I’m afraid I only sound condescending when I’m peeved, and one of my pet peeves on FR is folks whose conservatism appears from their writings here to consist of a love for the free market that then makes them think everything should be run like a business.
Your quoting Robespierre just made it worse.
To me conservatism involves conserving not just the American Founding, but all of the goods of Christian civilization (and those inherited from Greek and Roman pagan civilization before that) on which the American Founding rested. And the university, as it grew organically from the middle ages onward, is one of those goods. Academic freedom was the original freedom of speech, when none existed elsewhere in Europe or indeed the world, and tenure is its guardian. Attacking it, whether with leftist speech codes or by remodeling the university as a business, seems to me to be an attack on all freedom, and the sort of unconservative behavior that amounts to moving the boundary markers of our ancestors.
I quoted Robespierre?
You know everything I feel about education and free markets from this thread?
Goodness. I guess you’ve called up the guillotine for me without any proof.
TRD I think the point you are missing is running a University as a business means efficiency and turning out a product with an education that creates both breadth and meaning. Liberal Arts is a catch all for I learned nothing of any real marketable value to the marketplace but I expect companies to hire me because I went to a school for 4 years.
Sure, if they want to take Art History or other in high demand majors let them, but then don’t whine if you cannot make a living with it.
In China approximately 10% of ALL University graduates have the requisite skills required by multi-national corporations who do business in their country. This also explains why they flood to US schools to at least have a chance at getting the skills needed to meet the market. Why spend 100K and get a degree and end up driving a txi because you cannot do anything?
BTW China is planning to spend billions of dollars to reform this and make their workforce more marketable in their workforce, education is my passion but it has become a repository for hoary old theoreticians ho have never had a job in their lives or mills to indoctrinate Liberal entitlement thinking into young minds.
JMHO of course