RUTHFULLY YOURS

ttps://graboyes.substack.com/p/overcoming-college

If you wish to squander your children’s potential and incinerate any appeal they might hold for employers, America is chock-full of colleges and universities anxious to harness their vast infrastructures to help make them unemployable. These services, refined over many decades, won’t come cheap. But America’s student-loan complex will happily offer tuition money by the wheelbarrow. Decades hence, when you tire of progeny residing in your attic, politicians will squeal at the opportunity to foist their student loan debts onto other Americans who made better decisions.

Mind you, not all colleges and universities—or programs within those institutions—fit this description. And regardless of where and what said progeny intend to study, you and your children have the capacity to make higher education a worthwhile experience. But in general, the task of making college worthwhile cannot be entrusted to colleges. I’ve spent much of my adult life in and around universities and always took great pleasure in helping students to navigate employment markets. Here are five bits of advice from my experience.

Check under the hood before shelling out the money.
Make sure your children understand that their merits are not obvious.
Master at least two things.
Begin the job search no later than the beginning of freshman year.
Reinvent yourself when necessary.

I’ll elaborate below on all five points.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/what-is-dei-spread-college-campuses

The phrase diversity, equity, and inclusion may appear to be benign, but it has quietly become the latest frontier in the culture war against woke education .

Often billed as necessary programs and trainings to ensure racially diverse and successful institutions, diversity, equity, and inclusion, also known as DEI, has been decried for stoking racial resentment and prioritizing physical characteristics over merit.

The commonplace programs, which opponents say are just another example of the prevalence of critical race theory in contemporary institutions, have forced college students and many corporate employees to sit through hours of discussions on maintaining a diverse and “inclusive” space.

The expansion of DEI has proved financially lucrative for some, as it has created an entirely new class of employee. In 2022, LinkedIn ranked diversity and inclusion manager as the second-fastest growing job over the past five years.

In higher education, the programs continually rolled out of DEI offices are changing the entire collegiate experience by requiring a host of trainings and programs for students and faculty, beginning with freshman orientation.

In 2021, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, released a report highlighting what it called “DEI bloat” in university administrative offices. The report found that the 65 universities that made up the “power five” conferences had an average of 45 employees tasked with “promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The University of Michigan took the title for the most DEI employees with 163, far more than the University of Virginia and the Ohio State University, which both had 94.

https://www.city-journal.org/recapturing-higher-education

The most significant political story of the past half-century is the activist Left’s “long march through the institutions.” Beginning in the 1960s, left-wing activists and intellectuals, inspired by theorists such as Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci and New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse, made a concerted effort to embed their ideas in education, government, philanthropy, media, and other important sectors.

This process came to spectacular fruition following the 2020 death of George Floyd, when it seemed that every prestige institution in the United States got busy advancing the same ideological line on race, gender, and culture—which, whether they knew it or not, mimicked the precise themes that the old radicals had originally proposed. 

The long march through the institutions, in other words, was complete.

But conservatives, too, have updated their playbook. They have read their Gramsci and have begun to understand that ideological capture poses a grave threat to the American system. President Donald Trump shook conservatives out of their complacency with instinctual, if sometimes crude, cultural countermeasures. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has built on this approach, offering a sophisticated policy agenda for protecting families against captured bureaucracies.

Last week, DeSantis raised the stakes and proposed, for the first time, a strategy for reversing the long march through the institutions, beginning with what Marcuse believed was the initial revolutionary institution: the university. The governor appointed a slate of new trustees to the board of the New College of Florida, a notoriously left-wing campus, similar to that of Evergreen State in Olympia, Washington. DeSantis tasked the new board with transforming it into, to quote the governor’s chief of staff, the “Hillsdale of the South”—in other words, a classical liberal arts college that provides a distinctly traditional brand of education and scholarship.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/2-american-revolutions/

Evidently, the Chinese are actually not the source of the curse “May you live in interesting times.”  But whatever its source, that curse seems to have landed on us in double strength.  Our time is more than interesting—it is revolutionary.  The revolution you and I are living through is a counter-revolution; it is un-doing the America which was made at the founding.

