Replacing Standards with Sympathy

Higher education once stood for rigor, accountability, and personal responsibility. But grade inflation and diluted curricula have already eroded the pretense of academic excellence. Now, a new initiative at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK), titled the “Ecological Validation Model for Student Success,” threatens to finish the job. Disguised as inclusion, the model abandons rigor, absolves certain students of responsibility, and replaces objective standards with politicized discretion. What’s unfolding at UNK is not an isolated case—it’s a warning sign of a deeper crisis spreading across American universities. Billed as a “campus-wide approach to student success” in which “every staff...