Credentials, networks, internships, and prestige keep parents pursuing college admissions even when they perceive the institutions themselves as disasters.
In the wake of sexual assault allegations at Cornell University, victimization of women on college campuses has returned to public discourse.
Cornell’s 2025 state-mandated sexual misconduct survey reported that 35% of undergraduate women experienced sexual assault since arriving at the university. The undergraduate response rate was only 13%. Cornell’s presidential task force warned that this low response rate limits statistical estimates and makes results difficult to interpret.
Parents will sacrifice their daughters on the altar of institutional status. What other sacrifices might they make?
If one accepts the headline number at face value, sending a daughter to Cornell appears irrational.
Conservative parents correctly identify parallel concerns about the ideological and spiritual risks associated with college. They argue universities teach women to despise men, abandon religious faith, engage in promiscuous behavior, embrace progressive politics, and accumulate debt for degrees of questionable value. The cultural meme illustrates this transformation: a well-adjusted high school graduate returns from college with tattoos, purple hair, piercings, and wearing a “down with the patriarchy” T-shirt.
Yet both groups continue to send their daughters to university.
