On Academia | Institutes of Higher and Lower Learning

[Typhoon]

City J | The College Bureaucracy That Never Shrinks

[Simple Minded]

excellent article. thanks for posting.

The ever increasing number of parasites the host body nurtures is endangering the health of the host body?

Who is surprised?

As Thomas Sowell said, "Some ideas are so ridiculous that only an intellectual could believe them."

[Typhoon]

Quillette | After Academia

I keep being invited to talk about free speech on college campuses and every time I’m invited I make the same point: that this isn’t about free speech and this is only tangentially about college campuses. This is about a breakdown in the basic logic of civilisation, and it’s spreading. College campuses may be the first dramatic battle but of course this is going to find its way into the courts; it’s already found its way into the tech sector. It’s going to find its way to the highest level of governance if we aren’t careful, and it actually does jeopardise the ability of civilisation to continue to function.

~Bret Weinstein

[Simple Minded]

Quillette | After Academia

I keep being invited to talk about free speech on college campuses and every time I’m invited I make the same point: that this isn’t about free speech and this is only tangentially about college campuses. This is about a breakdown in the basic logic of civilisation, and it’s spreading. College campuses may be the first dramatic battle but of course this is going to find its way into the courts; it’s already found its way into the tech sector. It’s going to find its way to the highest level of governance if we aren’t careful, and it actually does jeopardise the ability of civilisation to continue to function.

~Bret Weinstein

Another great article. Thanks for posting.

Reading this makes me glad I'm past the college stage of life and that I attended Technical/Engineering colleges. Hard to imagine this insanity being prominent in any of the schools I attended, even though I'm sure it is present on those campi.

Treating feelings as science never seems to end well. That aspect of human nature seems pretty consistent.

It may be time for the New Humanities to be replaced by the New, New Humanities. Sad to read the University of Rochester has fallen so far. Oh well, they were trying hard to attain Ivy League Yuppie status even back in my day.

Not a good situation, but it does peg the schadenfreude meter to see the little monsters the professional academics created, taking over the asylum and delightfully eating their mentors.

Kinda like Fred doing a half-ass training job an attack dog or buying a lion cub. Then when the animal turns on him, he might realize that, maybe, just maybe, the level of competence he attained wasn't as high as he originally thought. It really sucks to only get self-reflective at that late stage in the game.

in ORZ this is known as "Reaping what you sow!" or on a personal, face to face level: "It couldn't happen to a better guy!"

Cosmic Justice Trumping Social Justice. Would make a great soap opera: "As the Academia Turns.". Writes itself, just run live camera feed!

Time for the Timothy Treadwell Award for Exceptional Academic Mentorship! (tm)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_Man

[Typhoon]

. . .
It may be time for the New Humanities to be replaced by the New, New Humanities. Sad to read the University of Rochester has fallen so far. Oh well, they were trying hard to attain Ivy League Yuppie status even back in my day.
. . .

The physics program at Uni of Roches, especially optics and lasers, was (still is?) first rate.

[Typhoon]

AIER | How a Leftist Echo Chamber Became the New Norm on Campus

A pronounced and growing hostility to free markets has turned the academic humanities into an ideological echo chamber. Over the past 20 years, faculty in English, history, foreign languages, and philosophy have shifted sharply to the political left, resulting in a nearly complete exclusion of dissenting perspectives from these fields.

My previous investigation of this trend found that the most biased majors on campus are now struggling to attract new students, whereas disciplines with greater balance are seeing their majors increase. Ideological homogeneity may comfort faculty and students who already share in a common set of beliefs, but it’s also off-putting to the nearly two-thirds of incoming college freshmen who do not hail from the political left.

A new study of student attitudes about socialism and capitalism provides strong confirmation of the echo chamber effect taking hold of these same disciplines.

[Typhoon]

Not an issue in Japan, but apparently one in the US.

Quillette | The Fight over Alternative Education

[Typhoon]

Good to read that Fred is still at it.

