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A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
DON'T BE A SHEEP
UT's Officially Disapproved Information Source and HISTORICAL ARCHIVE. The only source of truth, where Paradox Manifests: Hundreds of thousands of visits. Yet No One Admits to Reading It. Welcome to the "Grey Area" where "Unethical Utterances," i.e., criticisms of administrators, are commonplace. Make U.U. here where genuine civility still reigns, a.k.a., freedom......................... UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO'S EQUIVALENT TO RADIO FREE EUROPE
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NEW!!! Hard Eight by Professor Extreme
HARD EIGHT
Hard Eight: Auto-Ethnographic Essays on Academic Culture Featuring the End of the Arts & Sciences College, University of Toledo, 2010
Daily Koan
Should the newly discovered black hole be named in honor of UT BOT?
Swamp Bubble
Do you agree or disagree that University of Toledo suffers from administrative bloat?
How do you feel about the proposed UT Degree Guarantee program? (Reposted to allow more people to vote.)
How do you feel about the proposed UT Guarantee program?
How would you grade the overall performance of the Jacobs' administration on running the University of Toledo?
COMMENT OF THE WEEK
Bloggie applauds this perspicacious observer:
"The administration is in a panic mode to implement controversial and irreversible structural and curricular changes campus-wide by early February fiscal plan deadlines with only the vaguest notions of their impacts. The plan is, according to an interview with a top administrator published in the most recent Independent Collegian, to cast out many seeds and "see what grows." This experimental garden, as most senators articulated in many different ways, seems a costly recipe for disaster. Utter madness. Stay tuned."
Print Version of Dictionary of Academia Available on Amazon.com
The profound ruminations of the goaty Sage are now available in this 119 page satirical masterpiece. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1480292494/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B009RC0SJA&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1JV8N5BYAYY9WC9SJWD2
"Dictionary of Academia" Read it While it's Hot
A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
Comment of the Week
"This is that old tension between the corporate way of doing things and the academic way of doing things. In the corporate world, you sweep everything under the rug to make your b.s. as shiny, pleasing to the nose, and profitable as possible. In the academic world, you operate with a higher moral standard. Veritas and all that."
Comment of the Week of August 13
Re UT academic posers and hypocrites:
Have their checks calculated in units of postmodern theoretical currency and issued in photocopied legal tender notes signed by Walter Benjamin with a photo of Karl Marx and a seal stamped “In Derrida We Trust”.
Comment of the Era
Wow! Ain't that something.
-Anonymous
Comment of the Week
Mention goes to the the anonymous commentator of Feb 7, who, regarding UT President Llloyd Jacob's "Investing in Faculty" letter, stated: "If we could use the same criteria for 'investing in administrators' we could cut most of those positions."
Comments to HLC
Make sure you address your comments to HLC to the email address listed below in the "Higher Learning Commission Wants to Know" post. This may be the only chance you have to be heard. Bloggie hears that UT administration has discussed giving faculty "training" so that faculty members know how to "properly" talk to the HLC folks. How's that for stacking the deck? Does everyone get a little script to read? Make sure you practice before a mirror at being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Comment of the Week!
Definitely, the Comment of the Week award goes to Anonymous 12:14 pm, Dec 3, under the "Higher Learning Commission Needs to Know" posting by Diogenes. Pithy and pointed!
--Love,
Bloggie
MESSAGE OF THE DAY:
DON'T BE A SHEEP
Independent Collegian Article on Dicey Administrative Spending
IC reporter Casey Cheap looks at bow ties, apartments and movie tickets purchased by UT administrators at university/public expense. See
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Letter and Petition from Foreign Languages Faculty Member
A couple weeks ago, at the beginning of summer break, we in the Department of Foreign Languages were informed that our secretary's position was being eliminated and that while she will not lose her job (she'll be transferred), that position is not to be filled. We apparently will be expected to do our own jobs plus what we can of the secretary's. That is clearly not acceptable, and so one of the steps we in FL are taking against it is an online petition now available for any who want to (including those who for whatever reason--not a registered Ohio voter, not a US citizen, etc.--cannot sign the petition against SB5), to read and sign.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Katherine Best
Wave of the Future or Merely Sometime Later This Week?
