Support Your Ivy League Schools

Started by topside, April 01, 2017, 02:23:20 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

topside

Quote from: je_freedom on April 02, 2017, 09:20:43 PM
That's right.  The first thing W did when he became President in 2001 was
team up with Ted Kennedy to give him everything he wanted in his education bill.

Ivy League (and other) professorships are some of the cushy jobs
washed up Democrats are given
when voters finally get fed up with them and throw them out.

Fit's the evidence - a place to land when you leave office. Many of the profs and admins are paid ridiculous salaries to pump a liberal agenda into our up-and-comers. Tell me - how did the conservatives lose the heart of the colleges and universities? I would objectively expect much more diversity - maybe 50% conservative, 50% non-conservative?

je_freedom

Quote from: topside on April 03, 2017, 07:35:50 AM
Fit's the evidence - a place to land when you leave office. Many of the profs and admins are paid ridiculous salaries to pump a liberal agenda into our up-and-comers. Tell me - how did the conservatives lose the heart of the colleges and universities? I would objectively expect much more diversity - maybe 50% conservative, 50% non-conservative?

That happened a LONG time ago.
Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton University
before he was President of the United States.

(We just missed observing an anniversary.
It was 100 years ago yesterday that Woodrow Wilson
asked Congress to get America in to the World War.)

The primary method by which academia has been corrupted is money.
Big shot donors have their tax-exempt foundations
donate money to schools, with strings attached.

The money is donated on the condition that it be used to fund
chairs for the rationalization of politically correct dogma,
usually with a specific "scholar" pre-selected to occupy the chair.

Or the condition is that a particular person
be appointed to the university's Board of Regents.
That person then influences the selection of ALL professors,
and the decisions to create fields of study.

This has been going on for a LONG time.
Most of the last vestiges of conservatism
were scrubbed out decades ago.

A book by Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
documents much of the trend.

Another book, by Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed
discusses the hubris of academics.
They see themselves as godlike beings, who possess ALL knowledge,
as opposed to common people, who possess NO knowledge.
This is in spite of the fact the common people LIVE IN reality,
where academics HAVE NEVER VISITED reality!

What little conservatism is left on campuses
is found in the hard sciences,
where theories have to withstand actual testing.
And those professors have been intimidated into silence
by dogmatic administrators.
Here are the 10 RINOs who voted to impeach Trump on Jan. 13, 2021 - NEVER forget!
WY  Liz Cheney      SC 7  Tom Rice             WA 4  Dan Newhouse    IL 16  Adam Kinzinger    OH 16  Anthony Gonzalez
MI 6  Fred Upton    WA 3  Jaime Herrera Beutler    MI 3  Peter Meijer       NY 24  John Katko       CA 21  David Valadao

Solar

Quote from: topside on April 03, 2017, 07:35:50 AM
Fit's the evidence - a place to land when you leave office. Many of the profs and admins are paid ridiculous salaries to pump a liberal agenda into our up-and-comers. Tell me - how did the conservatives lose the heart of the colleges and universities? I would objectively expect much more diversity - maybe 50% conservative, 50% non-conservative?
Short answer...
Liberal arts degrees and Fed money, think Affirmative action. Though as Je points out, it goes back even further, like the turn of the 19th century.
Official Trump Cult Member

#WWG1WGA

Q PATRIOT!!!

topside

Quote from: je_freedom on April 03, 2017, 06:30:15 PM
That happened a LONG time ago.
Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton University
before he was President of the United States.

(We just missed observing an anniversary.
It was 100 years ago yesterday that Woodrow Wilson
asked Congress to get America in to the World War.)

The primary method by which academia has been corrupted is money.
Big shot donors have their tax-exempt foundations
donate money to schools, with strings attached.

The money is donated on the condition that it be used to fund
chairs for the rationalization of politically correct dogma,
usually with a specific "scholar" pre-selected to occupy the chair.

Or the condition is that a particular person
be appointed to the university's Board of Regents.
That person then influences the selection of ALL professors,
and the decisions to create fields of study.

This has been going on for a LONG time.
Most of the last vestiges of conservatism
were scrubbed out decades ago.

A book by Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
documents much of the trend.

Another book, by Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed
discusses the hubris of academics.
They see themselves as godlike beings, who possess ALL knowledge,
as opposed to common people, who possess NO knowledge.
This is in spite of the fact the common people LIVE IN reality,
where academics HAVE NEVER VISITED reality!

