Back in my early days of college, I complained often and loudly about any professor who had the temerity to include attendance as part of the course grade. "Not only am I capable of making my own decisions about going to class," I'd explain haughtily, "my tuition and fees pay his salary, so I should really get to choose how I'm graded." I eventually learned the inherent flaws of this opinion – thanks in no small part to several well-meaning professors more than happy to use ample amounts of that mandatory class time disabusing me of this and myriad other asinine notions.

Unfortunately, my consumer-based justification for why I "deserved" to be given a bespoke educational experience – I pay your salary – is quite common on college and university campuses. Rather than consider postsecondary education an undertaking of self-improvement or intellectual exploration, many students approach college as more akin to ordering off a fast-food menu: I already know what I want, and since I'm paying, I expect it served to me just as I asked, immediately.

To be sure, such attitudes are not new; yet, they are having a profound impact on higher education today – largely because institutions themselves are intentionally catering to their students' every adolescent predilection. Professor Tom Nichols commits a full chapter to this "commodification" of higher education in his recent book "The Death of Expertise," noting rigorous intellectual training has been replaced with the "full-service experience of 'going to college.'" Today, he argues, most schools treat undergraduates "as clients, rather than students," pandering to them intellectually and psychologically in place of cultivating self-discipline.

Several developments have helped shape this landscape: First, increased market demand and financial incentives have shifted the focus of higher education toward a customer-service paradigm. Simultaneously, decades of increasing ideological-uniformity and the swell of issue-driven university bureaucrats have all but extinguished viewpoint diversity among faculty and staff and dramatically revised the parameters of acceptable campus mores, including speech and expression. In addition, matriculating students arrive burdened with the ever-greater cost of postsecondary education as well as historically high rates of political polarization, psychological distress and civic illiteracy.

The results of this melange are troubling. Just this week, The Wall Street Journal unearthed more data highlighting the failure of colleges and universities to improve students' critical-thinking skills. This analysis builds on earlier work by Rich Arum and Josipa Roska concerning undergraduates' abysmal results on the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus, a little-known test that measures students' critical-thinking, analytical-reasoning and problem-solving abilities. According to test results from dozens of public colleges and universities between 2013 and 2016, the Journal found, "At more than half of schools, at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence in a document or interpret data in a table." Even at some of the most prestigious flagship universities, "the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years."

These findings come on the heels of last Friday's lackluster May jobs report, which detailed a continued deceleration of the job-growth rate. Analysts believe this signals that businesses are struggling to find qualified candidates to hire – which is consistent with reams of survey data gathered from employers who lament that newly hired college graduates aren't prepared for the workforce. When asked which traits are lacking, most employers cite either critical-reasoning skills or interpersonal or people skills as their primary complaints.

Put generally, evidence suggests that today's students graduate without sufficient intellectual humility. Intellectual humility governs how a person views their own mental capabilities: This involves things like one's understanding of the limitations of their knowledge, receptivity to new ideas and evidence and ability to consider new or conflicting information fairly and dispassionately. Critical-thinking and argumentative-reasoning skills draw from this well, as do many emotional qualities related to positive social interaction. Therefore, along with increased educative abilities, the intellectually humble are also better able to engage in civil discourse and interact with opposing perspectives.

Perhaps nowhere has the abject failure of higher education to teach students to think critically or act maturely and civilly been on greater display than with the issue of free speech and expression. Examples of campus-speech controversies are numerous and varied, yet together they illustrate of a kind of intellectual protectionism that has consumed a significant portion of higher education. Feeling entitled as consumers, petulant students increasingly demand safety from and punishment of any views deemed "offensive" or simply unwanted – justifying censorship with such intellectually bankrupt canards as "speech is violence," or even perpetrating actual violence. Fearing the ire of the campus mob – or worse, that prospective students might not view their school as "supportive" – feckless administrators turn a blind eye to their institutional strictures and basic psychology to join this regressive call-and-response.

Consequently, in combination with the dearth of viewpoint diversity, higher education's shift toward consumer satisfaction has, in effect, produced a less intellectually humble student body exercising far more influence over campus ideology and decision-making. By moving away from the fundamental pursuit of truth, academe's cognitive and psychological coddling has reinforced students' most academically destructive tendencies. As illustrated by the recent spate of campus-speech controversies, colleges and universities need to seriously consider how a fractious climate of intellectual protectionism is devaluing their educational product and stifling protected speech and expression.