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a deeply fascinating article called, "When to Dissolve a Faculty Senate." Apparently this is any time that it becomes "adversarial" to administration.
The online comments to the article are priceless.
Nemeth on Mammon in IC
David Nemeth's most recent tour-de-force
Professor Nemeth has another fabulous and timely article in the new and increasingly wonderful Independent Collegian. See http://www.independentcollegian.com/forum/the-kraken-attacks-1.2340091
Nemeth Does it Again
See the forum article in The Independent Collegian at:
Nemeth's New Article in Collegian
The Independent Collegian has run another of Professor Nemeth's fine and provocative articles in its latest edition. This one discusses the double-talk by mouthpieces for the current UT administration concerning the effects of and reasons behind so-called strategic reorganization. Make sure you get the latest version of Newspeak 5.1 if you want to decode what UT administrators are really saying.
UT Ranks 13th Nationally on Administrative Bloat
See Appendix B of the Administrative Bloat report posted on 8/28 for evidence, but UT now has a higher proportion of administrators to students than all but 12 public universities in America. President Jacobs has finally put University of Toledo in the top tier. With Strategic Organization he may be aiming for number one.
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Recent Letters from The Blade
Jacobs' arrogance is astonishing
Recently, President Lloyd Jacobs of the University of Toledo stated that bonuses were justified because his administrators "took all the risks."
As a professor at UT, I am outraged that President Jacobs claims that administrators take all of the risks. What risks do they take that the other faculty and staffs on campus do not?
Administrators are protected by state and federal employment laws and by their contracts.
When ex-President Vik Kapoor was terminated, he remained a professor with a salary near what he was paid as president.
As president emeritus, Dan Johnson retained a salary greater than his pay as president.
In the recent layoffs, exceptionally few administrators were terminated. It seems to me that low-level personnel at UT have far more risks because the greater proportion of the layoffs have come from their ranks. And they did not have continuing salaries.
President Jacobs' answer to questions on two occasions regarding relinquishing part of his bonus was to the effect that he earned his bonuses and what he did with them was his business.
Administrators do not risk their personal money in their duties: they use taxpayer money and funds collected through donations and grants to the university.
Administrators take home salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and then add bonuses for longevity and whatever else the president decides is fitting for their contracts.
However, the lower-level personnel have much lower salaries and no such bonuses. Where is the risk?
It seems to me that these bonuses are convoluted: The lower-level personnel are taking the greater risks with no bonuses while the administrators with very rewarding jobs with little risk receive large bonuses.
Am I missing something here?
WALTER W. OLSON,
Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing
Engineering,
University of Toledo
It's the same old, same old at UT
I could hardly believe the arrogance of Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, president of the University of Toledo, when a reporter asked if he would be willing to forgo his bonus in light of the layoffs, raise in tuition, etc.
His comment was that he worked for it. Is that to say that the ones being laid off did not work for their pay?
All I can say is, business as usual at UT. Some things never change.
SANDY FLICK
Rose Acres Drive
UT also has checks, balances
In response to letter titled "Professors must focus on teaching," I would like to point out that the University of Toledo operates on the basis of shared governance.
This means that faculty members participate in the administration of the university.
A focus on teaching requires faculty to address administrative issues such as policies, procedures, and yes, finances, because these all affect classroom outcomes. A university with solid and equitable finances benefits everyone, including and especially the students. Just as the U.S. government is constituted to have checks and balances, so is our university government.
The UT-AAUP is one of those checks against UT administrators who most recently have displayed more concern for their own profit rather than a concern for the common good.
LINDA M. ROUILLARD,
Associate Professor
of French,
University of Toledo
Quote of the Year (so far)
The following is excerpted from the recent UT AAUP newsletter concerning the official university response to news of the bonus scandal:
. . . . Either Jacobs is misleading the media or he has misled the Board of Trustees. President Jacobs objected to "the general tone" of the UT-AAUP Newsletter. Many persons on this campus object to the "general tone" of the Jacobs Administration. During his tenure as President, he has introduced an administrative culture of fear and intimidation. . . . A point of logic must be raised here, with all respect to UT AAUP, the conclusions that President Jacobs has (1) misled the media and (2) the Board of Trustees are not mutually exclusive. Both would seem likely given his considerable talent at spinning "visions." |
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34 comments:
Inspired by Don Wedding.
