January 10, 2014
Victor Davis Hanson Questions University Abuses
[From article]
Colleges have gone rogue and become virtual outlaw institutions. Graduates owe an aggregate of $1 trillion in student debt, borrowed at interest rates far above home-mortgage rates — all on the principle that universities could charge as much as they liked, given that students could borrow as much as they needed in federally guaranteed loans.
[. . .]
If the best sinecure in America is a tenured full professorship, the worst fate may be that of a recent graduate in anthropology with a $100,000 loan. That the two are co-dependent is a national scandal.
In short, the university has abjectly defaulted on its side of the social contract by no longer providing an affordable and valuable degree. Accordingly, society can no longer grant it an exemption from scrutiny.
[. . .]
Whatever may once have been the case, in our time tenure does not ensure free expression, but instead a banal orthodoxy, in which 90 percent of the faculty in the humanities share the same progressive outlook.
[. . .]
The abuse of lecturers, part-timers, and graduate students is institutionalized. In a word, the university is the most exploitative institution operating at present in the United States, protected by the notion that it is progressive and that its protocols cannot possibly be understood by the ordinary public.
[. . .]
the unfortunate emergence of the arrogant and ignorant graduate, who left the campus zealous for social change but sadly without the skills to even articulate his goals.
[. . .]
there is no transparency: What size of gift leverages a B+ student into Harvard?
[. . .]
Only the university could have allowed an Elizabeth Warren to invent an entirely fictitious minority pedigree and parlay it without audit all the way to Harvard.
[. . .]
That no one will ever know exactly on what criteria the president of the United States was admitted to Columbia College or Harvard Law School is a testament to the secrecy and mystery of the university guild that has such intrusive interest in the less-than-transparent workings of other institutions.
[. . .]
If the schools of education did not have a monopoly over credentialing, they would quickly dissolve, given that their product has made the public schools far less credible.
[. . .]
How strange that universities will publish statistical data on almost every facet of American life — from racial matters to the environment — but not provide the public with a detailed breakdown of their own expenditures to allow students and their parents to understand why their tuition is priced as it is.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367689/outlaw-campus-victor-davis-hanson
JANUARY 7, 2014 12:00 AM
The Outlaw Campus
The university has become a rogue institution in need of root-and-branch reform.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Labels:
Arrogance,
College Students,
Employee Abuses,
Faculty,
Universities
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