Posted on 05/20/2024 4:44:47 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
To be a college president, you have to go through the faculty ranks with one fear: you do not want to get on the wrong side of left-wing students and left-wing faculty. They're not just Democrats; they're hard left now and are predominantly taking over the general education curriculum. It's a diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology.
You see the Columbia president, someone promoted not on merit but on the idea that they are acceptable to the hard left and will continue this drift. The problem they're having is that the nation hadn't seen this. The nation just thought, "Well, it's Harvard. Harvard's always Harvard." Now, they've torn this scab off with these demonstrations, and people are realizing these presidents have no moral compass. They're canceling graduation, going to Zoom classes when you pay them $90,000 per student. They cannot acknowledge the epidemic of anti-Semitism. Every time they're asked to address the issue of people pushing Jews or telling them to go back to Poland, they say, "We deplore anti-Semitism and Islamophobia," even though there are almost no examples of Islamophobia. They have to say that because their constituency demands it.
This is kind of a revolutionary fervor we're seeing on these campuses. To quote Hemingway's great line in "The Sun Also Rises," it was gradual, like bankruptcy, and then it was sudden. People are astonished by what they see. At my university, we were looking for a new president, and everyone panicked because it's a little-known fact that in most of these universities, these multi-billion dollar endowments are long-term investments and locked up. They depend on $6-8 billion a year in fundraising. When you lose 10 or 20% of it, as some of these Ivy Leagues are experiencing, they panic because that's the operating budget.
At Stanford, we hired the Stanford Business Dean, Mr. LaVine. He's very good; he's not politically correct, and he's a professional. His father was president of Yale for 20 years, but he happens to be a white male. Nobody thought that would be possible, but these universities are now facing the reality that their alumni do not want to subsidize this. They may be looking at a Republican president, Senate, and House that have already said they’re going to look at the tax-free endowment income, the $1.7 trillion federal subsidized loans for students, and the massive multi-million dollar federal grants to these universities.
So, I think the universities are now in full panic.
When I watched the testimony of our four-star generals, I thought, "Wow, they're committing institutional suicide." They're making unfounded charges and implementing new protocols directly aimed at supposedly biased young 18 to 20-year-olds who have never had much opportunity in this country. They were the losers of globalization in the Midwest and the South, rural people. Yet, we know from their statistics and battlefield efficacy that these are the very people our enemies fear. These are the people we send into the streets of Baghdad and Kabul, and they are the world's best soldiers. Tampering with that makes no sense.
On the other end of the spectrum, these campuses were the world's most preeminent. Roughly one-third of all students are foreign students. We have a million foreign students coming here to study at these universities. But if you look at what they've done, they've dropped the SAT entrance requirement and do not grade high school GPAs comparatively. If I get straight As at a rural 500-person high school and someone in Palo Alto with 3,000 people gets an A, it's the same. This methodology is not to use merit to let in students, mostly from minority backgrounds or different gender and sexual identities.
The consequences are now visible. In the fourth year of these reparatory admissions, Yale is giving 80% As, Stanford about 65%. They’ve had to stop the traditional workload, soften courses, and introduce new ones. Thousands of diversity, equity, and inclusion people are auditing the faculty to ensure compliance. These universities don't want to die on the altar of standards. We have a million foreign students, mostly from illiberal nations—about 150,000 to 200,000 from Middle Eastern Muslim nations, 350,000 from China, and another 200,000 from autocracies in Latin America and Asia. We don't audit them, but universities recruit these students because they pay full tuition with no discount or scholarships.
One consequence of these campus demonstrations is that many students want to renegotiate their university experience. They find it too difficult or too traditional, and they didn't sign up for that. They can't do the work, want to be excused from finals, and want their senior projects dropped.
Employers have noticed this trend. They don't want to hire these students because they see them on TV every night, protesting and causing trouble. These students are seen as coddled, entitled, and lacking in skills. Employers prefer graduates from schools like Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, or the University of Tennessee over Columbia or Yale graduates. These universities' degrees no longer signify the same level of excellence.
The Ivy League and American higher education elites are going the way of Disney, Bud Light, Target, and CNN. They don't know it, but it's happening as we speak.