I take offense at using the "Cowboy" hat here. We Westerners would have ridden these people out on an rail a long time ago.
Well I think it was used in the sense of the old Texas quip " All hat and no cattle" We westerners know phonies when we see'em
250,000 RECENT COLLEGE GRADS ARE UNEMPLOYED
COLLEGE TUITION HAS INCREASED 600% SINCE 1980 AFTER CORRECTING FOR INFLATION
STUDENT LOAN DEBT IS CURRENTLY APPROACHING $1 TRILLION, WHICH IS MORE THAN THE TOTAL OF ALL OUTSTANDING CREDIT CARD DEBT IN THE U.S. AND NEARLY AS MUCH AS THE CURRENT U.S. DEBT OWED TO CHINA
SOME STUDENTS ARE ACTUALLY CALLING COLLEGE A SCAM
NEW YORK MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG SAYS CURRENT TRENDS IN COLLEGE EDUCATION COSTS AND UNEMPLOYED STUDENTS COULD LEAD TO STUDENT RIOTS
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/44556093#44556093
I am looking forward to hearing DJ Larry Burns spin the Rockets' football shellacking by that college in Idaho. "The team showed strategic growth in targeted parts of the game," says Spin-master Burns.
A decent comment on the failure of leadership of the Board at Texas A&M University. There seem to be some common factors with Ohio in that the State wants to shape education through a political agenda. http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Texas-A-amp-M-A-case-study-in-failure-in-2174883.php
Faculty in LLSS have been notified there are no Faculty Development Funds this year. Does anyone know if other colleges are in the same situation or is this another sign of the demise of the humanities at UT?
While the administration continues to force austerity measures on secretaries and other vital staff at the university, department chairs are complaining that now they have to do the work they are paid so handsomely to do instead of passing the work on to their underpaid secretaries. Perhaps the chairs and faculty should start fighting against the bonuses to administrators and idiotic projects like building a bridge to connect the library to the student union instead of complaining about all the work they will have to do when their secretaries are forced to work for multiple departments.
The new policy on chairs means that a chair can be removed by the President or Provost without any justification. That is the reason why chairs are not longer effective against fighting this administration.
If your wondering why the administration has shifted the definition of it's own "success" or "failure" away from total enrollment to enrollment in targeted areas it is this: the admins own projections anticipate a steady decline in overall enrollment at UT. If it kept the old model the admin would have to admit its policies are failing. Since it won't admit that, it just recreates the model and definitions of success and failure. Next year the admins will justify their bonuses by some other bogus increase in a "targeted" student group (say a 50% increase in left handed married students over 39). It's all smoke and mirrors and hefty salaries and bonuses to these people.
Man the posts have certainly slowed down a great deal. Has the Jacobs' strategy of divide CAS and conquer worked?
In a word, "NO".
Here's a statistic that needs to be posted onto the President's door and brought up at every administrative meeting: "The unemployment rate for those whose highest level of education is high school stands at 9.6 percent. For those with a bachelor's degree or higher, the rate is only 4.3 percent."
Re anon 11:05
Yes, but beware the dreaded post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy - i.e. correlation does not necessarily equate with causation.
Those with bachelor's degrees have only formally demonstrated their largely if not entirely pre-existing superior intellectual abilities and personal character.
It has become increasingly clear that people of superior ability and personal character with college degrees (whether graduating from Ivy League or state schools) tend to succeed regardless of their education and indeed often in spite of it.
Superior inputs (students) will always produce superior outputs (graduates) regardless of what does or does not happen in the black box (college education).
It would be REALLY interesting to put a test group of superior students into the work force without college and a corresponding test group of inferior students through college and then test those results.
This is in effect what has been happening – as the academy is flooded with inferior students from inferior high schools, all mandated by artificial politically correct government quotas and affirmative action. And the precipitous drop in outcomes has been sadly predictable.
