Good news:‘Hundreds, if not thousands’ of universities will soon be ‘walking dead.’
31 Replies to “What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?”
I enjoyed teaching my boys (7&11) during the lockdown. Even though they were doing their school assigned work, I taught it without the indoctrination.
I am going to assume that they will be back at school in the fall…as well as colleges/universities. They won’t want these kids to think on their own for too long.
Bless you, John. You and your kids are the only true HOPE we have as a culture.
How refreshing to hear a parent say how much they ENJOYED having their kids home and teaching them. The dominant meme was how mommy needed and extra bottle of wine every night to help her forget the kids.
Good news
On the other hand, Zombies seem to be very popular these days
“If only there had been some sort of warning”, that is, how the information age will save education.
Yep, get your Gender Theory or French Literature degree from the comfort of your own home. Think of all the money you’ll be saving while getting an equally worthless education.
Good riddance to the zombie factories, now the Zombies are running amok in the streets, send in the National Guard and put em down.
The critical issue is stated right here:
“Students I think across America along with their families listening in on these Zoom classes are all beginning to wonder what kind of value, or lack thereof, they’re getting for their tuition dollars,” he said.”
A university education can be likened to a luxury brand. It commands a high price because there was a promised high future financial return. It may well be that the Higher Education Industry is killing its own market by providing overpriced product that has little or no actual practical use. Such is obviously not the case with the pure or applied sciences, the classical humanities, but may be increasingly the case for a host of specialized programs in what are basically offshoots of Sociology and Psychology.
Make no mistake, the top, most prestigious institutions such as US Ivy League should survive just fine. But there are a host of less well known, less prestigious universities and colleges that might well wither on the vine. The current economic depression should have the result of clearing out a lot of economic deadwood.
Unfortunately, the publicly supported universities will still keep functioning. The government will always guarantee that the lights will stay on even if it’s only for public relations.
Mind you, some of those institutions might merge. Westerra Institute of Technology in Stony Plain was closed down about 30 years ago after starting up in the early 1980s. Its remnants transferred to the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton (NAIT). I’m not sure whether Westerra was a public or private institution but NAIT certainly is. From what I heard, money was the reason.
Similarly, the former Camrose Lutheran College (originally supported by the church) became Augustana University College about 40 years ago when it started offering degrees. Around the middle of the previous decade, it became part of the University of Alberta. Reading between the lines, it sounded like the place was sold to the U of A for a token dollar.
Same thing happened to Waterloo Lutheran University. It became Wilfrid Laurier University. And guess what,? They excoriated Lindsay Shepherd. Great progress.
Won’t they soon be changing their name again since Wilfred Laurier is now being excoriated for sins in the past?
Next name change ” The Diversity” ? Their specialty “Monomaniacal Studies:.
It will entail much more than than just trying to lower cost.
The ‘product’ they are turning out does not respond in today’s economic climate. Students are graduating with useless degrees in ‘social studies’ that have zero relevance in the world. They (students) have huge debt and no prospect of a job. Their degree prepares them for a career at Walmart and life in their parents basement. This is not a system that can be sustained.
The future is uncertain. The debt this country and others have taken on will have to be addressed. This is not a climate that bodes well for Canadian universities. Factor in the uncertainty of foreign students and the lucrative tuition they bring with them. There might be a precipitous drop in foreign students.
The bottom line is Canada has too many universities that are out of step with the marketplace. Market forces are coming to bear.
The bottom line is Canada has too many universities that are out of step with the marketplace.
It isn’t just that. Education has been turned into a commodity. When I was an undergrad (some time during the Devonian Era), universities and colleges advertising themselves and their “products” would have been considered unthinkable. By the time I started teaching at Armpit College, it was beginning. Now, those ads are everywhere.
In order to successfully peddle their product, admission standards were adjusted….. downward. The promise AC made was that whatever the students were deficient in, we would make up for it. I often had to spend up to a quarter of my time in lectures going over material that should have been learned in high school in order that I could actually teach what was in the course curriculum.
When I objected, I was given lame excuses, such as having to work with what I’ve been given. The administrators at all levels largely didn’t care, just as long as the bodies showed up, paid their money, and were pushed through to make space for new ones. And if any of them didn’t pass, guess who got blamed?