Unz - Fred Reed | The Godding of Dullards, the Death of Math and the Fall of America’s Premier High School

An example of what is coming: From The Independent: “A university professor has claimed teaching maths perpetuates “unearned” white privilege…Titled “Building Support for Scholarly Practices in Mathematics Methods”, Ms Gutierrez argues a focus on Pythagorean theorem and pi feed into the idea that math was (sic) developed by the Greeks and Europeans…Seattle is definitely on the forefront with this,” said Robert Q. Berry III, the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “What they’re doing follows the line of work we hope we can move forward as we think about the history of math and who contributes to that, and also about deepening students’ connection with identity and agency.”

[Typhoon]

The Spectator | Why academics hold Thatcher and Trump in such contempt

The academics themselves would claim, and no doubt believe, that their animus derives from their superior humanity. But I have an alternative theory, and it’s a simple one: insecurity.

Trump, the great deal maker (in his own mind at least) measured success in terms of bottom lines and negotiating outcomes, a philosophy inimical to most academics.

His very presence in the White House was living proof of how far you can go without paper qualifications, or even reading books. Suspicious of the academy and its leftward lurch, he justified withholding funding from institutions that practised affirmative action and had diversity programmes.

Similarly, Thatcher, despite her own academic success, was at heart the grocer’s daughter who weighed the produce in her father’s shops and took fair payment in pounds, shillings and pence.

[Apollonius]

Race and social panic at Haverford: a case study in educational dysfunction - Jonathan Kay, Quillette, 1 December 2020
https://quillette.com/2020/12/01/race-a ... sfunction/

... Of all the Haverford community members I spoke with, the only one who asked to be quoted by name was recently graduated philosophy major Alex Gutierrez, who once summarized the mindset of campus activists in an essay about Jacques Lacan. “Modern activists have psyches that are built for the joy of transgression,” he observed. “They engage in activism so they can repeatedly experience that joy, a joy that is denied them in everyday life because everyday life is dominated by the ethics of pleasure… And so they need to invent fictional dominant orders so that they can defy them. This is why protesters would actually be extremely unhappy if oppression went away. They want white patriarchy to be as powerful as possible, so they can defy it.”

Gutierrez wrote these words before his alma mater fell into upheaval in late October. But his analysis seems apt. When students complained that Raymond had caused them “harm” with her October 28th email, they weren’t really speaking up as activists denouncing racism on campus (since there doesn’t seem to be much of it), but as consumers whose parents paid good money for them to experience the sensation of transgressive social-justice heroism. “Normally, the administrators are the perfect target for student transgression,” Gutierrez told me. “They take the abuse and they’re not supposed to push back. That’s part of their role. That’s what students expect.”

Quillette has always allowed comments but since maybe about six months ago most comments appear only on their discussion forum Quillette Circle.

Many interesting responses including quite a few from parents of the kids who spend $54,000 per year (for tuition alone; these parents indicate that the total cost is closer to $75,000 p.a.) to pay for the kind of education Haverford provides.

[Apollonius]

It's another Haverford.

A student mob took over Bryn Mawr. The college said thank you - Minnie Doe, Quillette, 27 December 2020
https://quillette.com/2020/12/27/a-stud ... thank-you/



Hundreds of responses on Quillette's forum including many from students, parents, and teachers. I posted a few comments myself.

[Simple Minded]

It's another Haverford.

A student mob took over Bryn Mawr. The college said thank you - Minnie Doe, Quillette, 27 December 2020
https://quillette.com/2020/12/27/a-stud ... thank-you/



Hundreds of responses on Quillette's forum including many from students, parents, and teachers. I posted a few comments myself.

Thanks for posting Apollonius. Personally, I love it when the little monsters turn on their creators. Lots of colleges turned into expensive daycare centers long ago. Anyone who is surprised, wasn't paying attention.

The verbal hair-splitting and unlimited dialogue is entertaining. Although, I do think now that words are the same as violence, it will be interesting to see who can talk their opponents to death.

[noddy]

for those of us who ran screaming from the passive aggressive middle class wanker world, I can only look on in awe as their own half baked theories eat them alive.