On a truly even playing field (no preferential treatment for “under-represented” special interest groups etc.) the superior students without a college degree would still outperform the inferior students, even with their fancy but essentially meaningless sheepskin certifications of mediocrity.
And where do all these ubiquitous studies showing the high value of higher Ed come from anyway?
Oh, from those with vested interests in higher Ed and/or cozy quid pro quo insider relationships with education bureaucrats and politicians and those holding the multi-hundred-billion-dollar purse strings to research and education grants you say? How very interesting…
If you’re doing an investigative report on corporate skullduggery, you probably don’t want to rely solely on the company PR machine for your info.
C’mon, folks! What ever happened to objective, independent thinking?
Hammer away, but spreading that stat is exactly why there are so many blood-sucking degree mills around these days. The sad part is that this administration would rather also take the for-profit low road and turn UT into a top ramen degree mill (read charter university) than demonstrate some keen and original leadership by offering its students a challenging and quality four-year liberal arts education.
Why not simply ask yourselves why business are hiring people with degrees in greater numbers than those without? Businesses obviously consider a degree to have some kind of "value." And that value has a real world impact: it gets people "jobs." And it means a graduate of UT this year has a statistically much higher chance of finding a job than someone with a high school diploma.
What some people are ignoring is that this administration does not have offering a high quality Liberal Arts education as a goal. Instead, one could build a case that the goal of this administration is to shift our Liberal Arts programs to Bowling Green and build a STEMM school with the emphasis on the last M that is not normally meant by STEM. I believe that this has been a plan of the Ohio Board of Regents and the Board of Trustees for a few years now.
The administration’s problem is that they haven’t yet figured a way to pay for it all. So they over admit students into the Liberal Arts area and then bleed them of their cash through the fee structure to pay for the STEMM offerings. I don’t know what this administration is going to do when people get smart and realize that they should go to BGSU rather than UT for Liberal Arts. Perhaps they plan to depend on the lack of smarts in the under prepared.
Actually I think UT will become only a STEM school, with ONE M, where the last M stands for MEDICINE not mathematics... indeed there is a rumor they are going to shut down the PhD program in math.
Or TEM, rather. The sort of things being emphasized -- like making more efficient solar cells -- are not exactly the fundamental research one usually means by 'science.'
This morning's Blade reports that BGSU students are mobilizing to secure a TARTA bus link between BGSU and Toledo. If successful, convenient public bus access to BGSU from Toledo will also serve to siphon off some of the brightest TPS high school graduates; for example, those in search of a quality liberal arts education may choose to earn their four-year degree at BGSU instead of at UT.
And why not? The Jacobs administration by destroying its productive College of Arts and Sciences in a vindictive tantrum has opted for perpetual mediocrity -- or worse. I agree, by the way, that the Big Secret Plan is to merge UT and BGSU down the road.
Meanwhile some good news is that campus parking is now a free-for-all at UT. Now that's extreme student centeredness!
Re Anon 7:49 et. al
In fact, corporations have for some time now been increasingly turning away from hiring newly minted college graduates because colleges and universities can no longer be relied upon to deliver the goods – i.e. graduates who actually know things worth knowing and who can actually do things worth doing.
Universities have instead increasingly become politically correct diploma mills churning out armies of clueless and incompetent liberal arts graduates (not to mention even bigger armies of clueless and incompetent student loan indebted college dropouts) whose primary if not only qualification is their membership in some politicized “under-represented” special interest group.
Microsoft and many other major corps have resorted to training employees in-house, or relying on no-nonsense (often online) training and certification from places like the University of Phoenix, and/or are hiring graduates from Asia and some parts of Western and Eastern Europe, where people still believe in what America and Western Europe used to believe in – i.e. REAL education based on tangible skill sets and demonstrable merit.
First the Japanese and then the Indians, South Koreans and Chinese etc. started building their post-WWII cultures, economies and universities using the Anglo-American playbook of traditional American, British and German universities and cultural and economic values.
While we have been busy coddling our students since the 1960’s with the Marxist-feminist postmodern theory and ideology of resentment, entitlement, self esteem and identity politics, these formerly antiquated and destitute Asian cultures and economies have been using our own rigorous and time-tested intellectual, cultural, economic, industrial and technological heritage as a model to ramp-up their economies and standards of living and produce more and more of the world class scientists, engineers, mathematicians, innovations, goods and services etc. that we and the rest of the real world actually want and need.