A serious scholar has presented the un-making of America with startling clarity in a Frontpage article, and another serious scholar has told the story of the making of America with unprecedented precision and in astonishing detail.  Together, they tell the tale of where we are, where we came from, and, unless we manage to change America’s direction, where America is headed.

If you missed Bruce Thornton’s recent posting here at Frontpage about what has happened to education in America, I encourage you to read it.

“Today our educational institutions are grubby, rent-seeking businesses, and propaganda organs for illiberal, incoherent ideologies based on the “higher nonsense” that has captured “higher education,” and from there trickled down into K-12 schools.”

That was not the case when Thornton’s university teaching career began in 1977. Today, a serious scholar like Bruce Thornton is no longer welcome.  Real scholars have been replaced by propagandists, as America’s universities abandoned their reason for existing.

What is astonishing about this transformation is how quickly it happened.  In the span of a single career, America’s educational institutions were transformed.  The “higher nonsense” replaced the best that has been known and thought so rapidly that it was fully accomplished before most people noticed.  Americans continued donating to their alma mater without realizing it was no longer even the same kind of place it had been when they were there.

The consequences of this revolution are grim, terrible, horrific: the un-making of America. 

https://pjmedia.com/culture/lincolnbrown/2023/01/10/dear-young-people-college-is-lame-get-a-job-n1660538

Young people, are you ready for success? Want a career in a rewarding field that will lead to a fulfilling life? Don’t go to college. Be an electrician, be a plumber, be a welder,  be a carpenter — hell, learn to code — but for heaven’s sake and for that matter, your own, don’t go to college. I know some of you are months or even years away from high school graduation, but: Don’t. Go. To. College. Okay, so if you want to be a doctor, lawyer, or physicist (more on that below), maybe look for a college that does not double as an asylum. Other than that, treat college campuses like the radioactive waste depots that they have become.

Back when I was your age, everybody had to go to college. “Get a liberal arts degree,” my mother said. “You can do anything with a liberal arts degree.” You can’t do much with a liberal arts degree in the 21st century. Actually, you couldn’t do much with one in the 20th century, but no one seemed to know that. We were all supposed to go to college. One person told me to skip it and be a plumber. Not a day goes by that I do not rue failing to heed that advice.

Today, oh young people, college is likely to be a monumental waste of time and money: time you could have spent learning how to do something that people need; and money you could have been earning instead of waiting to see if Biden’s magical student loan forgiveness plan will take root and blossom. (Hint: the election is over. You won’t hear anything more about that until 2024.)

If you do go to college, you may be looking for a challenging atmosphere, an exchange of ideas, and opportunities to grow and craft a future. Instead, like Coleridge’s ancient mariner, you will find yourself on a tiny raft, adrift on a cold, gray, featureless sea with a rotting albatross of a student loan hanging on your neck. And if you don’t get that reference, find someone with a liberal arts degree. Once they explain it, ask if that explanation was worth all the money they paid.

College is lame and depressing. For example:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has appointed a number of conservatives to the board of the uber-left New College of Florida. One student said, “I got really sad and then just, like, laid down.” Just, like, laid down. It’s a board, kid, you didn’t get a terminal diagnosis. Students are also concerned that their personal safety is at risk, according to The Daily Caller. At risk from what? A different idea?

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-dei-is-supplanting-truth-as-the

One of the things The Free Press has been doing since its inception is documenting and exposing how many of our most important institutions—medicine, the media, the law—are increasingly being captured by an ideology that is hollowing out their core functions.

Today, John Sailer, a fellow at the National Association of Scholars, tells the story of how that’s happening at American universities across the country.

You don’t have to have ever stepped foot on a college campus to care about the revelations in today’s piece. Because as we’ve seen again and again, what happens on campus doesn’t stay there. It’s just a preview of what’s coming for the rest of us. — BW

In June 2020, Gordon Klein, a longtime accounting lecturer at UCLA, made the news after a student emailed him asking him to grade black students more leniently in the wake of the “unjust murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.”

Klein’s response was blunt. It stated in part:

Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota. Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we’ve been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half? 

