Posted on 05/29/2015 8:38:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
American colleges and universities, long thought to be the glory of the nation, are in more than a little trouble. Ive written before of their shameful practices the racial quotas and preferences at selective schools (Harvard is being sued by Asian-American organizations), the kangaroo courts that try students accused of rape and sexual assault without legal representation or presumption of innocence, and speech codes that make campuses the least rather than the most free venues in American society.
In following these policies, the burgeoning phalanxes of university and college administrators must systematically lie, insisting against all the evidence that they are racially nondiscriminatory, devoted to due process, and upholders of free speech. The resulting intellectual corruption would have been understood by George Orwell.
Alas, even the great strengths of our colleges and universities are threatening to become weaknesses. Sometimes you can get too much of a good thing.
American colleges, dating back to Harvards founding in 1636, have been modeled on the residential colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. The idea is that students live on or near (sometimes breathtakingly beautiful) campuses, where they can learn from and interact with inspired teachers.
American graduate universities, dating back to Johns Hopkinss founding in 1876, have been built on the German professional model. Students are taught by scholars whose Ph.D. theses represent original scholarship, expanding the frontiers of knowledge and learning.
That model still works very well in math and the hard sciences. In these disciplines its rightly claimed that American universities are, as The Economist recently put it in a cover story, the gold standard of the world. But not so much in some of the mushier social sciences and humanities. Just as the American model is spreading around the world, The Economist goes on, it is struggling at home.
Consider the Oxford/Cambridge residential college model. Up through the 1960s, college administrators acted in loco parentis, with responsibilities similar to those of parents. Mens and womens dorms were separate and mostly off-limits to the other sex; drinking and drug use were limited; cars were often banned.
The assumption is that 18- to 21-year-old students were, in important respects, still children. The 1960s changed all that. Students were regarded as entitled to adult freedoms: unisex dorms and bathrooms, binge drinking, a hookup culture.
The residential college model, with its bloated ranks of coddlers/administrators, has become hugely expensive and increasingly dysfunctional.
But now the assumption is that adult-aged students must be coddled like children. They are provided with cadres of counselors, so-called trigger warnings against supposedly disturbing course material, and kangaroo courts to minutely regulate their sexual behavior.
Most colleges and universities abroad and many in this country (notably for-profit and online) dont use the residential model. Students live with parents or double up in cheap apartments and horrors! commute, like most employed adults.
The residential college model, with its bloated ranks of coddlers/administrators, has become hugely expensive and increasingly dysfunctional. Its overdue for significant downsizing.
The Ph.D. university model is also metastasizing. A plethora of humanities and social-science Ph.D. theses are produced every year, many if not most written in unreadable academic jargon and devoid of scholarly worth. Most will probably be read by only a handful of people, with no loss to society. But some worthy scholarship will be overlooked and go unappreciated.
A glut of Ph.D.s and an ever-increasing army of administrators have produced downward pressure on faculty pay. Universities increasingly hire Ph.D.s as underpaid adjuncts, with low wages and no job security.
The last half-century has seen a huge increase in the percentage of Americans who go to college and a huge increase in government aid to them. The assumption was that if college is good for some, its good for everyone. But not everyone is suited for college: Witness the increasing ranks of debt-laden non-graduates.
And the huge tranches of government money have been largely mopped up by the ever-increasing cadres of administrators. Do students get their moneys worth from the masses of counselors, facilitators, liaisons, and coordinators their student loans pay for? Or would they be better off paying for such services only as needed, as most other adults do?
As Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com has written convincingly, the higher education bubble is now bursting. Colleges are closing; college applications and graduate-program enrollments are declining; universities are facing lawsuits challenging the verdicts of their kangaroo courts.
Naturally, administrators seek more money. But the money pumped into these institutions is more the problem than the solution.
Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner.
Was there ONE of the “Duke 88” that we couldn’t do without?
But how will we survive without diversity officers or the gender and sexuality resource center?
RE: But how will we survive without diversity officers or the gender and sexuality resource center?
Same way Universities in other countries survive.
The University of Wisconsin system is experiencing cuts right now (thanks to Scott Walker, among others). While there is the usual whining from government employees, it is surprising how easy it has been for them to find ways to cut.
My suspicion is that the budget cuts are allowing the UW system to finally get rid of some deadwood and obsolete programs. I think some of the administrators might actually (secretly) be happy for the opportunity to cut the waste.
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Social Justice Education is an interdisciplinary concentration of study with a focus on social diversity and social justice as they apply to formal and non-formal educational systems. It uses and generates research and theory to understand the sociocultural and historical contexts and dynamics of specific manifestations of oppression (e.g., ableism, classism, heterosexism, racism, religious oppression, transgender oppression and sexism) in social systems. It brings together faculty and students with interests in issues of social diversity and social oppression, inclusion, equity, social justice, critical theories, critical pedagogies, dialogues across differences, individual and collective empowerment, liberatory consciousness and practice, and research for social justice.
The goal of the SJE doctoral concentration is to prepare scholars and educational leaders that can promote social diversityand justice in educational settings through the development of theoretical and practical knowledge, empirical research, and the use of effective social justice education practices. The concentration engages candidates in the study, interrogation and further theorizing of social justice issues and social justice education practices for the purpose of developing knowledge capable of fostering educational environments that are socially just, diverse, inclusive, equitable, and accessible to all members within given communities and contexts. Candidates are experienced educational professionals classroom teachers, school counselors, staff development professional, education administrators, student affairs programmers, special educators, youth workers, or college residential educators who work closely with a faculty guidance committee to plan a course of study which balances academic and professional experiences relevant to successfully completing doctoral work. Graduates are employed in various roles including faculty and leadership and administration roles in a variety of educational settings including private and public schools, non-governmental organizations, university and college settings. For detailed information about the SJE doctoral concentration of study and admissions information go to the SJE concentration website. (Click here to link to more information about our Social Justice Education graduate programs of study)
Social Justice Education Website at http://www.umass.edu/sje/
Program of Study
The Program of Study for theSocial Justice Education Doctoral Concentration consists of:
Seven (7) required core courses totaling 21 credits:
Five (5) courses in the Social Justice Education Core
Two (2) courses in the Theory Core
Four (4) Research Methods courses totaling 12 credits
Three (3) elective courses toward specialization totaling 9 credits With the required eighteen (18) dissertation credits, the total number of required credits is 60.
The required and elective courses that are eligible to fulfill the doctoral requirements can be found at the following link: Social Justice Education Graduate Program
Curriculum Outline:
Contact Information
For more information about the Social Justice Education program, please contact:
Concentration Coordinator: Ximena Zúñiga (Professor) Email: xzuniga@educ.umass.edu
Associated Faculty
Korina Jocson (Assistant Professor), Antonio Martinez (Assistant Professor), Ximena U. Zúñiga (Professor).
I see no problems, 72% Harvard’s students graduated with an “A” average.
Look up how many communities there are where a university is one of the top 3 employers. Then tell me how this is gonna get done.
Pitt passed U.S. Steel as the largest employer here in 1980, and has never looked back.
he spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought. - Sir Peter Medawar
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