I believe that quality improvement in colleges and universities will follow as a direct consequence of greater public awareness.

Until then, with respect to the Department of Education, unless it is disestablished or Congress addresses its oversight responsibility, it will continue to convene its polished conferences, higher education will inflate its own absurdities, and the classroom will remain the most underperforming establishment in America.