Friends, public confidence in American higher education is dropping like a stone. That's par for the course, since confidence in all of our institutions is scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's also deserved, in many ways, given colleges' and universities' embrace of unAmerican, neo-Marxist values and priorities. It's also predictable, given the fact that many tertiary degree programs aren't worth what people are paying for them (and by "people", I mean taxpayers, in a lot of cases). Having said all this, as a professor myself, and as a lover of Western Civilization, it saddens me to see these august institutions of higher learning dragged through the dirt. How is our civilization to propagate itself if its accumulated wisdom is defiled in the minds of ordinary people, and its (allegedly) wisest citizens are seen as kooks, at best, and subversives, at worst? It's not a pretty picture, and I certainly haven't got any workable solutions in mind.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/508352/americans-confidence-higher-education-down-sharply.aspx
Tucker Carlson had his way with a number of GOP presidential hopefuls recently, and apparently poor Mike Pence is looking somewhat worse for wear. Utterly unscathed was DJT, who simply refused to show up!
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/14/gop-field-tucker-carlson-00106473
Finally, Democrats are sweating! Not only do many head-to-head polls show Trump beating Biden, or much too close for comfort, but when you throw in third party candidates Biden really starts to look like a weak sister. As this article suggets, the more candidates, the better, from the right-wing perspective! And, heck, isn't democracy all about giving the voters choices, and letting them make up their own minds about which choices are best? Someone ought to remind the Dems of that. They seem to understand the concept of "democracy" only in an oxymoronic sense.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jul/14/editorial-democrats-freaking-out-about-potential-t/
Dr.Waddy from Jack: I too lament the staggering degradation of the American academy.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: When my kids were doing their college searches we visited several Ivy League campuses. They were all enormously impressive; I wanted to take their striking outward appearances as support for their august reputations but the reality of their current antiintellectual ambience puts the lie to that. Where in the US can an unwoke professional thinker repair to these days? Is there any Western civilized country today which champions rigorous intellectual integrity.? I'm glad I yet witnessed the very end, in 1965 ,of the redeeming campus life which had obtained since perhaps the '20s.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I think the anti american dems perceive democracy as more than an ironic object of snide ridicule. They view it as a failed institution that must be supplanted by their total, very hierarchical, dictatorial rule. Democracy has been nemesis and antithesis to this principle and the historically catastrophic history of it in power. The latter is of no moment to them; all they see is democracy standing in the way with unbearable insolence and unjust resistance to their wisdom, doubt of which is to them depraved and deserving of extirpation. I think democracy is one of the prime foci of their unrelenting hatred for any form of non-cooperation with them and gives them no end of vindictive intent.
ReplyDeleteJack, like so many Americans I harbored dreams of attending an Ivy League school myself. I didn't get in to any of them. Could I have, would I have, had admissions been "fair"? We'll never know, and neither will any of the minorities who did get in ever know if their places were genuinely earned. Anyway, the Ivies have outlived their usefulness, in many ways, and I don't see a way back to respectability for elite institutions of higher ed, unless we really do have a "revolution" of some kind, and I'm not holding my breath.
ReplyDeleteDoes "intellectual integrity" persist anywhere in the West? Ironically, true intellectual freedom does linger in the academy, in a way that it doesn't anywhere else, simply because of tenure. The problem is that, going forward, no conservative or populist will be allowed anywhere near the profession, so that tenure will not protect them, since it won't apply to them. The academy has been purged, in effect.
Jack, in some ways you may give the Left too much credit. You said it yourself: "intellectual integrity" is dead. Ergo, words have no meaning. Ergo, "democracy" is whatever the Left says it is. They are saying now, with a straight face, that, if the American people ELECT TRUMP, it will be the end of democracy. Remember, these are the same people who called the USSR a "democracy", and their intellectual cousins named North Korea the "DPRK". They don't get hung up on semantics, Jack!
Nick, your headline is misleading. The Ivy League is hardly losing its luster. Yale had a record number of applications this year (56,000). Harvard had 56,000 as well and almost half their class was admitted early action. Looks like the luster is still there.
ReplyDeleteI went to an Ivy (Yale). I had no advantages. I am white, from a working class family, public school-educated, and a New England resident. I was not a legacy. I was a Top 5 class rank and 98th percentile SAT, but so were about 90% of the applicants. The only thing that distinguished me was that I had taken a year off to work and make money (my parents were in no position to contribute).
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that the people who are most vocal against college education are those like Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens who couldn't cut it in college. Sour grapes?
Dr. Waddy et al from Jack: Among those most understandably upset about the American academy are those who are forced by taxation to pay for state "universities" which openly teach antiintellectual disdain for the conservative views which nonetheless inform many benighted millions of taxpayers. Their latest presumption is to require students (at least those who want to graduate) to dance attendance on left wing struggle sessions. When SUNY New Paltz, where I went, welcomed William Ayres but refused my insolent suggestion to also welcome David Horowitz, an eloquent and harsh critic of New Paltz's openly left wing dominant bias I tore up my diploma and sent it to them.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy et al from Jack:I received a polite but disingenuous reminder of "academic freedom's " requirement that "tolerance" be shown for diverse doctrines, a virtue honored only in the breach far too often in SUNY.Consequently I sat with my state senator to talk about targeted defunding of the New York state university system . Let the Ivies wallow in mendacity and assured academic discredit! They have huge private endowments though I would deny them their Federal largesse, for the ample cause which obviously obtains. But state supported schools ? We need an informed taxpayer and parent revolt to put these reeducation camps back in their place. And by the way; these institutions DO NOT belong solely to the students. They belong to the entirety of the diverse public and must of right serve all their interests.Students are there to learn, not to dictate!
ReplyDeleteRod, naturally you're right (I mean, you're Rod, after all): the Ivy League isn't hurting, even slightly. Its LEGACY prestige (if I may use that now racist term) will sustain it indefinitely. It's higher ed as a whole that's hurting, in terms of enrollment, for both demographic and sound cultural/economic reasons. Probably a Harvard degree is still "worth it", especially considering that almost everyone who gets one is either too rich to care about the cost, or to poor to pay a cent. Whether a typical liberal arts degree, from a typical liberal arts college, is worth it, given the going rate, is an entirely different proposition.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm glad you got into Yale, because I assume you deserved to be there! Of course, you must know that the exigencies of "inclusion" have altered the admissions criteria A LOT since then...
Jack, I agree that public funding of state universities ought to require them to be, in some sense, accountable to the public. it would probably be best if they strove for political/partisan/ideological neutrality. Alternatively, they could endorse the most basic, time-honored values of America and Western Civilization. It is deeply offensive that, instead of either of these courses, they have embraced the defamation, deconstruction, and destruction of Western Civilization, and its replacement with wokeism and leftist tyranny.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: The myopic left disdains the fact that the taxpaying conservatives they disenfranchise also venerate education, true education that is. The American academy offers bigoted indoctrination as it's main fare.
ReplyDelete