tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post7675244653143078113..comments2023-10-30T05:28:11.795-04:00Comments on All Education Matters: From the Best to the Worst: For-Profits Are An Ivy-League Created ScamCryn Johannsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08452412213997621242noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post-73594479748314860082011-09-02T01:38:27.641-04:002011-09-02T01:38:27.641-04:00Could they be the people Yeats had in mind when he...Could they be the people Yeats had in mind when he wrote, "The best lack all conviction"?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post-21174396210944726792011-09-01T14:00:18.961-04:002011-09-01T14:00:18.961-04:00Of course Ivy league graduates (and I am one, by t...Of course Ivy league graduates (and I am one, by the way) helped to found these schools. How else are they going to pay back their student loans? The financial backers stay in the background. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have fraud convictions. At some point, when real thorough investigations are made, real bad hats are going to emerge. This is slime dog stuff, period, no matter how you dress it up.warwick555https://www.blogger.com/profile/02136215423585651220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post-53923967879812349432011-09-01T12:08:46.062-04:002011-09-01T12:08:46.062-04:00Further re "research" funding:
I assume...Further re "research" funding:<br /><br />I assume Cryn is dreadfully familiar with the current (beginning circa 1950s, metastasised during the 1980s-90s) convention of American universities regarding their faculty members' abilities to get "research" grants (almost always from corporate/state sources) as the primary criterion of a faculty member's "productivity".<br /><br />(I'm calling them "faculty" instead of "teachers" precisely because the role of teaching has become marginalised in the "higher education" cosmopole. I'm aware that many university teachers - such as Cryn evidently used to be, may I assume you were an adjunct? - remain dedicated principally to teaching, but the tragedy is that such REAL teachers have become marginalised.)<br /><br />Well, back to my main point about confusing "research grants" with "productivity"...<br /><br />...um, persons with common sense, the likes of, say, Orwell (and anyone who has studied Aristotle will know this is NOT a "straw man" argument!) - as I was saying, common sense persons who use the English language in its common-sense meanings, will understand that ASKING FOR GRANTS is the OPPPOSITE of PRODUCTION!<br /><br />In other words: What the f---? So if a scholar/researcher can produce serious research WITHOUT any grants from the state and/or the corporations who own the state, then she's LESS "productive" than those whose "production" is to persuade others to give her money?<br /><br />What those faculty who procure "research" grants actually "produce" - at least as per their ability to get grants - is in fact consumption. The production of consumption. To call the procurement of "research" grants, "production", is the penultimate apogee of Orwellian double-speak. "Black is White, and persuading others to give you money BEFORE you produce anything, is "production"!<br /><br />And then to rub salt into the wounds, those scholars who do NOT attract research grants are called "NON-productive" REGARDLESS of whatever SCHOLARSHIP they can produce on their "shredded shoestring" budgets!<br /><br />See what I mean? It reminds me of a joke circulating in Russia when I was there in Yeltsin's time: <br /><br />Two Novorusskies ("New Russians", ie "Nouveau Riche") met, and one admired the other's necktie. He asked his fellow Novorusskie, "How much did you pay for that tie?" Answer, "One thousand rubles." Then the other Novorusskie said, "Oh, you FOOL! I know where you could buy the SAME tie for TEN thousand rubles!"<br /><br />Such are the values of American (and many other Western) universities today; what matters is NOT the actual result, but rather to pay as much money for it as possible. Consequently, even "research" has been commodified into hyper-abstraction...while education has become de-commodified down to the level of debt-peonage, aka slavery. <br /><br />And so the paradox of today's America is that in contrast to the 1800s when it was illegal to teach slaves how to read, today education is equated with slavery. Ah, what a diabolically brilliant way to maintain extreme class differences resembling those of the most benighted nations, just equate teaching/education with degraded servitude and THEN EDUCATION IS NO LONGER A MEANS OF SOCIAL MOBILITY! <br /><br />It's a stroke of diabolical genius, unimagined by any prior slave-owning society! In fact it's CONTRARY to all prior slaveowning societies! To equate education with slavery! It's diabolically ingenius!One Who Survivednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post-22212021480834243692011-09-01T09:50:12.436-04:002011-09-01T09:50:12.436-04:00Arguably ALL universities are "for profit&quo...Arguably ALL universities are "for profit" these days, their main "market" being corporate-state (Mussolini's definition of Fascism) sources of "research" funding.<br /><br />Are you familiar with the work(s) of Wendell Berry? 