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Op-Ed: Tom Jones: John Arnold wants to control where your kids go to college

By: Tom Jones

After the pandemic, parents across the nation ran straight to the polls to elect candidates who opposed DEI and CRT in grade schools. Their efforts to elect conservative candidates — and to ensure their children were being taught to love, not hate America — were largely successful, and even a handful of our nation’s largest universities have eliminated these types of departments.

Now those winds of change have shaken Washington, D.C. itself. In 2024 the American people have sent a clear-cut message: things can’t go on as they have for the last 4 years, especially when it comes to education.

But in order to fix these problems, it’s important to understand how things got to be so bad in the first place. For the past few years, normal, traditional education has come under attack. How and why did this happen?

In large part the answer lies with billionaires like George Soros, who tap into their unlimited coffers to re-educate the public and to force their ideological views into the education arena — shaping the hearts and minds of our next generation in post-secondary schools across the nation and bankrolling efforts to shutter career colleges that provide real education to a majority of working-class Americans.

This all begs the question — why does the left hate career-oriented schooling? The answer is two-fold: the left hates institutions they cannot control and these institutions teach career-oriented curriculum, not gender studies.

And keep in mind: a majority of these blue-collar folks believe in traditional American values.

A prime example of this is John Arnold, a Texas-based billionaire, who spends upwards of $50 million a year of his money to shut down career colleges and vocational schools, in an attempt to force students into government-run and traditional “woke” universities.

John Arnold made his billions trading energy stocks at Enron — an energy and commodities company based in Houston, Texas that went bankrupt in a major scandal involving widespread fraud — where Arnold began his rise to riches, to his launching of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (which would eventually become Arnold Ventures, LLC), the main financial vehicle of his activism.

His activism and belief that every American can afford a Harvard or Yale degree has harsh consequences for middle America.

Under Joe Biden, inflation made it harder for families to afford groceries to feed their kids, fill their tank up with gas to go to work, and younger Americans despaired of ever buying a new home where they could start families. Some of the same Americans — some of whom may be considered “garbage” in Joe Biden’s dictionary — cannot afford a four-year degree.

Career colleges provide a career-and-customer focused route to a degree, and have been a favored choice for working parents, minorities, and veterans to make their educational dream a reality.

And they’re not woke. I haven’t looked but I’m pretty sure there aren’t any chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Phoenix.

They are closing the schools that train people to become nurses and truck drivers, all of which are in high demand and in short supply.

The full impact of Arnold’s contributions to attack career colleges is unclear. Unlike most private foundations — which are required to publicly report their finances — Arnold Ventures is an LLC and as such is not required to disclose information about its finances.

John Arnold only wants to kill career colleges and keep the status quo. Arnold and his allies want to make traditional four-year colleges the pipeline for any post-secondary education. This is because they see it as an ideal tool for indoctrinating young people. Simply put, he thinks college degree should equate to a guaranteed lifelong leftist devotee.

If Congress wants to reform higher education, they should start with investigating the Arnold Foundation

Thomas Jones is the president of the American Accountability Foundation.

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