The mindless minions of ignorant academicians are marching on campuses across the land.

Reflective of the attitude prevalent on some college campuses, one sophomore told the paper, "The U.S. is actually being the 'terrorist' by attacking." Given those sentiments, the honesty of one student about their ignorance of current affairs was delightfully refreshing.

"Apparently there is not enough on MTV about this or else I would know more," one sophomore told the Stanford Daily. Thankfully, the paper did not poll students about their impressions of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who left her job as Stanford University provost to join George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2000.

Parents, doesn't it make you happy to see where your thousands in tuition and expenses are going?

How practical would it be to set up a cottage college industry? Someone with a master's degree in economics, for instance, could attract a number of students who receive instruction in the professor's home, over the Internet, at the steak house on Fridays, etc. What kinds of costs does the entrepreneur bear? Besides getting the degree, there's books to teach from and an Internet-capable computer with economics-related software packages. In other words, cheaper than operating a corner taco stand.

If the home schoolers can complete with the government K-12 leviathan, home colleges can compete with the ivy-covered professors in the ivy-covered halls of elitist academia.

The primary problem is becoming an accredited (sp?) program. The degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on if one of the controlling organizations (someone else around here probably knows much more about this than me) doesn't approve it. A good idea to begin with, but in practice it's total political BS - watch how it works when a large school adds a new degree (a new major, or advanced degree in an existing major).

An idea could be borrowed from professional associations such as the American Production and Inventory Control Society. To earn APICS certification, one takes a battery of tests. Why not adopt the same for home- and mom-and-pop colleges?

Think of it as a GED for higher education. There could be one or (preferably) several associations that grade the tests, even doctoral theses, and hand out the degrees. This way, you don't have to certify college-level instruction - you just certify the graders.

Now if we could set up lawyer certification to be handled by competing associations...

Probably too far below the fold for anyone to see this... ;)

The problem isn't starting an association; it's getting companies (or other schools IF you care about graduate/doctorate education and you don't provide it yourself) to assign it's certifications any value. It's a nontrivial problem usually involving a) many years, mucho moolah, and lots of asskissing, or b) started by a confederation of interested companies, which is like herding cats (completely unrelated note - the EDS cat-herders Superbowl commercial was the best commercial ever, but not the best marketing - that's the bud-weis-er frogs, you have little kids to disc jockeys REPEATING YOUR BRANDNAME FOR YOU ALL THE TIME).

Matthew Picioccio said that "The primary problem is becoming an accredited (sp?) program."

This can't possibly be true or else I wouldn't be getting all that spam about degrees from prestigious unaccredited universities!

On the off chance that my sarcasm meter isn't functioning properly... ;)

Taken out of context - the main problem with making the degree worth anything is accreditation (sp?). Hence the need for those programs to spam to make $$$.

I just realized one gaping hole in my brainstorm - one professor would find it very difficult to teach all the subjects required for a college degree. (How could I forget Adam Smith's gospel of division of labor?)

The university system must somehow be forced into competing in a free market. I don't see how this can be done without new competition of some sort. The current batch of schoold is largely entrenched in utopian social engineering and (at least at the University of Texas at Arlington school of business) a failure to balance academics with vocational skills (such as proficiency with specific business software packages).

We could always do it the Microsoft antitrust way, by having the Federal Trade Commission force half of the universities to fire their leftist profs and hire nonleftist ones.