He went on:

Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the “color of their skin.” Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition?

Thanks, G. Klein

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/01/04/with_schools_ditching_merit_for_diversity_families_of_high_achievers_say_were_out_of_here_872909.html

Alex Shilkrut has deep roots in Manhattan, where he has lived for 16 years, works as a physician, and sends his daughter to a public elementary school for gifted students in coveted District 2. 

It’s a good life. But Shilkrut regretfully says he may leave the city, as well as a job he likes in a Manhattan hospital, because of sweeping changes in October that ended selective admissions in most New York City middle schools.

These merit-based schools, which screened for students who met their high standards, will permanently switch to a lottery for admissions that will almost certainly enroll more blacks and Latinos in the pursuit of racial integration.  

Shilkrut is one of many parents who are dismayed by the city’s dismantling of competitive education. He says he values diversity but is concerned that the expectation that academic rigor will be scaled back to accommodate a broad range of students in a lottery is what’s driving him and other parents to seek alternatives.

Although it’s too early to know how many students might leave the school system due to the enrollment changes, some parents say they may opt for private education at $50,000 a year and others plan to uproot their lives for the suburbs despite the burdens of such moves. 
 
“We will very likely leave the public schools,” says Shilkrut, adding that he knows 10 Manhattan families who also plan to depart. “And if these policies continue, there won’t be many middle- and upper middle-class families left in the public schools.” 

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2023/01/03/science_and_math_teaching_need_an_upgrade_110805.html

The United States needs mathematicians and scientists who can, among other things, learn about the natural world, discover new technologies, and help the country maintain its military advantage over China. As presently operating, American public K-12 schools aren’t up to the job. Far too many of our children graduate from high school without enough knowledge of mathematics and science to prepare them for college, much less for a career. They aren’t even educated sufficiently to judge news reports and public policy proposals that require mathematical and scientific knowledge.

State education departments need first to ensure that mathematics standards correctly sequence mathematics instruction in order to provide sufficient classroom time for rigorous education. Education reformers should make sure that K-12 schools teach Algebra I in the eighth grade as the foundation for four years of high school mathematics education. All K-7 mathematics standards should be aligned to prepare students to take and pass Algebra I in the eighth grade. High school mathematics standards should include Algebra II, Geometry, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, and either Introductory Calculus or Introductory Statistics.

Statistics is an intrinsically important subject and an extraordinarily useful one for scientific careers. State education standards should allow local school districts to choose whether to cap the mathematics sequence with Introductory Calculus, Introductory Statistics, or both. Earlier K-12 mathematics standards should incorporate the suggestions of the American Statistical Association to make sure that students are as ready at the end of the eleventh grade to take a course in Introductory Statistics as they are to take a course in Introductory Calculus. 

Of course, not every K-12 student will go on to a scientific career. But all K-12 students should learn basic statistical and scientific literacy, and especially how to detect specious arguments presented in the guise of scientific authority. Every high school student should take a course in science literacy, which should teach students to understand, evaluate, and apply basic statistical and scientific concepts when they appear in media and public policy. This course should be organized around four sequences devoted to statistics literacy, risk analysis, experimental design, and the irreproducibility crisis of modern science. Students should learn to use these skills both as citizens judging journalism and policy and as businessmen and administrators making professional decisions.

 https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/12/26/former_university_president_gets_16m_parting_gift_871735.html

The former president of Colorado State University collected a payout of almost $1.6 million. The university won’t say why she left before the end of her planned tenure.

Joyce McConnell’s annual salary was $550,000 per year. In the June separation agreement between McConnell and CSU Board of Governors, she was paid $1,572,725 as a result of ending her contract early. McConnell signed a five-year agreement in 2019, keeping her employed as president through 2024, The Coloradoan reported.

Neither McConnell nor officials at the public university will say why she left. Colorado state taxpayers have a right to know why she was paid the equivalent of three years of salary.

She was the university’s first female president, having come from West Virginia University where she served as provost and vice president for academic affairs.

Amy Parsons, a former senior administrator at Colorado State University at Fort Collins, is her most likely replacement, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.