…become the reactionary oppressors.
I don’t think that the popping of the academic bubble will bode well for many of them.
Category Archives: Education
Marshall McLuhan
An essay on his incomprehensible nonsense. I still enjoy that scene from Annie Hall, though.
The Academic Bubble
Is it about to burst? Given the degree to which it’s been driven by government money, and the coming fiscal meltdown, I’d say so.
…consumers seem to be reading the cues in the marketplace.
An increasing number of students are spending their first two years after high school in low-cost community colleges and then transferring to four-year schools.
A recent Wall Street Journal story reported that out-of-staters are flocking to low-tuition North Dakota State in frigid Fargo.
I went to community college my first two years before transferring to Ann Arbor, where I picked up all the basics for engineering — calculus, physics, chemistry, etc. I’m convinced that I got both a cheaper and better education there than those who were freshman and sophomores at Michigan, based on their descriptions of their classes (giant lecture halls taught by grad students for whom English was a second language). But I missed out on a couple years of the “college experience.”
[Update early evening]
The bubble will pop this decade, and here’s one reason why.
[Bumped]
Takes One To Know One
Apparently, Larry Summers did call the Winklevoss twins @n@l orifices, and is unapologetic about it.
The Hate
…that dare not speak its name:
Since Hitler’s death, the world has defined anti-Semitism down. Nurturing ancient fantasies of secret Jewish cabals that control the media and play politicians like puppets on a string, and making political judgments based on these fantasies isn’t sort of or almost anti-Semitic. To believe that Jews control public discourse and the media and bend the gentile masses to their sinister agenda is the essence of old fashioned anti-Semite. In some countries these beliefs are so common that they are no longer recognized as an aggressive and communicable mental disease. These ideas have become so widely accepted that they are seldom questioned or examined; when that happens, a whole society is poisoned and distorted.
The irony, of course, is not that it has become so prevalent on the left, but that those same leftists continue to attempt to rewrite history and claim that Hitler was of the “right.”
Revolutionizing Education
…with the Khan Academy.
On The Chopping Block
(My CEI colleague) Iain Murray says that part of a budget deal should be to eliminate the Department of Commerce.
It’s not actually the first one I’d go after (I’d get rid of e.g., Education, Labor and Energy first), but I understand the potential appeal. But it does serve many necessary functions that would have to be redistributed elsewhere. For instance, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wouldn’t find a comfortable home in the State Department, nor would NOAA or the weather service. Granted, the latter is kind of a mess right now, in terms of not getting needed new satellites up (particularly now that we’re headed into the heart of hurricane season), though it’s not clear whether that’s NOAA’s fault, or NASA’s, which actually manages the development of the satellites. Also, giving over the commercial export list to the State Department could make ITAR even more of a disaster than it already is. It would also raise the issue of finding a new home for the Coast Guard (and the Space Guard, if we ever get one).
There is a reason that Commerce has been around a lot longer than the three agencies I mention above as better targets — if it didn’t exist, we’d probably have to invent it in some form. And unlike education, energy, or labor, we actually do have a Commerce Clause in the Constitution (flawed and overstretched though its interpretation has become).
The Enduring Dangerous Legacy
They’re not liberals.
The Cargo Cult
…of credentials.
[Update a few minutes later]
More thoughts from (uncredentialed) Mark Steyn:
The justification for this absurd prolongation of adolescence is that it opens up opportunities for the disadvantaged. But credential-fetishization has the opposite effect. Remember Ronald Reagan, alumnus of Eureka College, Illinois? Since then, for the first time in its history, America has lived under continuous rule by Ivy League – Yale (Bush I), Yale Law (Clinton), Harvard Business (Bush II), Harvard Law (Obama). In 2009, over a quarter of Obama’s political appointees had ties to Harvard; over 90 per cent had “advanced degrees”. How’s that working out for you? In my soon to be imminently forthcomingly imminent book, I point out that once upon a time America was the land where guys without degrees (Truman) or only 18 months of formal education (Lincoln) or no schooling at all (Zachary Taylor) could become president. Credentialization is shrinking what was America’s advantage – a far greater social mobility than Europe. We’re decaying into a society where 40 per cent of the population do minimal-skill service jobs and the rest run up a trillion dollars of debt in order to avoid that fate, and ne’er the twain shall meet, except for perfunctory social pleasantries in the drive-thru lane.
We’re looking at education upside down: We should be telescoping it, not extending it.
But think of all the academic bureaucrats! Won’t someone think of the academic bureaucrats?
What You Can Do For Liberty
Three things, from Instapundit.
In light of depressing things like this, I’d also suggest a reading of the Declaration at your gathering tomorrow. The leftists who have taken over the educational system seem to have won.
Of course, to be fair, like the “Jaywalking” segments, we don’t necessarily see all the ones who had the answer right. It’s still dismaying that he could find so many so clueless. I doubt if that would have been the case, say, a couple years after the Civil War.
[Update a while later]
Young people are failing civics, and it’s a crisis for the nation:
For the past ten years, our research team at Stanford has interviewed broad cross-sections of American youth about what U. S. citizenship means to them. Here is one high school student’s reply, not atypical: “We just had (American citizenship) the other day in history. I forget what it was.” Another student told us that “being American is not really special….I don’t find being an American citizen very important.” Another replied, “I don’t want to belong to any country. It just feels like you are obligated to this country. I don’t like the whole thing of citizen…I don’t like that whole thing. It’s like, citizen, no citizen; it doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like to be a good citizen—I don’t know, I don’t want to be a citizen…it’s stupid to me.”
This seems to be a theme this weekend.
As I noted, a success for the left.