Universities Have Become Bureaucrat Cash Collection Points
Many or probably even most of the people in my life are academics in the social sciences or related fields, so I have a better sense than most people of the hiring situation in academia.
It's bleak.
People who would have gotten jobs as researchers and professors in previous years are now lucky if they can find an adjunct position that pays crap and comes without health insurance or any of the other benefits of a tenure track position.
Meanwhile, I've heard stories about the obscene annual lawncare budgets of university Presidents and other administrators -- paid for by the universities -- that could be put toward hiring a few professors.
And okay, some of you will sneer at social scientists (because isn't that what the Internet is for?), but consider what happens when administrators are paid ginormous salaries.
Is it possible that suddenly, they care in a way they didn't before about quashing free speech and bad publicity? Well, actually, yes. And is it possible that suddenly, they bow to every ideological demand in hopes of keeping things quiet? Well, actually...yes.
At James G. Martin Center, Wendy McElroy takes this subject on -- administrative bloat on campus:
Administrative bloat bears significant responsibility for the decline in educational quality and civility. The decline is partly due to the diversion of scarce funds from academia to administration and partly due to the ideological slant of administrative policies rooted in identity politics, such as mandatory sensitivity training on race. Identity politics occurs when people identify as a class based on secondary characteristics, such as gender, rather than as individuals with a shared humanity; some classes are seen to be at war. The policies expressing identity politics create conflict and impoverish education....All institutions need administration. But the bureaucratic nature and ideological bent of many college administrations is damaging academic freedom and flow of ideas that learning requires. Again, this is particularly true of policies based on identity politics. An example is the censorship of ideas, words, and attitudes that are deemed "offensive." In practice, whatever subjectively offends "marginalized" students is censored without regard to the impact on the others.
Professors are not exempt, as the progressive Bret Weinstein recently discovered at Evergreen State College. Weinstein was waylaid in his classroom by a mob of screaming students because he objected to a student campaign to exclude whites from campus for a day. He called it racist. This offended the organizers. Weinstein was subsequently forced to teach his class in a park because he was not safe on campus. The college President declined to suspend Weinstein but agreed to comply with most other demands put forth by the outraged students, whom he called "courageous."
Dissenting students fare no better and often retreat into silence for self-protection.
Because of "offended" students, works of classical literature by white males are discarded. Some law schools no longer teach about rape. Less than one third of top colleges require history majors to take a single course in American history because it is considered racist. Students are being denied exposure to necessary ideas.
I never needed college to learn. (I learn more now every week than I ever did in college.)
I suspect, in the coming years, that an increasing number of people who would have gone to college in the past will question whether it has any real value for them now.
I'll be perfectly frank. It's hard for me to feel sorry for the humanities and social sciences professors, because they created the intellectual rationalization for this to happen. I recognize that that was a previous generation, but if you ask most of today's humanities and social science majors, grad students, and adjuncts, they'll tell you that they agree with the principle even as they decry the results.
With the exception of STEM, the Left owns the academy in America, lock, stock and barrel. They have unlimited access to vast endowments and political inside tracks, for them to use as they please. This is how they have chosen to use it. Reform can't come from within them because their philosophy precludes the possibility, and they are too powerful for reform to be imposed on them from without. The only possible escape is that, as the American academy becomes ossified, eventually it will be perceived by the greater public as an obsolete institution, and bypassed. But then what replaces it?
Cousin Dave at June 27, 2017 7:29 AM
> But then what replaces it?
Trump University!
I kid, I kid. But seriously, much of what you learn in university can now be found online for free, or at low cost.
Snoopy at June 27, 2017 7:37 AM
My standard response to leftoids consumed by the fire they helped fan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6CVvNRQcvE
lujlp at June 27, 2017 10:25 AM
Colleges are a business.
Like many businesses, the people at the top make considerably more than the people lower on the ladder.
Like many businesses, they are very concerned "about quashing free speech and bad publicity."
Like all businesses, if they're not breaking the law, they're of no concern to me except whether I choose to patronize them (in either sense of the word).
I left college after a little more than a year when I saw how much it cost, how enormous the classes were, and how graduate students were paying for the privilege of doing most of the teaching work. It felt a little like televangelism and a little like a cult.
It still does — except the tenets of the cult have changed a bit. And anyone who chooses to enter adulthood with tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of debt may be educated, but he or she ain't too bright.
Kevin at June 27, 2017 12:19 PM
"Like all businesses, if they're not breaking the law, they're of no concern to me except whether I choose to patronize them (in either sense of the word)."
So I guess we can assume you aren't a taxpayer siince most of these *businesses* are financed directly and indirectly by the state and federal governments.
Isab at June 27, 2017 12:56 PM
So let's presume a particular college costs $200k for a four-year degree.
Instead of spending that, or borrowing that, presume the student has it at age eighteen. Compound it at 4% for forty-seven years. That's about $1,138,000. Divide by, say, three [pick your own] for inflation and you have $379,000 of today's buying power.
Using a modest depleting retirement annuity factor of $7.5/$1000, this gives you retirement income of $2800 monthly.
Do your own math to come up with a methodology that suits you.
Consider that you will begin accumulating assets, if only your first suit of business clothing, four or five years earlier.
So. Will a humanities degree generate the same or greater assets?
For intellectual growth, see your library card.
If you need a degree to get in the door of a good opportunity, possibly.
Your decision?
Richard Aubrey at June 27, 2017 1:11 PM
The bureaucratic monster is devouring the University system and, inside the machine, the most tentacular creature is the "diversity & co" beast.
The only surprise is that so many people are (perhaps) realizing that only now.
Paolo Pagliaro at June 27, 2017 3:23 PM
So I guess we can assume you aren't a taxpayer siince most of these *businesses* are financed directly and indirectly by the state and federal governments.
Oh, I know that — the same way that other people's children are financed directly and indirectly by the state and federal governments, aka my taxes.
If I could opt out of both, I would, but about the best thing I can hope for is to be left alone by the beneficiaries of my enforced largesse.
Kevin at June 27, 2017 4:36 PM
Democrats promise Universities grants, tax breaks, title 9 laws, and "help" for students paying tuition no matter how ridiculous it gets.
Universities pay it back with obscene speaking fees, mass indoctrination, many left leaning theories and half baked studies.
Lawyers and activists get in the mix by decaring as racist any way, besides of a degree, used for hiring.
Joe j at June 27, 2017 5:01 PM
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