Posted on 04/04/2019 1:12:05 AM PDT by Kaslin
American college is terrible and, as a society, we should stop doing it – at least how it is being currently done. The greatest benefit of a system where most citizens are pushed to get college educations, whether they truly need and want one or not, would be a society of really smart, informed, and engaged citizens. Do you see that happening?
No, you do not.
Instead, we have a bunch of people who are dragged down by crushing debt after wasting years of their youth chasing a piece of paper that often has no relationship to these graduates’ futures. Compounding the failure is how these grads march off campus infatuated with ridiculous commie notions abhorrent to a free people. The college system is a disaster – an expensive disaster that picks our pockets as well as those of the suckers who matriculate – and we should stop tolerating it. Time for conservatives to reform academia the hard way, and by “reform” I mean, “Destroy it, sow the campuses with salt, and rebuild academia into something that isn’t useless.”
About 99% of current college grads will feel that “sow with salt” line zoom over their empty heads. Most of them probably think “Carthage” is a rapper, or maybe a lesser Kardashian.
The college admission scandal, where a herd of rich Democrat donors paid a ton of dough to get their half-wit progeny into Snooty U, was the perfect encapsulation of how big a rip-off college really is. Did you notice how the parents forked over cash to get Junior into school because Junior scored 112 on his SAT and then…Junior stayed in the elite school with no problem? You might think that if these schools were rigorous institutions of higher learning instead of ruling class credential rubber-stump machines, they might flunk out? But no. When the internet famous daughter of that (former) Full House / Hallmark-movie-about-a-widow-finding-love-with-a sexy-carpenter-at-Christmas starlet Lori Loughlin was busted, she was literally sailing around the Bahamas on a yacht owned by a USC trustee.
I guess she needed a break from her work carrying on Dr. Hawking’s particle physics research.
Of course, according to our betters – the same betters who pulled off this scam and all the myriad other scams that are wrecking our culture – the answer to this outrage is to eliminate standardize testing. That way there will be no objective criteria for college admission at all, and the elite can simply wield its influence, pull a few strings, and voilà – Kaden has his gender studies degree from Yale!
But your kid, like every other Normal kid, will have even less chance of being accepted at, say, Harvard, because they can’t test in anymore. Harvard is, of course, the best school in the world, according to Harvard and the people who went there, a fact about them that you will learn within 15 seconds of meeting one. And your kid will have even an even worse chance if he or she (though not xe – that’s a plus) is both Normal and Asian. Apparently the hard work and talent of Asian-American students give them an unfair advantage over people lucky at being born or who get on TV spouting approved liberal clichés.
It’s apparent that the current collegiate system serves several functions, all of them a symptom of a deeper problem with our society. We have seen how admission to one of the elite schools is a de facto degree, which in turn is a de facto ticket into the ruling class. Any actual education is purely coincidental. It is also clear that attendance at non-elite schools is today merely a signal to employers that the person might possesses the basic readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic skills we used to expect from a high school graduate. This is because high school’s purpose is not to create a baseline educated citizen anymore but, rather, to provide comfy sinecures for Democrat-voting unionized teachers and the swollen ranks of lazy, useless administrators. Again, education is an afterthought – public education’s real goal is to provide jobs for Democrat constituencies.
Academia is similar. It exists to mass produce ignorant future elitists and to provide jobs for liberal indoctrinators fueled by our tax money. The state and private schools both take our dough directly as well as through guaranteed student loans. Student loans are a giant scam, of course. Students get grifted into chaining an anchor around their necks in exchange for credentials most don’t even need. Colleges can raise tuition as high as they like because the government will just back the loans these suckers take out. It’s a great system, if you’re an academic. Not so much if you are a student or a taxpayer.
Of course, the schools love the “free college” movement. Nothing costs as much as “free.” The only thing better than having the millennial dummies willing to borrow 200 grand for a degree in the feminist literature of Mongolia pay for it is to make you and me pay for it.
How about no?
