Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

New at The Best Schools

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

University affordability expert: Will current government reforms make any real difference to degree costs?

“Colleges have also used the gusher of taxpayer dollars to hire more administrators to manage their bloated bureaucracies and proliferating multicultural programs. The University of California system employs 2,358 administrative staff in just its president’s office.”

Thought for the day: Talent vs. success, and why talent matters more

Wolitzer: “We profess to love talent, and yet what we sometimes love more is the anointing that follows the revelation of talent. Hence the drama of Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream”, which lay not as much in her performance, as in the reaction shots to it”

Could the memoirs you studied in school be fakes? Can you know?

“The vast majority of fake memoirs probably don’t get outed simply because they are not interesting, informative, or significant enough for anyone to bother.”

Humanities prof to trendy materialist psychologist Steve Pinker: Stop caricaturing us

English prof Geoff Shullenberger so advises materialist cognitive psychologist Steve Pinker. That’s somewhat like advising a vampire bat against night flight. If he takes your advice, his career is over. (Note: We could live with that.)”

Is careerism hurting the life of the mind?

“The context is that academics chose, decades ago, to be cool and well-paid (compared to the baggy-suited, penny-pinching prof of yore). But the Law of Cool is merciless … ”

Comments
Citation from linked article:
Many colleges, he notes, are using federal largess to finance Hilton-like dorms and Club Med amenities. Stanford offers more classes in yoga than Shakespeare. … Some college officials are also compensated more handsomely than CEOs. Since 2000, New York University has provided $90 million in loans, many of them zero-interest and forgivable, to administrators and faculty to buy houses and summer homes on Fire Island and the Hamptons. Colleges have also used the gusher of taxpayer dollars to hire more administrators to manage their bloated bureaucracies and proliferating multicultural programs. The University of California system employs 2,358 administrative staff in just its president’s office.
It's not just taxpayer dollars, it's mostly student loan dollars. Look at this chart to see how fast tuition has been rising, compared to the cost of living and even medical care. And student debt, unlike the loans to the administrators at New York University, is non-dischargeable. Not even by bankruptcy. Forget the global warming grift. Higher education is the biggest scam going.jstanley01
September 1, 2013
September
09
Sep
1
01
2013
07:35 PM
7
07
35
PM
PDT
We hacks must live. ;)News
August 30, 2013
August
08
Aug
30
30
2013
05:19 PM
5
05
19
PM
PDT
Wow. You can really write, Denyse. Intriguing throughout, but those last three paragraphs reveal a hilariously sardonic hinterland, science writing could scarcely reflect. 'But the law of cool is merciless....' Reminds me of a similar wry, hilarious turn of phrase of James Howard Kunstler, a kind of doomster/survivalist, remarking how Nature just took its own sweet, inexorable course, quite heedless of any other considerations. Well, the last paragraph is a bit depressing, but so it should be in the 'context'(!).Axel
August 30, 2013
August
08
Aug
30
30
2013
05:03 PM
5
05
03
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply