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.
Non-tenured faculty can be easily hired and fired just like any other employee. This works better for higher-ed administrations and may also work better for students.
JONATHAN HAIDT: I didn’t even know about that. The president was supposed to be the grown-up in the room. He was supposed to show some wisdom, some balance, and some strength. And so we’ve seen, basically what can really only be called Maoist moral bullying – am we saw it very clearly at Claremont McKenna. The video is really chilling–the students surrounding this nice woman who was trying to help them, and reducing her to tears. As we’ve seen more and more of this, I’ve begun calling it, “the Yale problem,” referring to the way that left-leaning institutions are now cut off from any moral vocabulary that they could use to resist the forces of illiberalism. As far as I’m concerned, “Next Yale” can go find its own “Next Alumni.” I don’t plan to give to Yale ever again, unless it reverses course.
Math educational fads come and go. While all the average Joe needs is practical math (even if that practical math is advanced calculus or statistics), very few have the IQ or interest to go deep into theoretical math. It's too abstract.
Few college applicants even have the IQ to master basic calc or stats, hence Math for Poets and Rocks for Jocks.
Like the New Math in the 1960s (Multiply 2X3 in Base 6 - what?), the math experts want the kids to dig into the mysterious depths of numbers. It will never happen.
Higher Ed is not one thing. It is many things from a nursing degree at a community college to a BA from a state college to a doctorate in Philosophy at an Ivy.
It is all pretty much as expensive as the market will bear because greed is in the nature of institutions. It's never enough.
What is the proper role of the federal government in higher ed? My problem with it, as you might suspect, is that government "help" always ends up with government control. That's how Leviathan rolls. The College Try
It is a complicated topic. Private schools can and should accept whoever the heck they want for whatever reasons they want. However relevant SAT scores and grades are, they are not the only things of interest to colleges and not the only measures of merit or of potential. If all a school cares about is IQ, then a combined SAT is an excellent proxy for that.
I support the idea of "holistic" college admissions. Not "holistic" as an excuse to admit unprepared students, but holistic in the sense of students with many different talents and areas of potential besides just their SAT scores. (I would use SAT for screening, though, as it is essentially an IQ test.)
I will want musicians, mathematicians, writers, actors, geniuses, etc. I would want people who comport themselves as ladies and gentlemen. I would not have athletic admissions though except as an extra extracurricular on an otherwise desirable resume.
Some admissions officer somewhere claimed that Stanford could fill its entering class with Asians with perfect SAT scores. Well, those kids are smart, and driven. Some are surely overachieving drudges but so are some non-Asians. Some claim that Asians are the new Jews, discriminated against because of their drive and academic success.
If I ran a college, I would ignore race and ethnicity entirely, and look for interesting people with depth, curiosity, academic and other talents, energy, and integrity.
I am not sure why this is a "crisis." It is unwise to ever borrow - or lend - money if there is a reasonable concern about repayment. Nonetheless, people often do it.
Now that politicians have defined it as a crisis, they want to pander and to throw OPM at it and to do all the things pols do.
As Reynolds and many others have been explaining for years, there is a bubble in the pricing of higher ed. There will never be enough money to satisfy them, and loans and grants perpetuate the situation. It is a scandal, really, between the pricing and the little return from so many schools which are little more than diploma mills for recreating youth.
I would propose two simple solutions: eliminate federal loan guarantees, and permit student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy. This would normalize the debt and lending mess in higher ed, and would force pricing downwards.
Have you ever pored over the balance sheet of an institution of higher ed? If you get the chance, prepare to be shocked.
Why is college so expensive? Three main reasons. First, because colleges, with enthusiastic support from politicians of all stripes, have convinced Americans that higher education is the ticket to success. While a college degree is no longer a badge of the upper class, it is still viewed as a luxury good and is priced accordingly. Second, colleges have joyfully suffered from what Andy Rosen, CEO of the testing and online-education company Kaplan, has called “an edifice complex.” Colleges, including lots of state schools, continue to build luxury dorms, gourmet dining rooms, and lavish athletic centers to attract students—almost as if academics were an afterthought. Staffs have become bloated, too, not with more professors, but with administrators. Third, colleges have been playing with other people’s money. Washington has pumped trillions into financial aid programs. Low-income families get outright grants; everyone else qualifies for easy-to-obtain loans.
We, the Students of Hamilton College, demand the end of the inevitable tokenization of all marginalized bodies at Hamilton College. Hamilton College cannot continue to overwhelmingly perpetuate narratives that center whiteness, able-bodied individuals, colonization, heteronormativity, and cisnormativity. The faculty, administration, staff, and student body at Hamilton College almost ubiquitously encompass a single population that continues the exclusion of historically underrepresented communities.
Good grief. That is not even English. Hamilton would barf.
There is something wrong with the general state of education in the US today, and part of it seems to be some lack of grown-ups with integrity and maturity. What do adults do when kids stage tantrums?
If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.