Now, the college scam has insinuated itself into our culture like a malignancy, and cutting it out will be traumatic, but we need to do it or it will destroy us. First, we need to demand that high school do its job and turn out students who can do the basic things citizens must do without taking remedial courses in college so they can master See Spot Run. Outlawing teachers’ unions sounds like a great start, as well as refusing federal aid for any district that has more than a 1:1 teacher to administrator ratio.
Second, we need a cultural rethink of the concept of college itself. A four-year degree – as opposed to a four-year party – is not for everyone. It’s not even for most people. You know who do well today, who aren’t MFA grads yet making our coffee for us? People with skills. Plumbers. Electricians. Welders. Trades are the future.
And a four-year degree should not always be a prerequisite for a professional degree either. I did four years of undergrad, where I majored in beer and girls with a minor in 80s post-punk alternative music, then three years of law school (albeit interrupted by the Army). That seven years could have been condensed to five, maybe four. Same with med school; docs learn as on the job as residents. You should not have to spend nearly a decade taking classes to do the vast majority of jobs. I deal with other lawyers for a living. Most are quarter-wits aspiring to be half-wits.
Third, we need to realize that our elite schools are not elite. Their status comes not from the quality of their education but the selectivity (at least, the selectivity they claim to the public) of their admissions. Guess what the median grade at Harvard is. Go on, guess. Our most rigorous school, right? It should be really hard, right? Lots of “C” and “B” grades because of said rigor, right?
It’s an “A-.” The median grade at Harvard is an “A-,” which is supposed to be “outstanding.” But a Harvard A- is not “outstanding.” It is the default. Think about it. Half the grades at Harvard are “A-” or above. Would you give our ruling class an “A-”?
And beside all this, the universities as bastions of leftism and censorship. That needs to end too. President Trump’s free speech executive order is just the first step in defeating academic fascism.
Academia is a scam, as well as a campus gulag archipelago of hellholes of leftist oppression, and we need to tear it down and start over.
Hey, no problem. Is the noise inside my head to loud for you? :-)
No its drowned out by the voices inside of mine!
The college experience (including liberal arts) is valuable when people are taught how to think rather than what to think. However, I seriously doubt there are 50 colleges (out of thousands) in this country where that is the norm rather than the exception.
I was at Pitt when Tony Dorsett was there. Dude never went to classes, just hung out at the Student Union with his entourage. And THEY were paying HIM to be there.
So where is the outrage over this and the thousands of similar situations?
bump
Where, oh where, shall we find professors/teachers who are minimally QUALIFIED to teach?
Except for colleges like Hillsdale.
The teaching profession has taken more hits than our southern border. Those at the best Universities came from the worst universe of teachers.
The crime is the introduction of unions into the mix, which produced Teamsters instead of Teachers.
Hate to say it, but I saw this, and so did many others, long, loooonnng ago.
It can be fixed, but it will take time.
I think the “student athletes” are the least corrupt part of the whole system.
They are outstanding at what they do. People pay obscenely large amounts of money to support them, most of it freely given. They get what amounts to an apprenticeship for a job that will make some of them multimillionaires. And, if they are so inclined, they can also go to college.
Yes, their majors in football and basketball are obscured by lies. But so is everything else about the system, so why pick on them?
I can only speak to what I see on a daily basis.
From the sixties to date we have a not so slow trend to socialism that is being taught in our schools. From grade one to college the indoctrination is complete.
Maybe in the STEM areas of education there is a trace of specific learning but too few are taking that path.
and I know what I see here.
The Supreme Court ruled that the company's employment requirements did not pertain to applicants' ability to perform the job, and so were discriminating against black employees. The judgment famously wrote that "Congress has now provided that tests or criteria for employment or promotion may not provide equality of opportunity merely in the sense of the fabled offer of milk to the stork and the fox."[2]
Hm? .....Good point!
Schools are broken, Colleges, Universities, K-12 Public schools. No sure if there is political will to improve and restructure.
bump!
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