I had to teach people who expected a free ride. I had to teach people whose command of English was barely acceptable. I had to teach people who couldn’t compose a simple sentence nor could they clearly express themselves. I had to teach people who barely understood even the simplest concepts in the course and who made no effort to do anything about it. I had to teach people who shamelessly cheated and knew they could get away with it because I wasn’t allowed to do anything and my superiors refused to punish them.
I had to teach all them and make sure that the class average was at least 60%. Anything less might besmirch Armpit College’s reputation for “student success” and could jeopardize government “gravy” funding, extra money that would be granted based on “customer satisfaction”.
It was basically teach to the numbers and let society take its chances. That doctrine, I fear, won’t change any time soon.
Maybe, but I no longer accept university degrees at face value. In my side business, I give written tests and exams. This weeds out the wankers before they even get to the interview stage.
I justify it very simply: this is 2nd year varsity material. If they can’t do it, how did they graduate, exactly?
Oh and never hire anyone who took 6+ years to do an undergrad. Unless they were a self-funded parents working two jobs and studying in the evenings.
While I was finishing my second master’s degree, I overheard one of my profs berating some undergrads, who, I assumed, were in their senior year. He said something like: “That’s stuff you should have learned as a sophomore! How did you manage to get this far?”
My respect for him went up after hearing that. I took a pair of courses from him two years earlier. He was tough, his exams were killers, but boy! did we learn a lot from him. However, by the time I heard that comment, he wasn’t terribly popular with the students because he was tough and demanding.
After I got my Ph. D., I happened to cross paths with him. I thanked him for expecting so much from me as I think he might have been responsible for me completing my doctorate, giving me the determination to tough it out.
Sadly, I don’t think there are professors like him in engineering any more.
And it is hardly a unique feature of Armpit College. You could be describing undergraduate education at almost any Canadian university. Almost every student I’ve taught for a generation *already had “earned” an undergraduate degree* before I encountered them, and a good number of them were certified “professionals”. I’ve had many excellent students, hard-working, intellectually curious, honest, principled, and articulate people; sitting with them in Convocation, however, are an even greater number of people who meet some of the criteria you describe above, who will be handed an identical parchment and will be able equally to place their degree on their resume. Like a prisoner, I mark an “X” each day on the calendar pointing to the day of retirement, hoping to avoid “cancel culture” and obtain the academic equivalent of an honourable discharge.
There are a handful of serious post-secondary liberal arts colleges in Canada, most, if not all, faith-based. People who valued their own liberal arts education should, in their charitable giving, set aside whatever they have normally given to the universities from which they graduated, recognize that those universities are counterfeits of their former selves, and send that much-needed money to authentic institutions which will use it to give their students an authentic education.
Queen’s university’s law school has decided to remove the name “Macdonald” from its main building, because Sir John A. was a…something-or-other. I am an alumnus of the university, and will be contacting the alumni department to take my name from all contact lists.
It’s not just quality. Most kids go to school now for the credential and the connections. You take away the latter with online learning and it’s a big issue. I know a few friends’ kids who are deferring cause the school is online in the fall. This is going to have big impacts in Canada as well.
Most kids go to school now for the credential and the connections.
It was like that while I was an undergrad in the 1970s. Make the connections now and get the promotions and win the deals later on. Actually trying to learn the course material because it might be useful or important was irrelevant.
Where I live, I have spoken to three families who previously had their elementary and high school kids in public schools. They won’t be going back. All three found they could teach what the kids learned at school in about 2 or 3 hours at home. No distractions, no bullies, no sexual attacks, no non-ending testing programs, no wide range of teacher abilities, no administrations and unions protecting incompetent teachers. In my area, the home schooled and charter schools (attended by internet) get together for sports, social events, and even graduations. The parents are finding out that their children don’t need or want the ignorant bullshit that comes with a public school education. Covid hasn’t killed a semi-useless institution, but it winged it.
