Posted on 08/02/2006 2:06:53 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
$40,000 numbskulls
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Posted: August 2, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006
Colleges and universities will start their fall semester soon. You might be interested in what parents' and taxpayers' money is going for at far too many "institutions of higher learning."
At Occidental College in Los Angeles, a mandatory course for some freshmen is "The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie." It's a course where professor Elizabeth J. Chin explores ways in "which scientific racism has been put to use in the making of Barbie [and] to an interpretation of the film 'The Matrix' as a Marxist critique of capitalism." Johns Hopkins University students can enroll in a course called "Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll in Ancient Egypt." Part of the course includes slide shows of women in ancient Egypt "vomiting on each other," "having intercourse" and "fixing their hair."
Harvard University students can take "Marxist Concepts of Racism," which examines "the role of capitalist development and expansion in creating racial inequality." You can bet there's no mention of the genocide in Africa and former communist regimes like Yugoslavia. Young America's Foundation and Accuracy in Academia publish lists of courses like these, at many other colleges, that are nothing less than student indoctrination through academic dishonesty.
Parents are paying an average tuition of $21,000, and at some colleges over $40,000, to have their children exposed to anti-Americanism and academic nonsense. According to a 2000 American Council of Trustees and Alumni study, "Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century," not one of the top 50 colleges and universities today requires American history of its graduates.
A survey conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut gave 81 percent of the seniors a D or F in their knowledge of American history. The students could not identify Valley Forge, or words from the Gettysburg Address, or even the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution. A survey released by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that American adults could more readily identify Simpson cartoon characters than name freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment.
The academic dishonesty doesn't end with phony courses and lack of a solid core curriculum; there's grossly fraudulent grading, euphemistically called grade inflation. For example, Harvard's Educational Policy Committee found that some professors award As for average work. A Boston Globe study found that 91 percent of Harvard seniors graduated with honors, that means all As and a few Bs.
I doubt whether these "honor" students could pass a 1950 high-school graduation examination. According to the Department of Education's 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy, only 31 percent of college graduates were proficient in prose, only 25 percent proficient in reading documents and 31 percent proficient in math.
Who's to blame for the increasingly sad state of affairs at America's colleges and universities? It's tempting to blame professors and campus administrators, and yes, they share a bit of the blame for shirking their academic duty. But the bulk of the blame rests with trustees, who bear the ultimate responsibility for what goes on at the college.
Unfortunately, trustees know little detail about what goes on at their institutions. Most of them have their time taken up by their non-college obligations. As such, they are simply yes-men who, in making decisions, must rely on information, often incomplete or biased, given to them by the president and the provost.
A good remedy would be for boards of trustees to hire a campus ombudsman and staff that's accountable only to the trustees. During my brief tenure as a trustee of a major East Coast university, I made this suggestion only to be asked by the president whether I trusted him. My response was yes I trusted him, but I wanted verification
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Dr. Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
Actually, there are a lot of degrees out there that would DQ you, were I in hiring manager mode. Ethnic Studies, Womyn's Studies, possibly English in today's world (the moonbats are pretty bad in the English departments), etc.
As a newspaper editor-in-chief, my best editor was a physics major/math minor (who has become an editor-in-chief herself). Better grammar skills than most journalism majors, plus good analytical skills to see what was really really happening in a story.
But I have also known excellent English majors and journalism majors. I hate disqualification of candidates based on arbitrary rules.
'zactly.
A college that does not indoctrinate, has no tolerance for nonsense, maintains standards, does not use tenure, is run for the students not as a playground for the professors - could easily charge just half what the lowest price places charge today and give anyone serious about their life a higher quality education.
This can't be that hard to start. Nor to "chain". It would be run for profit and would get a $10 billion market cap in no time.
DQ is probably too harsh, on the English major (but not on the others mentioned). More like "a strike until careful interviewing shows it should be removed".
The old saw goes that "Doctors bury their mistakes, engineers build monuments to them."
With your math stopping at Linear Algebra???! You're getting off far easier than I did.
I doubt whether these "honor" students could pass a 1950 high-school graduation examination.
