RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/15/elite-universities-have-failed-to-produce-elites/

The higher education system composed of “elite” institutions has failed to produce a truly educated elite to serve the nation. They have instead produced bureaucrats, financiers, and the engineers of Silicon Valley. Highly ranked and regarded institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton or “public ivies” like the University of Virginia, University of Michigan, and UC Berkeley have failed to produce men and women who are statesmen, creators, and leaders.

Students, parents, and high school administrators spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to get themselves and their students into these institutions. Why? Not because of the promise they will receive an education (one cannot call four years almost entirely devoid of facts and disconnected from reality an education) but because it is expected that the time and money spent will launch them towards financial and professional success. This is a tragedy for the nation and a disaster for these institutions. It is something that cries out for reform and action from conservatives.

The nation is in desperate need of a true aristocracy of merit. Throughout history, the elites of the regime, whether Roman, English, or American have shaped the virtues, goals, and laws through their influence and example. The current system is failing to produce them. Instead, it has given us students who work aggressively to be admitted into highly ranked institutions and, once admitted, are rarely kicked out. Immense resources are devoted to assisting these students, and if they are struggling there is a program, tutor, or relaxed deadline to ensure they graduate.

We have created a ruling class where admission into the elite, powerful, and wealthy circles of the nation is secured by one’s college acceptance. It is well known and expected that these students will go on to become doctors, politicians, scientists, businessmen, and bankers. They are not taught to think or to understand how man has answered the perennial questions of existence. Neither are they equipped with a firm grasp of history, literature, or reality. Instead, they are trained to mouth the pieties of our “thought leaders.” Praise of diversity and tolerance is demanded of them. Likewise, they are to refrain from controversial behavior (such as support for the Second Amendment, opposition to homosexuality or abortion). This reflects a failure in understanding what a liberal arts education is and its importance for a free society.

One can only hope that out of the sheep at Harvard and Yale there might arise a statesman. Yet we cannot count on this.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elite-m-b-a-programs-report-steep-drop-in-applications-11571130001?mod=trending_now_1

Applications to some of America’s most elite business schools fell at a steeper rate this year, as universities struggled to attract international students amid changes to immigration policies and political tensions between the U.S. and China.

The declines affected some of the nation’s top-rated programs, with Harvard University, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others, all reporting larger year-over-year drops in business-school applications. Some, such as Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, posted double-digit percentage declines.

International Shift:U.S. business schools saw a steeper decline in applications from international students than any other country in the world this year.Change in applications from international students from previous year Source: Graduate Management Admission Council

Overall, applications to American M.B.A. programs fell for the fifth straight year, according to new data from the nonprofit Graduate Management Admission Council, an association of business schools that administers the GMAT admissions test. In the latest academic cycle ended this spring, U.S. business schools received 135,096 applications for programs including the traditional master of business administration degree, down 9.1% from the prior year, according to an annual survey. Last year applications for U.S. business programs were down 7%.

The M.B.A. was once considered de rigueur for anyone wanting to join the management ranks of U.S. companies, especially for international students, offering a pathway to leadership and a bigger payday. But education experts say shifts in U.S. immigration policy, trade and political tensions with China, as well as the growing attractiveness of technology-industry jobs that don’t require M.B.A. degrees, have recently dampened foreign students’ enthusiasm for business school.

Meanwhile, a hot domestic job market has cooled the interest of many Americans in the traditional two-year M.B.A. path. Millennials, many of whom are saddled with debt loads from their undergraduate degrees, have proved more reluctant than previous generations to pursue the pricey degree.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/04/dysfunctional-education/

The only way for Americans to avoid being pulled down in a vortex of the self-indulgent ignorance that characterizes our education establishment is to cut loose from that establishment: to stop funding it, and to create another, honest one.

The 2020 elections will afford us the chance to pass judgment on the immediate threat to our democracy posed by the intelligence agencies, the Democratic party, and the media in their grab for power through a bastardized impeachment process. But no such opportunity exists for us to deal with the most serious, most fundamental threat to our way of life, namely our thoroughly rotten educational establishment.

The problem has been festering for decades, and keeps getting worse.

During Word War II, only 4 percent of some 18 million draftees were illiterate. Despite (or because?) of massive expenditures on education over the subsequent two decades, 27 percent of the Vietnam war’s draftees were judged functionally illiterate. Between 1955 and 1991, the inflation-adjusted average K-12 per-pupil expenditure in America rose 350 percent. In 1972, 2,817 students scored 750 or better on each half of the SAT. By 1994, only 1,438 made this score though the test had been made easier. Today, U.S. 15 year olds rank 24th out of 71 countries in science, and 38th in math. In 2018, college students spent less than a third of the time their grandparents did studying for their classes.

But as the bell-curve of intellectual achievement continues to shift leftward, the bell curve of school grades continues to shift rightward. Increasingly, the default grade in America is “A.” Among all classes and races, some seventy percent of U.S students report having cheated on exams or papers.  No one should be surprised at the American people’s increasing incompetence and inability to follow directions—never mind arguments.

This past week, the noise from Washington drowned out three items of news that remind us of how corrupt and dumbed down American education has become, how far into society the rot has spread and how much it would take to remedy it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/charter-schools-ace-another-test-11570143771

Is the success of charter schools an illusion? Critics claim charters merely skim the best students, whose parents care enough to apply, while pushing out troublemakers. So it’s worth noting a new study showing that often test scores improve for all students when charters increase their market share.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute examined 21 urban school districts with at least 2,500 black students per grade from 2009-2015. As the “black charter market share” rises in the study to 50% from zero, the associated educational gain is 0.8 grade level in English and 0.7 in math. This bump is for all black students in the district, whether they attend a charter or not.

