“I don’t understand it. Help me understand is all I’m trying to say.”
All right. It’s either a figment of your imagination, or a fabrication cooked up for the purpose of slurring someone for disagreeing with you.
“You claim to speak for all people who worked and got their degrees, when you don’t.”
So, outright lies are not beneath you. I made no such claim nor implication.
“I am trying to understand why you feel that way.”
No, you’re just slinging mud. I’ve explained my opinion at some length. You’d understand my position if you had any interest in doing so.
“She had good grades.”
If she had good grades and high scores on the entrance exams, universities would have been trampling each other to get to her first. Why weren’t they?
“and earned a scholarship to Harvard.”
She didn’t earn a scholarship with grades. She earned it by (a) being the perfect liberal cliché, and (b) writing an essay. By the way, what was her high school GPA?
“As this woman did.”
No, she didn’t. She got admitted to and graduated from Harvard through the good graces and financial support of the NY Slimes.
“Clearly this woman succeeded, so she was cut out for Harvard.”
Are you under the impression that Harvard is academically rigorous?
“I see nothing to indicate affirmative action is the reason why she was given a slot.”
Not statutory, nor regulatory. She got her scholarship through the voluntary affirmative action of liberal putzes at the Slimes. If she’d been a man, they wouldn’t have given her the time of day.
“Like yourself, I paid my way through. Wasn’t easy had to quit and go back and finish. Is there going to be an article writing about me and how cool I am? No, and I’m happy that there won’t be. I’m just an ordinary college graduate, and quite happy with that tyvm.”
And you don’t see the wrong-headedness in lionizing this person, who got a free ride through Harvard? They *ought* to be writing an article about you, and men like you. They ought to be writing an article about the fact that men are increasingly crowded out of universities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html
http://www.thecampusslate.com/the-new-math-on-campus-1.1277237#4
Good night.
“Here’s a clue: you’re not going to impress people who got through college without a scholarship by holding up someone who cruised through without having to sweat food and shelter.”
This is the statement I’m referring to. You claimed to speak for all of us.
I am not trying to slander you. Arguing that she is a case of affirmative action, etc, I really don’t think flies. I understand your suspicion of the Times and Harvard, but the fact is she finished, got her degree. So she’s not an affirmative action case, which crashes and burns at the higher levels. This is what stood out to me.
As for myself, yeah, I’ve written articles about that before. I’ve been very critical of higher education. I think there are many ways to fix it to make it better, but those fixes are not going to be implemented because the system has no stake in improving them.
There’s no reason why it should have taken me 4 years of school to get the degree, and I honestly believed the courses that I took in high school to be of higher rigor. That combined with the expense made it clear to me that it was a waste of time.
1. Every course can be challenged. You’ve read up on Chaucer beforehand? Great. Take my exam, and score 80 percent and be on your way. Want your entire university experience to be 40 examinations on a daily basis over two months? Good luck. Finish those, get your degree and move on.
2. Accelerated schedules. Say you don’t pass the challenge threshold. Now you have to take the courses. Wouldn’t you learn better if you stuck with one thing at a time and then moved on? 3 course hours a week for 13 weeks? Why don’t we spend 40 hours and learn the material in a week? Rinse and repeat. On this model of 3 credits a week, you’d finish up in roughly a year. 40 credits a semester.
3. Apprenticeships. You’re going to teach? Get a placement with a high school. Work with them for 2 years. After you finish the apprenticeship, you go on to being a teacher. This would happen after the qualification, which if it only takes a year makes much more sense.
4. 20 percent of each graduating class makes the cut for the entry exams. Entry based on all prospective students writing an entry examination invigilated at the school in September of the year you wish to enter. Make the threshold, get in.
5. Get rid of the Women’s study department. All courses should be content-driven not the ‘cause of the day’. Urban/Educational history is not content driven. History of the British Empire is content driven.