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You neglected the "Avoiding the Draft" theory. I've met an inordinate number of professors who entered college in the 1960's primarily to keep their 2S deferment, stayed on for grad school again just to keep their 2S, and eventually wound up with a PhD and totally unfit to work anywhere else except in academia.

People with ambition, people who are motivated by a desire to make money and achieve material success -- in other words, conservatives -- by and large exhibit a pronounced desire to get out of college so they can start making some serious bucks. Naturally, then, what remains in your pool of potential teachers is the dregs.

>> You neglected the "Avoiding the Draft" theory. I've met an inordinate number of professors who entered college in the 1960's primarily to keep their 2S deferment, stayed on for grad school again just to keep their 2S, and eventually wound up with a PhD and totally unfit to work anywhere else except in academia.

Agree. There were enormous numbers of PhDs in less mathmatically-challenged fields, such as sociology and social work, who had no place to go but to pump gas (which many did) until the government, universities, and public schools came through for them by creating positions for a literal army of social workers.

Part of the problem for a late 20th century student, or 21st century student I suppose, is that while the physical trappings of a classical education remain - all those ivy covered towers - the core of many schools was gutted long ago. They don't bother to explain this at the inbrief, though. It will soon become apparent to the student once classes start that any semblence to the days of yore are long gone. All hail "diversity" and a hard-leftist ideology that pervades nearly everything, even a geology text.

How is it, do you suppose that a Catholic university or myriad of other schools founded upon Christianity or other grounded values could hire, say, atheist communists as faculty? Does this even sound like a good idea? Yet this kind of thing was done in the 50's and 60's in what seemed then to be a magnanimous gesture of open-ness and transparancy. Ooops.