I dont fear for higher learning so much - this stuff is always in the social studies and arts side of the universities, its not so much in the engineering and science side.

or.. my country is 20 years behind the curve (as usual) and it not going to be a problem in my lifetime

[Simple Minded]

for those of us who ran screaming from the passive aggressive middle class wanker world, I can only look on in awe as their own half baked theories eat them alive.

I dont fear for higher learning so much - this stuff is always in the social studies and arts side of the universities, its not so much in the engineering and science side.

or.. my country is 20 years behind the curve (as usual) and it not going to be a problem in my lifetime

Amen.

It is only the professional intellectuals who can keep the game of "I know you are but what am I?" going long enough to pay off their student loans.

In the STEM schools, they just flunk you out to purge the school of the disease.

XOGWbzUM-y8

[noddy]

the bit ive always found fascinating about all this is that in the hands of the wokelings, its all the fault of the "racist poor right wing whites".

in reality, its the progressive middle class who control the systems, they setup the passive aggressive cube farms which are toxic to anyone who hasnt done the appropriate university training to survive them - a house of card built by them, for them.

its also their suburbs which have strict rules to keep the smelly people out.

the "white privilege" is theirs, the criticisms are valid in many ways.

aslong as the engineering and hard science departments are safe, of course

[Simple Minded]

the bit ive always found fascinating about all this is that in the hands of the wokelings, its all the fault of the "racist poor right wing whites".

in reality, its the progressive middle class who control the systems, they setup the passive aggressive cube farms which are toxic to anyone who hasnt done the appropriate university training to survive them - a house of card built by them, for them.

its also their suburbs which have strict rules to keep the smelly people out.

the "white privilege" is theirs, the criticisms are valid in many ways.

aslong as the engineering and hard science departments are safe, of course

Well said.

The funny part over here is the Liberal, woke, white elitists telling Black people how they should look, talk, think, and behave if they want to be considered "legitimately black." All in the name of saving them from oppression, but not quite freeing them from the burden of being ruled by those with "white privelege."

Seems to be all the rage. "You people need to start behaving!"

Let the humanities schools eat their own. As long as the STEM schools keep the disease out, we won't be progressing back into the Stone Age.

[Simple Minded]

Ya know, its a damn shame CHAZ/CHOP didn't last longer.

I'm sure they would have created zero point energy or perfected warp speed transport shortly after they got this social justice/oppression thing worked out.

Kinda like Al Gore, Joe Biden, and crew solving Climate Change.

[Doc]

Ya know, its a damn shame CHAZ/CHOP didn't last longer.

I'm sure they would have created zero point energy or perfected warp speed transport shortly after they got this social justice/oppression thing worked out.

Kinda like Al Gore, Joe Biden, and crew solving Climate Change.

Give them some credit. At least they created an alternate universe

[Apollonius]

Do our woke universities live up to their own values? - Philip Carl Salzman, Minding the Campus, 28 December 2020
https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2020/1 ... wn-values/

Each of our great universities used to have official mottos that were meant to stand for their values. For example, McGill University’s was “Grandescunt Aucta Labore,” ‘by work, all things increase and grow’; Western University’s was “Veritas et Utilitas,” ‘truth and usefulness’; Queen’s University’s was “Sapientia et Doctrina Stabilitas,” ‘wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times’; Wilfred Laurier University’s was “Veritas Omnia Vincit,” ‘truth conquers all’; and Brandon University’s was “αληθευοντες δε εν αγαπη” ‘speaking the truth in love.’

To avoid provincialism, here are a few American examples: Yale University’s motto was “Lux et Veritas,” ‘light and truth’; Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s was “Mind and Hand”; Duke University’s is “Knowledge and Faith”; my alma mater the University of Chicago’s was “Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so let human life be enriched”; and Harvard University’s was concise “Veritas,” ‘truth.’

By 2020, almost every university in North America has replaced its traditional motto and specified objective with the common motto “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and its more concise label, “social justice.” Truth, knowledge, and wisdom have been replaced in favor of social engineering.

What do woke universities mean by “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and do they live up to their claimed values in practice?

Salzman gives us some impressive statistics from my old alma mater.

60% of the UBC student population is female; 40% male.

65% of the UBC student population is non-white while non-whites represent less than 30% in the population of the province at large.