What little conservatism is left on campuses
is found in the hard sciences,
where theories have to withstand actual testing.
And those professors have been intimidated into silence
by dogmatic administrators.

Thanks for the rationale and references above. I'm not seeing the "why" clearly yet. The sense I get is that there is "old money" in both the Dems/ libs hands and pubs hands (RINOs and Conservatives). The libs were more aligned with the "enlightenment" going on at the colleges and their donations and appointments managed a tipping point. The Pubs / Conservatives put their money on other concerns. So we lost many of the major colleges and universities. Later this was observed and turning these institutions was insurmountable. Rather, new colleges with conservative values were founded and maintained, but these aren't as prevalent as the schools run by the libs - many of which are funded by states and by the fed. I may have that all wrong - that's just the sense I get. It's another area I need to dig into to become convinced.

I found a survey that tallies the Dim/Lib to Pub ratio. As bad as 30:1 in some schools.

https://econjwatch.org/file_download/944/LangbertQuainKleinSept2016.pdf?mimetype=pdf

It tries to explain how this imbalance came about, but their explanation is opaque to me.

Certainly the sciences are less subjective. However, mathematics (the hardest science - most disciplined) is full of liberals even in the conservative midwest. And anyone who stays in an academic setting will, by nature, become academic whether lib or not. We probably have a lot of Blake's coming out who've drank the cool aid. Arrogant, unyielding, irrational, and loaded with propaganda. God help us all.

The feds should get out of the university funding business and student loans. Again, leave that to the states and private industry. The states could decide the mix of ideology in the campuses they fund / run. Similarly for private funded institutions. Many of the universities are stuck because of the tenure practices and unions - that would need to change to get anything to move.

I have 30 years work experience and graduate degrees to support. So I took an adjunct position at a local community college to see how it would go. I liked it and most of the kids (that worked) liked me. But many of the kids didn't work ... and so they didn't pass. I put my heart into the class - worked at two courses for about 50 hours a week while being paid 1/3 of poverty level. There were about 35 students in both classes; I took their picture the first day and learned their names. I did 12 office hours a week in an open center where students could sit down and work with me or each other. I set the rules the first day - no late work without prior agreements. And when some asked to turn in late, I would give them an extra day and have them meet me at a Starbucks on Saturday. Most stopped asking for extra time after that. There were all sorts of ways they tried to make excuses - so many deaths in families that quarter. I think God must have had vengeance on this group of families for some reason? Anyway, I didn't even allow for sickness if they didn't call and discuss it. There were a third that breezed through, a third that never caught on (failed), and a third that worked their butts off and learned something - I spent a lot of time with that middle third.

Many instructors were great - did a great job. But there was a group that were not respected at all - didn't really teach ... just required minimal work and gave passing grades. There were also help departments for students who were "at risk" meaning that they didn't have a good work ethic. At found at the beginning of my semester that a third of my students were at risk in an algebra class. I went to the "help" and they only could take on one of the students of about 15 that I asked for because they didn't have time. I went back several times and they were always in meetings and going to conferences - they didn't seem that interested in helping the students much. It was a fake program - a facade that looked good to the management but had no teeth.

I really liked the head of the math department - a very friendly and curt, matter of fact Brit - double citizenship believe. I told him I'd like to take a job teaching there and wanted $60k a year for a standard course load and was fine with being non-tenured. He quickly replied that there were no open positions and if there were they would have to do a nationwide search. I explained that I had the credentials and lived less than two-miles from the school, but I'd be fine with competing. Moreover, I told him that there were several instructors that weren't pulling their weight. He replied that he knew about it ... and that he was helpless to change it because the unions would stop him from cutting these worthless instructors that could care less about teaching. He wished me well and said he would call if there were any openings. That was two years ago. My phone isn't going to ring, is it?

My take away was this. More than half of our students are broken - don't go to college for a reason (like to get a J-O-B) and also haven't picked up a work ethic. The ones that just blow off the work are easy to see - the ones for whom the work comes easy are just as much of a problem in the long run. But the system is failing us too. There is no competition for the best instructors to teach the kids that do want to learn. You want to figure out why the US educations are going to pot relative to the world? It's because we don't teach them with the best that we have to offer. You can thank your local lib for this mess to a degree. But it's gone on under many administrations - and there is no cure in sight.

What's Devoes doing anyway? She's supposed to be a hot-shot. I haven't heard a thing.