Thank you for confirming my bias. I truly believe that public education will be much reduced or “gone” within 20 years. It is my understanding (I could be wrong!) that REgina Christian School is expanding as parents are willing to pay the tuition to ensure their sons and daughters receive a good education (and being Christian is a bonus!). They also are the only ones accredited to teach the International Baccalaureate Program. My daughter did the Math and Science certificate (she was a bit lazy and did not want to do full IB) and I will be forever grateful. It set her up well for university and she is now a successful computer programer.
Only the lazy, poor or “less than special” parents will put their children into the public schools. Sadly, we as the taxpayer, will still have to subsidize it.
It’s become obvious, to vote for any major political party results in maintaining “secret” policies and values never openly stated by those parties. There is essentially a UniParty in every Western English speaking nation. The differences are merely around the edges so it’s impossible to vote to defeat them when you get the other washing powder same as before in a different brightly coloured packet.
Matters not who gets your vote, you get some version of a fabian socialist, ruinous welfare Statist, Keynesian money destroyer, Stasi social “activist”, corporate/union rent seeker, closet marxist green etc etc.
The left captured politics because it brilliantly captured education, simple as that.
The Don is the only exception I can see anywhere. Once he’s retired in 4 years, it will be back to business as usual. Look to your affairs, plan ahead for that if you can.
The humanities have been dropping in enrollment for the past ten years. The pandemic and demographics suggest that this trend will continue, and perhaps accelerate.
Higher education, the effect that causes failure in logical thinking, and promotes the dunning-kruger effect. Give me experience any day, as it means the person has learned something useful.
Khan Academy:
“The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined
by Salman Khan”
Defunding victimhood theory faculties would be for society like the resection of a tumor for the cancer patient.
They only lead to hate and destruction.
I read Reynolds’ book recently. It’s a good read. Essentially the modern K-12 education system is an adaptation of a mid-late 19th century Prussian system which was intended to produce workers for a growing industrial economy in a very militaristic society. It served its intended purpose but never really adapted to the modern world. As for the universities, essentially he posits what most of us already know, i.e. that with a few exceptions they long ago abandoned any pretext of promoting excellence in any academic discipline and simply degenerated into self-perpetuating cash generating sinecures for academic mediocrities and bureaucrats.
The whacko profs are going to be on the losing side of this COVID BS when students just take the course remotely. Their influence and tenure may not be as secure.
Let us face facts. Universities have lost their focus. Yes, they are elite institutions designed to train the brightest minds. Listen to Jordan Peterson’s truthful lectures on intelligence and what people of various IQs are capable of doing. High school and job-focused colleges should be the place to train over 50% of the population, not university.
2.2% of people have very superior IQs and 6.7% have superior IQs and they will become the STEM researchers of the future. Simply fact. We should be training them better vs. admitting the lesser cohort of folks in the 110-119 IQ cohort 16.1%. Less than half of them, only those with high conscientious as as personality trait should be there. This is why all the universities have been dumbed down, as everyone says get a degree, but now those degrees are worthless and expensive. Most of these folks should go to college to learn a specific trade.
We will always have to provide care for many of the 15% of low IQ people, below 90 through social services and families.
Add to this mix new full pay immigrants, who graduate without really speaking or reading English or French. There are way too many people going to university in Canada, and our best people are not being educated well.
That is good news. So much wasted time, money, and young lives.
When we are ruled by effete elites,the definition of “Best People” can be very different to best equipt.
The natural greed and lust for power of very small men,is proudly demonstrated in our universities.
They are not just out of touch.
They are a cancer of civil society.
Cancel culture is what they do.
Let them add Molotov Cocktail tossing and explosive vest testing to the javelin catching they already feature.
Fine homes for the homeless.
The real estate is very nice,good locations and what “better use” than housing the lazy,shiftless and insane..who currently infest our under-bridges,parks and public spaces.
Funny how the homeless describe the activist student/staff so well.
The future?
I was amused when Justine’s People piled into this country and filled up the student residences,as this too was a better use of these publicly funded buildings.
But even then it struck me a most interesting that the fake refugees got priority over Canadians down in their luck or insane..
Universities are doomed,because they bit the hand that feeds them,became vanity projects of government and now the governments are out of OPM.
So Sad.
Too Bad.