When the Soviet block finally imploded and emerged from its totalitarian Marxist/Stalinist socialist central planning nightmare – the peoples of the former Soviet Union and its satellites couldn’t wait to Go Free Market West.
And in Europe it is the efficient, rigorous, competent and brilliant Germans with their strong economy and superior universities and science, technology and industry, who are being looked to yet again to bail out all the other whiny, quasi-socialist, unsustainable tax and spend until you bleed red ink economies of the Eurozone.
Until we get our own house in order - by getting the ten thousand pound liberal government taxation and regulation Obamanomics gorilla off the back of business, education and everything else in this country – we will continue our flaming cultural and economic death spiral.
And yet, oddly, Asian, East European, African, Indian, Pakistani, Arab, etc. students flock to US universities: so much so that even a provincial urban backwater university like UT can attract students from the Middle East, Asia... in fact, a recent UT publication notes the Chinese student population has tripled. Clearly, some people on this board have used their education only as a means of enhancing their abilities to spin: a 4% unemployment rate for people with degrees doesn't mean people with degrees have a better chance of getting and keeping a job. In fact, according to recent posts here, it means the exact opposite and moreover is a sign of how decrepit our universities are and how a President who has been around for barely 3 years is to blame for it all; foreign students applying to US universities from around the globe isn't evidence of the respect our system holds abroad, it too means exactly the opposite.
...and furthermore - it is for some of the reasons outlined in my 10 am post above that we now have to endure the humiliating sad spectacle of UT's former president and Toledo's current mayor and countless other Americans going to the Chinese and others with hats in hand trying to convince THEM to help US build OUR economy.
The very idea of the mighty USA going begging like this would have been unthinkable 40 years ago.
..And one more reason why corporations are reluctant to hire students who have been weaned in the liberal academy - because they see them as not only spoiled, unqualified, resentful and entitled but also as walking high-risk, hair-trigger discrimination (or other frivolous) lawsuit time bombs who can do significant and unjustified damage to the corporation's bottom line.
Why should any company risk hiring an under-qualified, high-maintenance, liberal American discrimination time bomb with attitude problems when they can just as easily hire a well-trained, reliable, no-nonsense, hard working foreign college graduate instead? Why indeed.
"Brilliant Germans"? "Obamanomics gorilla"? Sounds like either you walked out of a time machine built in Berlin in 1939 or are one of the badder "Boys from Brazil" ~
In a possibly vain attempt to prevent this forum from turning into yet one more example of a nonfact-based reality, here are some "facts" from 1990:
"an overwhelming 93% of today's chief executives are college graduates"...
"The moral for students: If you want to occupy the corner office, don't show up without a college degree."
"More than half of today's CEOs have a graduate degree of some kind..."
"The U.S. higher-education system infuses American business with variety and diverse ideas and is one of the nation's enduring competitive strengths. America's rivals know it; that's why they send so many of their sons and daughters to study in the U.S."
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1990/06/18/73671/index.htm
Re 12:49 –
Grab your wallets everybody – the NAZIS are coming!!
Don’t you EVER get tired (not to mention embarrassed) of playing the childish, mindless and shrill “Nazi” card?
Actually it is YOU and your ilk who are stuck in 1939 - because anybody who doesn't agree with you is STILL just another "Nazi" – no need for thought or rational discourse – just playground name-calling.
How very sad.
"Nazi" is apparently one of the few words you learn in your Marxist feminist PoMo/PC leftist college courses (along with the other standard mindless buzzwords -- racist, bigot, sexist, fascist, etc.)
The Germans ARE in fact brilliant, their research universities have been world renowned since the 19th century, their economy IS the strongest in Europe, their science, technology and industry DOES remain the best in Europe and some of the most innovative and robust in the world (don’t you just hate having to deal with these “Nazi” facts?).
