Posted on 11/09/2019 4:59:36 AM PST by karpov
American higher education seems to be in a permanent state of crisis. Almost monthly, a federal court has occasion to reprimand some college or university for improperly chilling speech, even as some students continue to complain that campuses are too friendly to the wrong kind of speakers. Many institutions have cut back on faculty hiring, even as the cost of tuition grows. Two basic, and mutually reinforcing, phenomena are behind the chaos on campus.
First, colleges and universities have subordinated their historic mission of free inquiry to a new pursuit of social justice. Consider the remarkable evolution of Yale’s mission statement. For decades the university said its purpose was “to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge.” The language was banal enough, but nevertheless on the money. In 2016, however, Yale’s president announced a new mission statement, which no longer mentions knowledge. Instead, Yale is now officially “committed to improving the world” and educating “aspiring leaders”—not only through research, but also through “practice.”
Second, American colleges and universities have been overwhelmed by a dangerous alliance of academic bureaucrats and student activists committed to imposing the latest social-justice diktats. This alliance has displaced the traditional governors of the university—the faculty. Indeed, nonfaculty administrators and activists are driving some of the most dangerous developments in university life, including the erosion of the due-process rights of faculty and students, efforts to regulate the “permissible limits” of classroom discussion, and the condemnation of unwelcome ideas as “hate speech.”
How did the university lose its way? How did this new alliance of activists and administrators supplant the faculty?
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Higher education is the enemy! Raid the endowments of all higher ed colleges and use it to pay off student loans. This is a big liberal rat scam machine. They are in place to subjugate the foundations of this country by feeding our young lies and creating social activists to do their bidding
Just putt the Community Colleges on the trimester system. Let the students get certified in 12-18 months in any field. Then eliminate ALL support for higher education.
They took power because they were willing to use intimidation, including violence, in order to get their way.
A hundred years ago, they could not have done so. The prestige of the university rested on their ability to produce graduates who were literate and grounded in Western Culture, and thus eligible to find prestigious places in society.
One thing which Trump could do, would be to have the government compile and publish actual statistics on the various colleges.
The feds have the data (from the federal student loan program, and from the IRS) from which they could compile a breakdown, by college and major, of how well graduates are earning five years after leaving college, as well as the percentage of students who leave without graduating. Publish that. Let parents really, objectively see which colleges are the better investment.
It looks to me like the Soviet plan, starting in the 1950s, to infiltrate and indoctrinate influential sectors of American society--education, media, and entertainment--is bearing fruit.
THIS is why we need to FIRE MOST admin staff.
Some of that information is already accessible at neces.ed.gov, the Integrated Postsecondary education data system (IPEDS). States are also moving to consumer sites for the public Universities.
II agree with the author that faculty should have more say in admissions, I checked Yale’s admission page and there are no test score cutoffs, no courses or number of courses taken in high school (ie 3 years of math including Geometry, History course with instruction on the US Consitution) or any other objective measure that a student has mastered enough high school-level material to study there.
Instead there are two very qualitative, subjective questions any well paid essay writer can work with.
Faculty should be able to put in place some qualifying measures. They need to continually remind administrators and especially lower level staff that their knowledge, expertise, and ability to evaluate are the product.
Stop the flow of federally insured loan dollars and the zombie leftist beast will starve.
The universities will have to slash administrative positions just to make ends meet.
If you are a piece of scum as a person, don't do any teaching, but bring in money to the university (even if it is by doing ‘shady’ research), you will be embraced by the administrative hierarchy - including the university president. Further, it's not the faculty OR the students OR the broader lower level administrators who define what happens at universities. It's the board, president and deans, and the people running the endowments who have the most power.
If you want to be on the board of an ‘elite’ university you will have to donate a BIG chunk of money to be considered, and/or be the CEO at a large corporation, or be famous for some other reason. Fact.
Whereas I agree that the politically correct social justice warrior crowd can have deleterious effects at a university, I would also ask Cabranes whether he thought the students of MIT were correct when they became upset about a faculty member there who was funded by money from Jeffrey Epstein. I personally think they were spot on in their objections - particularly since MIT seemed to have tried to hide the source of the money, obviously so they could keep it.
Follow the money. How does the Academic-Industrial-Complex fund itself?
Well, plenty of the “activists” are token students who should never have been admitted; plenty can’t read or write, but they let them in to “look like America” - and bank the gubmint money that comes with them.
Truth BUMP!
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