We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan at Flint and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, recently calculated that his university has nearly 100 diversity administrators, more than 25 of them earning over $100,000 a year. Collectively, they cost the University of Michigan, with fringe benefits, about $11 million annually. Adding in other costs such as travel and office space expenses, the total cost rises to perhaps $14 million, or $300 for every enrolled student at the U of M in the fall semester 2017...
Curating is the new pretentious term for picking and choosing things you like or want. I was recently at a restaurant which offered a "Curated selection of organic teas."
Well, highly-selective colleges now "curate" their admissions. Of course, they always have done so. 80 years ago they wanted to be preppy, WASPy clubs. Not now.
I very much doubt that Harvard, for example, is biased against Asians. Selective schools are not purely meritocratic, if grades and SATs are the only measures of merit. They are not, of course. They do want a mix of interesting and talented people who they think can contribute to, and thrive in, their environment, and who will be future successful ornaments to their alma mater They make a bet that you will be special. Plus necessary legacies and donors. And quarterbacks. And bassoonists.
In my view, as long as past performance and IQ (eg SAT) meet some standard, let them "curate" their Freshman classes at will. Elite schools could fill their classes many times over with kids with perfect grades and perfect SATs, but that would make no sense at all.
Story here. We now understand that the SAT turned out to be basically a proxy for IQ. It makes sense to me for schools to be interested in IQ. Of course, there is far more to what a person might have to offer than IQ, but I think they ought to know that when making distinctions between applicants. Especially at a school like Chicago, which, unlike most of higher ed, requires that a graduate actually ends up knowing a lot of basic things which are not easy to learn.
I am just talking about Liberal Arts higher ed, of course.
Why do they even measure these statistics? Can't we just view people as people? I am confident that nobody in the board of ed is discriminating against whites, hispanics, and blacks.
I think one major impetus for my change was the fact that, despite being in default liberal environments all of my life, I nevertheless always adored the works of the Western literary tradition. And when I saw the 1980s’ multiculturalism taking over university campuses, and ignorant students who had never read the works of the Western canon feeling empowered to reject those works on the basis of the gonads and melanin of their authors, that to me was appalling.
Ironically, people I don’t think understand this distinction, in the 1970s, which was the height of this very abstruse literary theory known as deconstruction, that you mentioned, and that I was an uncritical acolyte of. However odd the theories of language were, holding that meaning is impossible, that the human self is just a fiction, a trope of language, we read the canon without ever once thinking to say, if I’m a female, “Oh, gee, I can’t read Milton because he’s a dead white male.” It never came up. So, I fortunately had a strong grounding in greatness, in beauty, in eloquence, in sublimity. And when that came under attack, that started to turn me away from the broader trends that were going on in academia.
The USA is the worst country in the world. Europe is a terrible ex-colonial place in its death throes, a quaint museum with food. European civilization is the worst the world has produced. The Western World is obsolete and evil, etc.
"Unprepared" is a euphemism with the hidden assumption that everybody, if "prepared," would be higher ed material. Of course, there are countless reasons why the assumption is wrong, but let's start with some of the obvious ones: half of the population has below-average IQ; many people lack the interest or the character traits needed for rigorous high ed (or for high school for that matter, but may want the diploma); many kids float through secondary school while benefiting minimally.
Curating is the new pretentious term for picking and choosing things you like or want. I was recently at a restaurant which offered a "Curated selection of organic teas."