I have a report on the latest FOIA results, over at PJMedia. And yes, I know it’s dioxide, not monoxide. I’m trying to get it fixed.
[Update a few minutes later]
Trenberth’s heat remains missing.
Category Archives: Education
Free Internships
Are they moral?
Actually, what I think is immoral is some third party (e.g., the government) telling someone what they are allowed to earn in a freely negotiated contract (that is, the minimum wage is immoral, and empirically destructive of the lives of minorities, as Sowell has documented). It seems a little strange that you can pay someone nothing, but you can’t pay them four bucks an hour, even if they’re a teenager who needs some spending money and is willing to take that wage.
Speaking Truth To The Academic Mob
Naomi Schaefer Riley defends herself in the WSJ:
Scores of critics on the site complained that I had not read the dissertations in full before daring to write about them—an absurd standard for a 500-word blog post. A number of the dissertations aren’t even available. Which didn’t seem to stop the Chronicle reporter, though. And 6,500 academics signed a petition online demanding that I be fired.
At first, the Chronicle stood its ground, suggesting that my post was an “invitation to debate.” But that stance lasted for little more than a weekend. In a note that reads like a confession at a re-education camp, the Chronicle’s editor, Liz McMillen announced her decision on Monday to fire me: “We’ve heard you,” she tells my critics. “And we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley’s blog posting did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles.”
When I asked Ms. McMillen whether the poem by fellow blogger Ms. Barreca, for instance, lived up to such standards, she said they were “reviewing” the other content on the site. So far, however, that blogger has not been fired. Other ad hominem attacks against me seem to have passed editorial muster as well.
In a sane world, banks would put a high premium on a loan to get a degree in anything “studies.”
For those who haven’t been following this, Nick Gillespie has the whole story.
[Update a few minutes later]
More from Ron Radosh.
Law School Malpractice
More thoughts on why many lawyers don’t understand the Constitution, from Jen Rubin:
…law schools have given way to the notion that the Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is. In a sense this is true insofar as the principle of judicial review has been concretized and the other branches assent to the courts’ decisions. But the idea that the Constitution has objective meaning that can be ascertained, in part by studying works like “The Federalist,” is still resisted by the vast majority of elite law school faculty. Even weirder from faculty members’ vantage point is the idea that you can thereby assess whether the Supreme Court got a case “right” or “wrong.” That sort of assessment, using the Constitution, its text and its meaning as the touchstone for judicial interpretation is not in fashion, and hasn’t been for decades now, at elite law schools. Students study precedent and view newer decisions as either departures from or natural consequences of earlier cases. But assess that a decision, and maybe a great number before that, are just plain wrong because they misunderstood an aspect of the Framers’ intent or the structure of the Constitution? Perish the thought.
This is why so many “progressive” lawyers (including Barack Obama) have made such fools of themselves in front of a Supreme Court that actually does understand, and care about it, and why so many legal analysts in the media have been so shocked that the court actually takes constitutional arguments seriously.
A Crisis Of Contitutional Ignorance
No wonder “progressives” didn’t take arguments against Obamacare seriously.
The deplorable state of education in this country really is frightening.
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Risk-Based Student Loans
An idea whose time should come. But it will be fought tooth and nail by the academic-industrial complex, to protect their phony baloney jobs.
[Update a couple minutes later]
If you’re “investing” in college, think like an investor. Unfortunately, one of the many things that kids aren’t learning in public schools is how to do that.
[Update a few minutes later]
What comes after the bubble pops?
Academic Fraud
At UNC:
The 10-page report said the findings are a blow to the university’s academic integrity. The findings were so serious that the university consulted with the district attorney and the SBI about investigating forgery allegations, as some professors said their signatures were forged in documents certifying that they had taught some of the classes in question. Professors also said they had not authorized grade changes for students that the department submitted to the registrar’s office.
Law enforcement officials declined to investigate because they did not think the forgeries, if proven, rose to the level of criminal activity, according to the report.
“We are deeply disturbed by what we have learned in the course of our review,” said Jonathan Hartlyn and William L. Andrews, two senior faculty administrators who conducted the investigation. “Our review has exposed numerous violations of professional trust, affecting the relationship of faculty and students and the relationships among faculty colleagues in this department.”
They added, “These violations have undermined the educational experience of a number of students, have the potential to generate unfounded doubt and mistrust toward the department and its faculty, and could harm the academic reputation of the university.”
I think that at this point, just having a Department of Women’s Or Afro-American Studies is a de facto blow to any university’s academic integrity.
The Dying Art Of Writing
A depressing essay. Just one more sign of the abysmal state of our educational system at all levels. I don’t think that you should get a college degree if you can’t write coherently and grammatically. Or graduate high school, for that matter.
I always found that the best way to learn how to wrote was to read, and appreciate, others’ writing.
More thoughts from George Leef. As he points out, inability to write clearly is probably indicative of an inability to think clearly.
The Occupy Movement
Why it’s a potential disaster for the Democrats.
I hope so. They deserve it.
The Lost Boys
Some thoughts on Peter Pan and the Occupy movement.
[Update a few minutes later]
Occupy’s totalitarian temptation. It’s what Leftists do.