Results are similar for the 27 urban districts with at least 2,500 Hispanic students per grade. As the “Hispanic charter market share” rises to 35% from zero, it’s associated with a gain of 0.7 grade level in English and 0.7 in math. For comparison, the overall racial achievement gap is roughly “two to three grade levels,” the study says.

Other results in the paper aren’t as dramatic. After adding more than 200 smaller urban districts, those with at least 100 minority students per class, the gains are 0.3 or 0.4 grade level, although Hispanics show no bump in English. In large suburban districts, the data show mostly null results for minority pupils.

Also noteworthy: “There is no evidence that higher charter market share is associated with achievement gains for white students.” There are even some declines as charters build market share. The largest drop, about 0.4 grade level, is in white suburban math scores. The reasons aren’t obvious. Maybe suburban charters are more likely to be Montessori or Waldorf schools less focused on testing. In any case, most of these students turn out fine. But for students in poor urban districts, solid English and math scores can be a ticket to the middle class.

New York, NY (October 3, 2019) — The National Association of Scholars (NAS) reacted with disappointment to the decision by a United States District Court upholding racial discrimination in admissions by Harvard University. NAS had previously filed an amicus brief in the case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, in favor of the plaintiff. We noted that Harvard’s race-conscious admissions process discriminates against Asian applicants in order to achieve racial balancing.

 
“Racial discrimination is wrong,” said NAS President Peter Wood. “Unfortunately, Judge Allison D. Burroughs engaged in mental gymnastics to find Harvard’s behavior legal. Burroughs acknowledged that Harvard considers race ‘as a positive attribute’ for some races, but refused to admit that this results in intentionally negative outcomes for non-favored races.”
 
Wood continued, “Race should play no role in college admissions. Colleges and universities should concern themselves with life of the mind, not the color of their students’ skin. Academic achievement, proven ability, ambition, and commitment to learning should form the basis for college admissions decisions.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/youth-and-ignorance-walter-williams/

Camille Paglia is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she has been a faculty member since 1984. Paglia describes herself as transgender, but unlike so many other transgender people, she is pro-capitalism and hostile to those who’d restrict free speech. She’s a libertarian. As to modern ideas that include “gender-inclusive pronouns” such as zie, sie and zim, Paglia says it is lunacy. In a 2017 interview, Paglia was especially irritated by the thought police running college campuses today. In defending University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, who has become a pariah for his refusal to cave in to nonsensical gender-inclusive pronouns, Paglia said that the English language was created by great artists such as Chaucer and Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Joyce. She added: “How dare you, you sniveling little maniac, tell us how we’re gonna use pronouns! Go take a hike.”

On feminism, Paglia criticizes what she calls the “antisex and repressively doctrinaire side of feminism.” She calls it “victim feminism” and complains that “everything we’d won in the 1990s has been totally swept away. Now we have this endless privileging of victimhood, with a pathological vulnerability seen as the default human mode.” Everyone must yield to it “in the workplace, in universities, in the demand for safe spaces.” Paglia adds, “What I am saying throughout my work is that girls who are indoctrinated to see men not as equals but as oppressors and rapists are condemned to remain in a permanently juvenile condition for life.”

Paglia’s bold statements got her in a bit of hot water last April. University of the Arts students demanded that she be fired over public comments she’d made that were not wholly sympathetic to the #MeToo movement, as well as for an interview with the Weekly Standard that they called “transphobic.”

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2019/09/27/yale_alumni_stage_intervention_110360.html

When a somber-looking group of family and friends tell you to sit down because it’s time for a serious heart-to-heart conversation about your drug addiction or some other destructive behavior, we call it an intervention. Imagine you are Yale University, and the man telling you to sit down is Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz. Behind him are a host of other concerned alumni, each wearing the look of tough love. 

Rosenkranz is currently campaigning for a seat on the Yale Corporation, the university’s governing body. Backed by a grassroots effort of alumni, his campaign comes in the wake of several high-profile controversies at Yale in the areas of racial politics, free speech, and academic freedom. Perhaps the best known of these controversies resulted in Nicholas Christakis, a prominent member of the Yale faculty, resigning his position as a college master after becoming the target of an angry student protest over views he and his wife expressed on the censorship of Halloween costumes. Mr. Rosenkranz agreed to a brief email interview with RealClearEducation to discuss his bid to become a Yale trustee, his ideas for reform at Yale, and his vision for higher education more broadly. 

Can you tell readers a little about yourself, your career, and your interest in higher education? 

I teach constitutional law at Georgetown. For many years, my primary extracurricular activity has been my work to support free speech and intellectual diversity at American universities. I serve on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which is the preeminent defender of free speech on campus, and on the Board of Directors of the Federalist Society, which is the leading proponent of intellectual diversity and debate in legal education. In 2015, Jonathan Haidt and I co-founded Heterodox Academy, which promotes intellectual diversity of university faculty and unfettered debate on university campuses.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/n-j-schools-pushing-far-left-indoctrination-what-the-hell-is-betsy-devos-doing/

Melissa Barnett, a supervisor of English Language Arts in the Washington Township School District in New Jersey, caused outrage on Twitter by tweeting out a photo of hundreds of books in dumpsters. “This week, dumpsters were filled with books that should have left decades ago @TWPSchools and replaced with engaging, relevant, culturally diverse literature.”

This led to cries of “book burning” by critics and crowdsourcing to identify the books in the bins.PJ Media reached out to the Washington Township School District to find out more. “I was not unaware they were cleaning out a book room,” said Steve Gregor, director of secondary education. “Many of them were in poor condition and unreadable, dating back to the 1960s or earlier. We intended to replace [relevant] books with new copies.” Among the books that were reordered are Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, 1984, by George Orwell, Slaughter House Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, Dante’s Inferno, and Night, by Elie Wiesel.