And going back to your “Nazi” comfort zone of 1939 for a moment – we are STILL reaping the scientific and technological benefits from the work of WWII German rocket and aeronautical scientists and engineers, and physicists and mathematicians (Mach, Heisenberg, Gödel, Messerschmitt, von Braun et al.) who were decades ahead of their time.
Thank goodness the insanity of Hitler and the Nazi ideology combined with the countervailing shrewdness and tenacity of American citizens, soldiers, scientists, engineers, technology and industry (and British - Turing et al. and Jewish - Einstein, Oppenheimer et al. and Italian - Fermi et al. and Danish – Bohr, etc. etc.) managed to turn the tide against steep early-going odds.
Re 6:19 –
The fact you cite dated 1990 info from one of the leading propaganda wings of the leftist academic media (CNN) only serves to prove my point.
In case you haven’t noticed – the realities of higher education have changed DRAMATICALLY since 1990 (which is not to say that dogmatic leftist academics should necessarily have a clue – since they rarely do anyway).
Are their still good professors and good students and good programs and good universities in the U. S.?
Obviously.
But do many people like you still unquestioningly promote and swallow the tired, dysfunctional, unworkable and unsustainable established leftists academic dogma and propaganda?
Of course.
And most anyone on any side of the equation with a clue also agrees things are REALLY messed up.
But if I was cheering for Obama and pushing for higher taxes and more funding for higher education – you would be vigorously patting me on the back and agreeing and citing politically correct chapter and verse about the crisis in American education and how more of the same dismal, dysfunctional and unsustainable status quo is the way to go – and how increased funding and more programs for women and minorities are desperately needed – blah blah blah.
I’m guessing you are a vested tenured AAUP prof with little to worry about. You got yours. Good for you. Enjoy the rest of your career and then go out to pasture and contentedly chew your cud.
The rest of us need to worry about making it through the day, year and decade – and will continue to fight and hope for the future of American higher education and our nation and our children and grandchildren – against you and all the other encrusted clergy of the academic left who are determined to take us all down in glorious Marxist ideological flames.
Re Anon 11:55 AM Part 1
Foreign Students – why they come and why they flourish:
Foreign students – whether Asian, Middle Eastern, European or otherwise – generally come here from quality foreign elementary and secondary schools.
They are eager to learn and they have at least reasonably solid social values, study habits and work ethics.
They seek real education in real, demanding programs and courses – business, medicine, science, math, computer technology engineering, etc.
They also come here for western socialization – to master English and to learn western and American customs and our way of life – all of which will help them succeed in the American and/or global economy.
Yes, THESE students and those like them still can receive a great education at American universities – despite everything, because, as the old saying goes, they EARN it.
But even this tide is turning. It is becoming more difficult and less desirable or necessary with each passing year for foreign students to come to America for higher Ed – as foreign countries continue to build up their own outstanding education systems and as they become increasingly skeptical about the American system.
Re Anon 11:55 AM Part 2
American Students – why they flail:
American students largely come to college already severely handicapped and damaged by inferior education, liberal political indoctrination and toxic popular postmodern hip-hop socialization.
Statistically American Blacks and Hispanics are the most severely pre-damaged and have dramatically higher failure rates than Whites or Asians. This is largely a social as opposed to a racial plague – as foreign, Non-American (African) Blacks and Latin American or European Hispanics tend to do just fine.
This cultural and socio-economic damage tends to be multiplied and intensified on campus.
Those minority men who do test the waters are soon driven off campus in droves as a result of their powerful, pervasive toxic and degenerate anti-intellectual hip-hop/street gang socialization, as well as by negative politically motivated feminist anti-male bias in education – while minority women are coddled and cultivated, but at the same time stupefied and indoctrinated by the mediocrity and political correctness of Marxist feminist postmodern academic programs.
Whites tend to succeed or fail in real terms depending on the degree to which they are affected by and/or embrace or shun the temptations of inferior American education, liberal political indoctrination and toxic popular postmodern hip-hop socialization
Many American students go to college for every reason except education – they have no direction in academics or life – but everybody “knows” (i.e. the academic puppet masters, social engineers and tax-robbers tell us) that college is an absolute necessity for absolutely everyone.
They come to college with abysmal academic aptitudes and high school records – but have big juicy college sports scholarships (or affirmative action grants) dangled under their noses.