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The first time I heard something like this I thought that it could not possibly be true but now I am beginning to see that it is true for far too many college graduates. I entered the Navy in 1962 and went through boot camp with a group of high school graduates who made most of the young people I meet now seem totally ignorant of anything to do with government, history, literature or almost anything else other then the fad of the moment. Try asking them just to name the three branches of government and see how many can do so, I learned that at such an early age that I cannot tell you when I didn't know it. It is no wonder that people keep falling for socialist schemes, they have no idea how this country came into being or what it was originally intended to be.
Well, I don't think it's that easy to avoid these days. The stuff is so pervasive, the subconcious indoctrination seeps in, even while we mock the overt stuff as being over the top. I'm concerned more with the steady creep of this stuff than the outrageous stuff...many decent kids can laugh off the latter without realizing their mindsets are slowly changing, even as they follow their studies diligently.
Living in a culture where deviancy is normalized can be very influential.
Part of the problem is that a bachelor's degree has become mandatory for all sorts of jobs that really shouldn't require it. You can understand why companies do this; a degree at least shows the individual is able to function in an absurd hierarchical organization for several years without going howling insane, but it's a lousy reason to start young people out with tens of thousands in debt.
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Quick, run for the swamps, you are liable to be imprisoned for telling that much truth at one swipe.
I had a heck of a time hiring an editorial assistant. The candidates with degrees from big-name universities could not pass our easy spelling and grammar test.
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While someone such as I, who might have been able to pass it, would never be given a chance to take it due to my lack of a degree, not to mention age.
I find that education, it don't matter where you go to school, Italy, America, Brazil, all are the same -- it's all this memorization and it don't matter how long you can remember anything just so you can parrot it back for the tests.
I got this idea for a school I would like to start, something called the Five Minute University. The idea is that in five minutes you learn what the average college graduate remembers five years after he or she is out of school.
It would cost like twenty dollars. That might seem like a lot of money, twenty dollars just for five minutes, but that's for like tuition, cap and gown rental, graduation picture, snacks, everything. Everything included.
You know, like in college you have to take a foreign language. Well, at the Five Minute University you can have your choice, any language you want you can take it. Say if you want to take Spanish, what I teach you is "¿Como está usted?" that means, "how are you", and the answer is "muy bien," means "very well." And believe me, if you took two years of college Spanish, five years after you are out of school "¿Como está usted?" and "muy bien" about all you're gonna remember.
So in my school that's all you learn. You see, you don't have to waste your time with conjugations and vocabulary, all that junk. You'll just forget it anyway, what's the difference.
Economics? "Supply and Demand." That's it. Business is, "you buy something, and you sell it for more." Theology, I'm gonna have a theology department, you know, since I'm a priest, and what you have to learn in theology is the answer to the question, "Where is God?", and the answer is, "God is everywhere." Why? "Because he likes you." That's kind of a combination of the Disney and Roman Catholic philosophy. It's just perfect for the late 70s or early 80s you know, just perfect.
Well, after the courses are all over, then it's time for a little Easter vacation. No time to go to Fort Lauderdale, only lasts for like twenty seconds. But what I'll do for you, I like to turn on the sun lamp you know, give you a little glass of orange juice, that's for the snack part, orange juice, and then after vacation it's time for the final exams. I say to you, "¿Como está usted?" you say "muy bien," "Where is God?" "God is everywhere," Economics, "supply and demand," then you put on a cap and a gown, I get out my Polaroid camera, you know, make a little snap flash picture for you, I give you the picture, you give me twenty dollars, I give you a diploma, and you're a college graduate, ready to go.
I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure, right next door to the five minute university, I might open up a little law school. You got another minute?
That's just the GECs :)
I thought they already had colleges like that... you send in your application fee they send you your diploma...
My advice... Choose you school carefully. If you have a chance to go up and visit the campus before attending, do it... and talk with the professors in the field you wish study. If they seem like they are just marking time and have no passion about the field, you really won't learn anything from them.
I don't know how old you are, but I would certainly have interviewed and tested anyone who might have written a cogent cover letter. I knew that resumes were prepared by professionals. I ended up hiring a black fellow in his early 50s because he aced the tests, had a good background in a similar field, and was as bright and personable as they come. His degree from a good university was not the determining factor.
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