higher education – Moe Lane

Quote of the Day, Winter Is Coming To The Academies edition.

That’s more or less the final sentence to this essay on the bleak future ahead for various university power structures:

The [John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy’s] work and influence can be seen as part of a trend: red states are beginning to lean forward on their skis in dealing with universities—institutions that have historically been bastions of Democratic and left-wing ideas. With higher ed costs rising inexorably, many conservative state representatives are likely wondering just why the state is offering tenured professorships in Transgressive Gender Studies with lots of time for ‘research’, and they are becoming more aggressive in trying to shake-up the higher ed system.

Continue reading Quote of the Day, Winter Is Coming To The Academies edition.

QotD, It’s The End Of The School As We Know It… edition.

….AND I FEEL FINE.

(H/T: Instapundit) Two quotes, actually, with commentary after the second. First:

The most important part of the college bubble story—the one we will soon be hearing much more about—concerns the impending financial collapse of numerous private colleges and universities and the likely shrinkage of many public ones. And when that bubble bursts, it will end a system of higher education that, for all of its history, has been steeped in a culture of exclusivity.

…OK. Works for me.

Here’s the second quote, same source:

Through its “Open Yale” initiative, Yale has been recording its lecture courses for several years now, making them available to the public free of charge. Anyone with an internet connection can go online and watch some of the same lectures I attended as a Yale undergrad. But that person won’t get the social life, the long chats in the dinning hall, the feeling of collegiality, the trips around Long Island sound with the sailing team, the concerts, the iron-sharpens-iron debates around the seminar table, the rare book library, or the famous guest lecturers (although some of those events are streamed online, too).

…on the other hand, that person also won’t get the side-effects from four or more years constant, corrosive personal exposure to a variety of substitute authority figures who generally feel that the United States of America would be just perfect if they could only do to it what Paul Verhoeven did to Starship Troopers (safe link). So I’m going to score that one as a wash.

Moe Lane

#rsrh QotD, This Bed I Made Is Sure Uncomfortable edition.

(Via Instapundit) An anonymous* ‘diversity hire’ at a liberal arts school feels… defined by the color of his/her skin, not the content of his/her character; to the point where he/she feels like there’s an invisible number above his/her head denoting said hire’s exact… diversity quota, I suppose. And the diversity hire feels that everybody can see that number hovering over the hire’s name, and reacts accordingly. And the diversity hire wonders:

We should be more than our skin color, our sexual orientation, or our country of origin. We should be more than a checked category, a percentage, or an initiative. Unfortunately, we’re not. I know that there are many more like me. And many of us are wondering how long that invisible number is going to follow us around.

At this rate, anonymous complainer? Forever.

:pause:

Was there anything else?

Moe Lane

PS: Stop whining, neighbor. You got a job, don’t you?

*You may safely assume that the ‘anonymous’ part is the exact moment where my sympathy became, as they say, muted.

#rsrh “The Ax is Laid To The Foot Of The Tree.”

Thus is titled Walter Russell Mead’s probably-not-meant-to-be-cheerful analysis of how our current higher education system is merrily spinning its way towards a thoroughgoing smash-up at the base of the cliff – got to love those mixed metaphors, huh? Anyway, the basic ‘problem’ is that we’re producing mediocre ‘scholarship’ that nobody reads, let alone actually uses; and that increasing numbers of people are going to be reluctant to actually pay for. I respond to this scenario with all the righteous fury of a liberal arts major (BA, English Literature, with a minor in History): chop. CHOP.

Or is that the response of the partisan Republican tired of subsidizing partisan Democrats? Ach, well, works either way.

Moe Lane

(Via Instapundit)