But just how bad is it at small, liberal-arts colleges in 2014? Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution has the grim facts:
He offers a prescription for reversal, but the feasibility of recommendations depends on just how late in the day it really is.Our top-ranked liberal arts colleges have eviscerated the core curriculum. Of the Top 25, ACTA reports, “only two require an economics course. Only three require a survey in U.S. history. Only five require a survey course in literature.” Amherst College, Grinnell College, Hamilton College, Middlebury College, and Vassar College have open curricula with no requirements. Bates College, Bowdoin College, Haverford College, Oberlin College, Smith College, Swarthmore College, Wesleyan University, and Williams College do not require undergraduates to study literature, American history, the principles of American politics, or economics.Our top-ranked liberal arts colleges, while aggressively promoting multiculturism, have incongruously demoted language study. The majority of them do not require students to achieve even intermediate-level proficiency—the equivalent of three college semesters of study—in a foreign language.Our top-ranked liberal arts colleges have discouraged the free exchange of ideas and free inquiry. According to a study by the redoubtable Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, incorporated by ACTA into its report, all of the top liberal arts colleges seriously impair freedom of speech. Fourteen—including Carleton College, Colgate University, Middlebury College, and Wellesley College—have in place “at least one policy that clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.” Several punish “offensive speech.” Some American college and universities have actually banished unfettered expression to designated “free speech zones”—a dodge reminiscent of how Russia marginalized protesters during the Winter Olympics.
With college being so expensive students (and of course their parents) want to major in fields that give them a better return on their $$$. These professional fields like medicine, engineering, architecture, marketing (lol), do not lend themselves to indoctrination. The liberal arts do somewhat, especially political science (lol) but, demand and supply considerations which you should applaud since they are the free market at work, generally point most students away from the humanities. Will this result in less humanity? We'll see.
ReplyDeletethe average take-home for a successful "sugar baby" is $3,000 a month (if you can believe that).
ReplyDeleteIts ranking was based on campuses that had the greatest increases in participation on the site. In 2013, SeekingArrangement claims, it saw 54 percent growth, with students making up 42 percent of its users. CEO Brandon Wade:
Sugar Scholarships provide real solutions to the problem of student debts.
Um. Yeah. Sorry Trojans, but UCLA has you beat in the game of not being on this embarrassing list.
Here it is!
1. University of Central Florida
2. Arizona State University
3. New York University
4. Georgia State University
5. Temple University
6. University of Colorado
7. Kent State University
8. University of Southern California
9. University of California, Davis
10. Texas State University
11. University of Georgia
12. Florida International University
13. University of South Florida
14. University of Arizona
15. University of California, Berkeley
16. University of New Mexico
17. Tulane University
18. Indiana University
19. Michigan State University
20. Louisiana State University
Read more at http://www.laweekly.com/informer/2014/01/16/usc-is-a-top-school-for-sugar-babies
A lot of humanities enrollment these days consists of people in those majors you list above needing to pick up some elective credit hours. So the indoctrination still occurs. And a real understanding of history, literature and philosophy recedes ever further.
ReplyDeleteLast summer in Florida, I had drinks one night with Stephen Green (the Vodka Pundit at PJ Media) and he said he told his young son he wouldn't pay for his college unless he majored in some field where you learn to make things.
ReplyDeleteIf these majors in areas where they learn how to make things are so shallow as to believe everything they're told, well, we're in trouble for the future. Watch one, do one, teach one. That leaves little room (or time) for imagination. Onto retirement with that fine portfolio, after doing or teaching one thing after another....
ReplyDelete"To be clever enough to get all the money, one must be stupid enough to want it." --GK Chesterton
ReplyDeleteNow that I think about it, most of. The $$ fields use indoc exclusively. Because there are generally right and wrong ways to do something. A corporation indoctrinates its employees who deviate at risk of being shown the door. Dunno bout the military, do you, lol?
ReplyDeleteBy a REAL understanding of history, literature and philosophy which you postulate is receding ever further, just what do you mean? Your understanding? I am shocked at your contention that academic freedom is no longer present on our college campuses. Anyhow, would you have ever begun to align yourself with the Free Speech Movement in Berkley back in the day? Herman B. Wells (of course only of that low life publicly funded institution of higher learning) said this about intellectual freedom:
ReplyDelete"Intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored. Intellectual freedom encompasses the freedom to hold, receive and disseminate ideas."
Wabash College is not rated, but DePauw received a red and IU a yellow (more free, but not entirely free). Any infringement upon intellectual freedom has to stop. However, if there are matters upon which a university may become liable for monetary damages then they unfortunately must consider that in their policies. This is a way too litigious society but how to change that might involve infringements upon certain freedoms of others.
On what basis are you shocked? Are the stats in my post some kind of lie? For that matter, what are we to make of the flyers posted on the hallway bulletin board at my place of work in my context as an adjunct university lecturer - flyers for course in which you learn such made-up-last-week nonsense as the fluidity of gender?