70-something Kentuckian farmer and poet, politically unclubbable except perhaps as an agrarian-populist reactionary. <br /><br />Some choice exerpts from one of his commencement addresses:<br /><br />"And yet by all this fuss we are promoting a debased commodity paid for by the people, sanctioned by the government, for the benefit of the corporations. For the most part, its purpose is now defined by the great and the would-be-great “research universities.” These gigantic institutions, increasingly formed upon the “industrial model,” no longer make even the pretense of preparing their students for responsible membership in a family, a community, or a polity. They have repudiated their old obligation to pass on to students at least something of their cultural inheritance....Now, according to those institutions of the “cutting edge,” the purpose of education is unabashedly utilitarian. Their interest is almost exclusively centered in the technical courses called, with typical ostentation of corporate jargon, STEM: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The American civilization so ardently promoted by these institutions is to be a civilization entirety determined by technology, and not encumbered by any thought of what is good or worthy or neighborly or humane....You will be told also – ignoring our permanent dependence on food, clothing, and shelter – that you live in a “knowledge-based economy,” which in fact is deeply prejudiced against all knowledge that does not produce the quickest possible return on investment...."<br /><br />http://www.bellarmine.edu/studentaffairs/graduation/berry_address.aspx<br /><br />There's a lot to be said for the good kinds of reactionaries. In the final verse of the Nazi anthem, the Horst Wessel Lied, the enemies of the Nazi revolution are the "Red Front and Reactionaries". And weren't the French Resistance reactionaries? "Reaction" against the progress of evil is another kind of revolution.One Who Survivednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post-60282355770604346292011-08-31T23:50:59.105-04:002011-08-31T23:50:59.105-04:00@Anonymous 11:46 PM - you might be right. But Ms. ...@Anonymous 11:46 PM - you might be right. But Ms. Mack has an A.B. from Brown. Even if she took all business-y classes, she had to have wound up in some sort of ethic-y class! Or maybe not. Undergrads at Brown have no imposed curriculum, i.e., they can make up their own major and take pretty much whatever classes that strike their fancy. <br /><br />I do not mean to say that in a nasty way. I taught at Brown, and found the undergraduate population to be amazing. <br /><br />Perhaps Ms. Mack lost her way after graduation? Not sure . . .<br /><br />(And don't get me started on President Ruth Simmons).Cryn Johannsenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08452412213997621242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post-5788343289612684892011-08-31T23:46:39.262-04:002011-08-31T23:46:39.262-04:00I think you have "ethics" because you st...I think you have "ethics" because you study history.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post-2900490389082756232011-08-31T18:12:44.436-04:002011-08-31T18:12:44.436-04:00Andrew S. Rosen earned his Bachelor's degree f...Andrew S. Rosen earned his Bachelor's degree from Duke, and has a law degree from Yale. Yet, he cannot figure out that his hair looks awful.<br /><br />Listen up, Andrew. You are bald. Combing your hair forward, like a six year old, is futile. YOU have a gaping hole in the middle of your "hairline." Take your ass down to the local store, and purchase some hair clippers. Go in the bathroom, and buzz the last remnants of your hair.<br /><br />Go bald with dignity, Ass.Nandohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06423524039657355134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post-88336392762195408702011-08-31T18:12:04.816-04:002011-08-31T18:12:04.816-04:00As long as big taxpayer backed money is to be made...As long as big taxpayer backed money is to be made, this system, as we know it, will continue, and profit.<br /><br />Bankruptcy would throw a big wrench into the works, and so that is why bankruptcy was done away with.<br /><br />And the ordinary taxpayer hasn't a clue as to what is really going on.<br /><br />I am repeating myself, but lately I think that too much Gov't involvement in Higher Ed has led to some great abuses, with both public and private pigs feeding at the taxpayer trough. (spelling)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post-69330633304254344012011-08-31T18:03:44.781-04:002011-08-31T18:03:44.781-04:00@Anonymous 5:56 PM - exactly! You really made me l...@Anonymous 5:56 PM - exactly! You really made me laugh.Cryn Johannsenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08452412213997621242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3481083477379506990.post-47966259568728701622011-08-31T17:56:33.002-04:002011-08-31T17:56:33.002-04:00Sounds to me like some of these people are "o...Sounds to me like some of these people are "over qualified" for a test-prep co.<br /><br />I too went to an Ivy and graduated w/ an MA. I was so proud to even be accepted as my beginnings are humble. I really believed that this would really distinguish me from other job seekers.<br /><br />Maybe it has. It only took me 2.5 years after receiving my MA in 2008 to find a FT job that is not related to my degree, that I had to move cross-country for, AND that pays me less than I was making with a Bachelors. Not to mention the probably obvious crushing private student loan debt that was presented to me as have the same flexibility as federal student loans...<br /><br />Aaahhh to be basking is such elitist privilege. Don't y'all wish you were me?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com