If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don’t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn’t one of them.
Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up!
I used to read theChristian Science Monitor regularly. It was a good, relatively balanced, source of information. In the last few years, it has become a more-or-less mainstream piece of garbage. It regularly runs articles pushing the liberal agenda, without questioning or even analyzing the information presented. As another bullhorn for Progressive policy, CSM has simply joined an echo chamber. It may be a popular way to make a buck in the media industry, but it's not good journalism.
Which is why, when I read this piece, I began to question whether it's worth reading any more at all. The article implies the U.S. is somehow failing its children since, as a nation, we lag the rest of the developed world in providing pre-school education.
My parents divorced the year I entered kindergarten, aged 6. I had an older brother who was a year ahead of me, and 2 sisters who were younger. For the next 3 years, she was a single mother raising 4 kids and holding down a regular job. We all went to Catholic school. When my mother remarried, my youngest sister was just starting kindergarten. None of us had pre-school
Despite the lack of pre-school, we were all high performers in school and all of us got a college degree, while two of us continued into post-grad work. Maybe we were genetically predisposed to do well. I doubt pre-school would have helped, though we will never know for sure.
An early start to education is useful, but it is not necessary and does not guarantee performance. It's my guess higher performance later in life has to do more with factors such as the involvement and care of parents in their children's lives, as well as the relative success that allows many families to send their kids to pre-school. You can't replace a caring parent and loving family with a (hopefully) good teacher and assume that will yield great students. But that's the story you'll get from Bill de Blasio, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton (as well as a few Republicans). The OECD and CSM will push that agenda, too.
Are
the elite colleges really any better? (education sentences to ponder) -
See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/11/how-good-are-elite-colleges-really-education-sentences-to-ponder.html#sthash.42kYOCIa.dpuf
Are
the elite colleges really any better? (education sentences to ponder) -
See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/11/how-good-are-elite-colleges-really-education-sentences-to-ponder.html#sthash.42kYOCIa.dpuf
A venture capitalist searches for the purpose of school and formal education. Here’s what he found.
An interesting topic. There is no doubt that schools are there to do the things that parents are not equipped to do or might not have time to do: acculturation, academic skills, some practical skills. Foundations for life.
I have no idea how anything at the University of Missouri ever gets done. It's pretty clear this is a campus held hostage by a few entitled nitwit students and a few radical professors (some of whom have lost their job).
But I'm at a loss for words when it comes to stuff like this.
Black pain is not an easy subject to cover, but the lesson we can take from this encounter at Missouri is that our presence as journalists, with the long legacy of criminalizing blackness that comes with it, may trigger the same harmful emotions that led to the students’ protests in the first place.
We have a name for activists who don't want the media around. They are called fascists. They seek to impose their views by force, and having media around exposes their sometimes brutal and always childish behavior to the world. It has nothing to do with sensitivity or "safe space" (what the hell is that?). It has everything to do with hiding your aggression from visibility.
Now, as the University continues to spin out of control, we're learning that most of the claims were lies. We're learning the hunger striker is really just an entitled brat. The football team are just useful idiots, pawns in a bigger game of stupidity, which became apparent when the students sought to separate themselves to create "black only healing space."
I have no doubt these students have grandparents who fought to have schools integrated. So I'm confused. Did we come full circle? Is separate but equal the law of the land, or is separate but equal only in effect if and when a certain group of people say they want it to be in effect? I'm all for their right to voluntarily segregate themselves, but if they do so they should be aware they are simply making things unequal once again, and they have no standing to ask to be treated equally.
They have created a very arbitrary line. I think I'll go create my "white only healing space" to sort through my emotions on this, but I have a feeling I'd be called a racist for having that space. I know these kids are wrong. It's hard for opinions to be wrong, but when they are, they are usually wrong by a long shot. In this case there's no question. These are not students, because they've learned nothing and are acting out on childish impulses. If the university had a president, I'd think the correct response is to expel each and every one of them. There's always room for protest on campus, there's always room for freedom of speech. But there isn't room for lying, misrepresentation, and there's certainly no room for closing one's mind to history and/or the law simply because your emotions were 'triggered'. Time to grow up, snowflakes.
Who is "we", Kemosabe? Oh, it's me. I have no problem with loans for cars, houses, boats, school, or anything else. Government-subsidized loans? No. Not necessary and distorts the price structure the same way mortgage interest deductions do.
One thing that stood out to me was the arrogance of the academics quoted. Like this:
Panelists spoke passionately and knowingly about the ability of art and literature to increase empathy and human understanding and to improve students’ critical thinking and writing skills. “From my experience, it is not possible to develop those skills without a liberal arts education,” said UNC system president Thomas Ross.
I think Herman Melvlle, Mark Twain, and even Bob Dylan might dispute that.
Higher Ed is not one thing. It is many things from a nursing degree at a community college to a BA from a state college to a doctorate in Philosophy at an Ivy. 
At Duke, 