I thought ChatGPT did a very good job.
Thanks for posting.
I can’t wrap my head around this sort of failed leadership.
These universities have billions in their endowments. Students across the country dream of going to an Ivy League School. Families are willing to shoulder enormous debts in order to pay $90,000 a year in tuition.
And the college presidents are afraid? They fear the students that have been accepted by the school and who have been attending class in hopes of getting a prestigious degree?
How about this — If you demonstrate, we kick you out. You fail all current classes. You get no degree. No money will be refunded. We can find more students to take your place.
Put the fear on the students.
I had to do that a couple of days ago. ChatGPT did a pretty good job on the transcript.
That's not what the article says. The article says that they fear the people with actual brains who are waking up to the fact that these colleges are little more than a con game.
Whan you have state funding of just about anything the state becomes the client. So it is quite natural this organization becomes chuck full of statists . Hard core Leftists.
Seperation of School and State is an idea whose time has come.
Well, yes. But the schools are, in part, a con game because they insist on kow-towing to students who demand anti-education policies. Hate speech rules, DEI, pro-Hamas, etc. The students clamor for that crap, the univerities submit, and the thing becomes a worthless effort — a con game. It doesn’t have to be a joke. But it is.
People who think young people are cool are the issue. Young people are idiots.
“I can’t wrap my head around this sort of failed leadership.”
It’s not a failure. This was quite intentional. Lower the standards, quit teaching kids how to think but rather what to think, and you turn “higher education” into a propaganda center turning out hundreds of thousands of angry embittered leftist drones.
That’s always been the goal. It’s textbook Mao. “Long march through the institutions”. And they’ve succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
L
Then the Marxists opened the floodgates to the Islamists given that, for some strange reason, they are brothers-in-arms.
Commies at work.. Joe McCarthy was righter than he could ever possible imagine..
How about this — If you demonstrate, we kick you out. You fail all current classes. You get no degree.
Long ago when I went to college, 67 grad, my school had a policy:
Fall below a 2 GPA semester, probation. Two semesters in a row, gone. Any F regardless of GPA, probation also.
Strict attendance standards, Up to six absences per course per semester.
Jacket and tie required (until 1965 when that was relaxed as admitted women then).
ROTC required for two semesters.
School had a very small endowment, but tuition was minimal...18 per credit hour in 63 and 33 in 67. Costs low since Profs taught the courses and most had a side hustle.
What is he saying here?
“If I get straight As at a rural 500-person high school and someone in Palo Alto with 3,000 people gets an A, it’s the same.”
“there are almost no examples of Islamophobia”
There would be many if college students had to study the Koran and Islamic history.
“November 17, 1964
“Columbia’s latest hike means that the school’s tuition has gone up nearly 73 per cent since 1959. Tuition was $1450 in 1960-61 and $1575 in 1962-63; it is $1700 this year.
“The tuition in Columbia’s graduate schools will also go up next fall. In the school of journalism, the jump is from $1650 to $1850; in the school of medicine, it is from $1700 to $1900; and in the school of law, from $1500 to $1700.”
“Current tuition rates at the other Ivy League colleges are: Brown, $1600; Cornell $1700; Pennsylvania, $1750; Princeton, $1770; and Yale and Dartmouth, $1800.”
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1964/11/17/columbia-ups-tuition-rate-another-200/
Oohh, a second VDH ping in the same day! This time from a YT video.
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson
You don’t have to sit through most ads. After the ad runs for a short time, click on “skip”. It will be down on the right.
try running it through Perplexity AI (my favorite AI search)
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/please-format-To-8JChGTXxQF2laSWlKsquhg
Use Brave Browser on yr phone. All adverts will be cut out including on youtube. I don’t use my phone much on the internet. It seems that ad blocking add-ons do not exist for android??? My simple solution is to use Brave browser.
For Windows computer laptop etc. Use the browser you like and install U-Block origin. https://ublockorigin.com/
Very simple to block out all advertisements.
My wife and I are blessed. Our son was accepted into an Ivy. He chose Georgia Tech.
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