They come to fill government mandated quotas for race, gender etc.
Assuming they do actually have some academic aptitude and ambition – they usually studiously avoid anything “patriarchal, linear or politically incorrect” – i.e. science, technology, western culture etc.
Upon arrival most American students – the good, the bad and the ugly – instead seek out easy politically correct liberal arts programs where feel good A’s are passed out to all comers like pink ribbons and candy bars.
They seek and find luxury Club Med campus facilities and plenty of 24/7 partying, sex, drugs and rock and roll for their 5-plus year “academic” vacation on poor clueless mommy and daddy’s dime (and/or on taxpayer subsidized grants - or on their own student loans which they do not yet understand will plague them the rest of their days).
American students mock all those nerdy foreign students who can always be seen studying hard all over campus – even when all the cool American kids are going to a big home game or getting hammered and hooking-up at a frat house kegger.
When they graduate, if they graduate, the American student can often rely on their accumulated (not by them) cultural capital and native citizenship status and/or politically correct academic certification and/or gender or minority status – to land cushy entitlement taxpayer subsidized jobs in government, education, non-profits, the arts etc.
When election time comes, they all know who their daddy is – the big liberal Democrat government tax man.
Those areas of the private sector that actually need to earn a living and keep the lights on (for themselves and the rest of society) often look not to American students but to the foreign students for the industriousness and tangible knowledge and expertise the REAL world needs to keep running.
And so it goes.
This headline merits comment:
"Colleges turn to state to get unpaid tuition $140M owed in 3 years; OSU, UT students top list."
Closer reading reveals that UT is owed nearly four million dollars by its debtors! Holy box of bow ties! The State of Ohio will apparently hire third-party collection agencies and private attorneys to hound down our desperados. That looks like new job creation and a win-win game plan for everyone but our downtrodden debt slaves. They will have to begin to pay back with interest when captured -- or flee the Buckeye State for 40 years, after which the forgiveness laws begin to kick in. More brain drain.
I wonder if Anon 11:55 has any actual facts or evidence on incoming high school GPAs, retention and graduation rates for UT and 4 year public institutions, unemployment rates and average salaries for high school and college graduates over the past three decades that clearly shows declines in the value of a college degree (even in non STEM fields) over this period? Alon 11:55 easily makes many claims about the status and quality of higher education at UT and in the U.S. generally, but one wonders if beyond opinions there is any actual evidence? Having been involved in higher education for almost 30 years, here at UT and other institutions, I clearly have seen many changes both positive and negative in higher education, yet much of what Anon 11:55 is complaining about is not new and was present 30 years ago in higher education. Please show us the evidence for your claims. Currently, and over the last 30 years, I know many college students of all races and background that have been very successful coming from public schools, achieving college degrees (in STEM and non STEM fields) and resulting career successes. We can all appreciate the concerns with the declines in high school education in the U.S. (again a long term problem, not a recent one) and the current difficult economic climate for all students and graduates, but to blame these solely on liberals and Democratic governments is very shortsighted given that conservatives and Republicans have also been in power at the federal and state levels over the last 30 years and are equally at fault for the status of both education and the economy.
Their minds are ductile and easily disciplined. I'll give you that.
Your college is in chaos. Your shared governance is dead. Your enrollment is tanking. Your administrators are sucking every penny out of the place before this is more widely known. And you are putting your energy into this type of endless, pseudo-philosophical crap? No wonder you were such easy targets.
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see nietzsche
sez u
Anon is actually proving his own argument, presuming he has a university degree. He's making all kinds of outrageous statements without including supporting evidence, presumably taught in the school of "say it often enough and they will believe it." The conclusion that a US university education is "worthless" is just propaganda. Any idiot with basic typing skills can go on the internet and research the bios of all the major Amer corporations. Not only will you find that over 90% of them all have degrees from US universities but you will also find that foreign companies also have executives with degrees from the US. And, the icing on the cake: check out some foreign coporate bios. If they have degrees from US universities they are PROUD of it. In India, China, Russia.. many places around the world a US degree has more value than a degree from their own country. Do the research. Do the math.
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