[Apollonius]

He wants to save classics from whiteness. Can the field survive? - Rachel Poser, New York Times, 2 February 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/maga ... eness.html

Dan-el Padilla Peralta thinks classicists should knock ancient Greece and Rome off their pedestal — even if that means destroying their discipline.

This appeared on Quillette's discussion forum under the title: 'Barbarian wants to destroy what he doesn't understand, then live in the ruins.'

[Simple Minded]

He wants to save classics from whiteness. Can the field survive? - Rachel Poser, New York Times, 2 February 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/maga ... eness.html

Dan-el Padilla Peralta thinks classicists should knock ancient Greece and Rome off their pedestal — even if that means destroying their discipline.

This appeared on Quillette's discussion forum under the title: 'Barbarian wants to destroy what he doesn't understand, then live in the ruins.'

vRp7tYWnJJs

[Typhoon]

. . .

as long as the engineering and hard science departments are safe, of course

In the US, STEM is no longer immune

Draft APS [American Physical Society] Statement On Graduate Admissions

To ensure the long-term health of our discipline, the American Physical Society (APS) considers it vital that graduate physics education be available to those with the potential to make long-term scientific contributions. Graduate admissions practices that rely heavily upon traditional metrics tend to admit less diverse graduate cohorts, causing talented individuals to be excluded. APS urges departments to implement an admissions process to admit students who will go on to succeed in a wide range of careers, including scientific research, technology development, quantitative analysis, public policy, and education.

Context and Actions

Graduate education in physics allows students to gain an advanced understanding of a wide range of topics and enables them to produce knowledge in a specific area. To succeed in graduate school, students must not only possess a sufficient academic background, they must be motivated, accept personal responsibility, enjoy learning, and be able to work independently to tackle problems without known solutions. Graduate admissions committees are charged with identifying students who will be successful both in graduate school and in their subsequent careers. This is a challenging process since students come from a wide variety of educational and personal backgrounds.

We recommend that graduate programs undertake the following actions:

• Agree in advance upon a rubric for use by admissions committee members when reviewing applications

• Ensure that all members of admissions committees are aware of possible unconscious bias, both their own and that which can appear in letters of reference [1]

• Develop methods to search for evidence of perseverance and the ability to overcome challenges—information that can sometimes be gleaned from letters of recommendation, personal statements, and interviews

• Take a considered approach to using the GRE, including being aware of the systematic differences between the scores obtained by different genders and ethnic groups [2,3], the limited utility of these examinations as a primary predictor of graduate student success, and ETS guidelines on GRE scores that include avoiding the use of cutoffs [4].

• Seek ways to offer admissions to students who show ability but need additional (advanced undergraduate level) coursework in order to join the standard graduate track

• Consider interviewing promising applicants who might not otherwise be admitted to get a more complete picture of their strengths and weaknesses

• Encourage colleagues to write detailed letters of recommendation on behalf of their students, including challenges overcome

[1] J. M. Madera et al., “Raising Doubt in Letters of Recommendation for Academia: Gender Differences and Their Impact,” J. Bus. Psychol. 34, 287 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-018-9541-1.

[2] Figure 1 of Casey W. Miller et al., “Typical physics Ph.D. admissions criteria limit access to underrepresented groups but fail to predict doctoral completion,” Sci. Adv. 5, eaat7550 (2019), DOI: 10.112/sciadv.aat7550.
[3] https://www.ets.org/gre/institutions/ad ... presented/; accessed July 7, 2020.
[4] https://www.ets.org/gre/institutions/ad ... guidelines; accessed July 7, 2020.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

In the US, STEM is no longer immune

From getting to the moon to getting a mooning within two generations. None of this will end well.

[Typhoon]

In the US, STEM is no longer immune

From getting to the moon to getting a mooning within two generations. None of this will end well.

STEM grad school is the not place for remedial math.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

In the US, STEM is no longer immune

From getting to the moon to getting a mooning within two generations. None of this will end well.

STEM grad school is the not place for remedial math.

No it isn't. The administrations will be laughing to the bank though; at least until the whole project goes sideways and no one wants US-trained STEM.