Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh are spending nearly $5 million to teach students how to talk to one another.
IUP received a $2.29 million federal grant to create a Center for Dialogue and Civic Life. Pitt was awarded about $2.7 million to build a regional model for civil discourse and civic leadership. Both efforts are multiyear and staff-heavy. Faculty say they are responding to a growing problem: Students increasingly avoid disagreement, not because they lack opinions, but because they fear engaging at all.
Those investments may be smart. They may be necessary. But they also should give us pause. How are young adults arriving on college campuses unable to manage a basic give-and-take conversation?
College already costs an extraordinary amount of money. Many students finance that cost with debt that follows them for decades. If higher education is one of the most expensive investments people make, then full participation in the classroom is not optional. Questioning, arguing, defending and revising ideas is central to learning.
When that participation breaks down, the loss is concrete. Students still attend class. Tuition still is due. Loans still accrue interest. What disappears is the value created by engaging seriously with people who think differently.
That kind of engagement is not a “soft skill.” It is load-bearing.
Think of a college education the way most families think of a house: a long-term investment, often financed by borrowing. Everyone involved has strong views about what matters most. Different disciplines emphasize different priorities. Professors push from one direction. Students push from another.
That tension is not a flaw. Like a construction project, the work only moves forward if people can argue about priorities, make trade-offs and decide what matters most on a given day.
When that process stops, the project stalls — but the bills keep coming.
The fact that universities now have to spend millions to restore this basic function should concern anyone who pays tuition, co-signs loans or supports public higher education. These programs exist because something foundational has eroded. In that sense, they are remedial — closer to an algebra refresher than an advanced seminar.
The consequences do not end at graduation.
Students who never learn to engage constructively with disagreement carry that avoidance into the workplace, where meetings stall and decisions drag. They carry it into families and neighborhoods, where conflicts harden instead of getting resolved. In a society already under strain, the inability to navigate difference makes daily life more brittle — and, at times, less safe.
As college costs rise, the margin for wasted opportunity shrinks. Students deserve an education that challenges them and prepares them for a world where consensus is rare and cooperation is required.
Universities are not wrong to invest in civil discourse. They are right to see a problem and try to fix it. But an uncomfortable truth remains.
When institutions have to spend millions to rebuild the capacity for disagreement, it is a sign of how much we are all paying. It also speaks to how little we have prepared young people for the real work of learning, living and disagreeing together.