ReplyDeleteI'n all done with both of the places from which I earned degree: Wabash and Butler. When they took a side in the HJR-3 controversy, I said that they'd seen their last dime from me.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean on what basis am I shocked? I'd have to say a personal basis, having matriculated to both a military academy (where there was virtually no freedom to do absolutely anything as a swab and the only required liberal arts courses were history and literature, one the 1st year and one the 2nd year, all the rest was engineering oriented) and a small private college and graduated from bachelors and masters programs at a land grant college in the 70s and 80s, I never ran into the issue. I thought the Free Speech Movement (by the way you never answered my question about whether you would join such now, weren't its proponents commie bastards and subhuman dogs?) had pretty much resolved the issue back in the early to mid 60s when the colleges and universities were still "in loco parentis" and stifling any free thinking from their charges. Should your part time employer disallow these postings? There must be a university policy regarding posters. Is it being followed. You don't like the content of the poster(s), so should you be allowed to demand their removal? I think not. Bottom line is history, literature, economics are courses of no interest to the current students. They are largely interested in making their fine beds in this free economy. That means they need to take the courses that get them hired by employers who in your zeitgeist have all power and can always do what the fuck they want, even piss and/or hair test for legal stuff like nicotine.
ReplyDeleteRe being all done with your alma maters, probably a number of churches, that is just what that tree your acorn fell off of did now isn't it? Thankfully the vast majority move on. Actually, it's not much our world any longer, it's that of our children and grandchildren. What a long strange trip it's been though. Hopefully you will stay around to impart both wisdom and bullshit to them. Either way it's doubtful that they're listening that much. The world and US population have more than doubled since 1955 and international communication has been loosed from all overlords, including yours. Wouldn't you expect some serious redefinitions of freedom? You are the one blocking homo love expression. It aint gonna happen, it's gonna be the law of the land here. Then you can become a Putin lover or perhaps Catholic. You are free to protest. The other side is free to garner popular support and win over you on this and other issues which it is doing, swiftly, on a number of fronts. There is no turning back.
ReplyDeleteAnd I am not at all expecting to change your mind. That is not why I blog here.
ReplyDeleteYou're getting close to the essence of why conservative activism is so urgent. The sources from which the ever-younger population can learn the real underpinnings of Western civilization and the preciousness of freedom are dwindling. Not only that, the fiercely determined Freedom-Hater movement is determined to squelch the attempt to impart this understanding to younger generations.
ReplyDeleteThey don't give a shit. Hasn't our culture taught them that it is all about the $$$$?
ReplyDeleteNoone has any right to squelch the free flow of information and ideas. There will likely always be continuing attempts but they must not prevail.
ReplyDeleteIn reviewing the critical reaction to Bloom's 1987 work you cited I found this review by Linguist and libertarian socialist political theorist Noam Chomsky dismissed the book as "mind-bogglingly stupid" for "basically saying... you just march the students through a canon of 'great thoughts' that are picked out for everybody" when "the effect of that is that students will end up knowing and understanding virtually nothing." I don't think you like Chomsky though, do you? At any rate, are you comfortable with the state of science and engineering education at our nation's universities? Must be something to that aspect since students worldwide are attending to learn from the best.
ReplyDeleteNoam Chomsky hates freedom and America with every fiber of his being. THe late Hugo Chavez was a huge fan of his work.
ReplyDeleteI think he might have a point there though. At any rate, science and technology education is ascendant in American universities which might explain the dwindling emphasis on the humanities in America. Indians, Chinese and students of many other nationalities lust after sci tech learning in our universities today so what good would a greater grounding in Western Civilization be to them?
ReplyDeletePerhaps this work by a Hahvahd prof who may be considered a pointy-head will shed some insight into the topic when it is released by the hitherto well-regarded Cambridge University Press:
Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the Cold War by Andrew Jewett.
This book “reinterprets the rise of the natural and social sciences as sources of political authority in modern America. It demonstrates the remarkable persistence of a belief that the scientific enterprise carried with it a set of ethical values capable of grounding a democratic culture – a political function widely assigned to religion. The book traces the shifting formulations of this belief from the creation of the research universities in the Civil War era to the early Cold War years. It examines hundreds of leading scholars who viewed science not merely as a source of technical knowledge, but also as a resource for fostering cultural change. This vision generated surprisingly nuanced portraits of science in the years before the military-industrial complex and has much to teach us today about the relationship between science and democracy.”
Read more at http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/american-history-general-interest/science-democracy-and-american-university-civil-war-cold-war
It's quite clear that, given the astounding evidence of the rapid acceleration of our technological advancement over the last 200 years (from horses and buggies on the one hand and cannons on the other to Google glasses and nuclear bombs on the corresponding hands in our own time), human nature does not evolve toward improvement, much less perfection. We need the saving blood of Jesus as much as we did thousands of years before he was born.
ReplyDeleteDid Bloom or Buckley say or imply that?
ReplyDeleteSure. A view of the human condition as essentially tragic is core to the Conservative vision.
ReplyDeleteWell, Bloom was Jewish and Buckley Roman Catholic and you do not hear much talk in either "camp" about the saving blood of Jesus.
ReplyDeleteThere are Catholic churches and societies named Precious Blood though they're kinda weird sounding these days. To each their own, but America and the world have grown a bit more secular (wouldn't you say mostly because of sci-tech advances) lately, i.e., the past century or so.
ReplyDelete