The quest for mass university education was achieved by turning it into just another bums in chairs project. I can’t see how they can call the results graduating since that word means ranking the students ability which is, as we all have been told, unfair. We’re all equal !
Rochdale anyone ?
I enjoyed teaching my boys (7&11) during the lockdown. Even though they were doing their school assigned work, I taught it without the indoctrination.
I am going to assume that they will be back at school in the fall…as well as colleges/universities. They won’t want these kids to think on their own for too long.
Bless you, John. You and your kids are the only true HOPE we have as a culture.
How refreshing to hear a parent say how much they ENJOYED having their kids home and teaching them. The dominant meme was how mommy needed and extra bottle of wine every night to help her forget the kids.
Good news
On the other hand, Zombies seem to be very popular these days
“If only there had been some sort of warning”, that is, how the information age will save education.
Yep, get your Gender Theory or French Literature degree from the comfort of your own home. Think of all the money you’ll be saving while getting an equally worthless education.
Good riddance to the zombie factories, now the Zombies are running amok in the streets, send in the National Guard and put em down.
The critical issue is stated right here:
“Students I think across America along with their families listening in on these Zoom classes are all beginning to wonder what kind of value, or lack thereof, they’re getting for their tuition dollars,” he said.”
A university education can be likened to a luxury brand. It commands a high price because there was a promised high future financial return. It may well be that the Higher Education Industry is killing its own market by providing overpriced product that has little or no actual practical use. Such is obviously not the case with the pure or applied sciences, the classical humanities, but may be increasingly the case for a host of specialized programs in what are basically offshoots of Sociology and Psychology.
Make no mistake, the top, most prestigious institutions such as US Ivy League should survive just fine. But there are a host of less well known, less prestigious universities and colleges that might well wither on the vine. The current economic depression should have the result of clearing out a lot of economic deadwood.
Unfortunately, the publicly supported universities will still keep functioning. The government will always guarantee that the lights will stay on even if it’s only for public relations.
Mind you, some of those institutions might merge. Westerra Institute of Technology in Stony Plain was closed down about 30 years ago after starting up in the early 1980s. Its remnants transferred to the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton (NAIT). I’m not sure whether Westerra was a public or private institution but NAIT certainly is. From what I heard, money was the reason.
Similarly, the former Camrose Lutheran College (originally supported by the church) became Augustana University College about 40 years ago when it started offering degrees. Around the middle of the previous decade, it became part of the University of Alberta. Reading between the lines, it sounded like the place was sold to the U of A for a token dollar.
Same thing happened to Waterloo Lutheran University. It became Wilfrid Laurier University. And guess what,? They excoriated Lindsay Shepherd. Great progress.
Won’t they soon be changing their name again since Wilfred Laurier is now being excoriated for sins in the past?
Next name change ” The Diversity” ? Their specialty “Monomaniacal Studies:.
It will entail much more than than just trying to lower cost.
The ‘product’ they are turning out does not respond in today’s economic climate. Students are graduating with useless degrees in ‘social studies’ that have zero relevance in the world. They (students) have huge debt and no prospect of a job. Their degree prepares them for a career at Walmart and life in their parents basement. This is not a system that can be sustained.
The future is uncertain. The debt this country and others have taken on will have to be addressed. This is not a climate that bodes well for Canadian universities. Factor in the uncertainty of foreign students and the lucrative tuition they bring with them. There might be a precipitous drop in foreign students.
The bottom line is Canada has too many universities that are out of step with the marketplace. Market forces are coming to bear.
The bottom line is Canada has too many universities that are out of step with the marketplace.
It isn’t just that. Education has been turned into a commodity. When I was an undergrad (some time during the Devonian Era), universities and colleges advertising themselves and their “products” would have been considered unthinkable. By the time I started teaching at Armpit College, it was beginning. Now, those ads are everywhere.
In order to successfully peddle their product, admission standards were adjusted….. downward. The promise AC made was that whatever the students were deficient in, we would make up for it. I often had to spend up to a quarter of my time in lectures going over material that should have been learned in high school in order that I could actually teach what was in the course curriculum.
When I objected, I was given lame excuses, such as having to work with what I’ve been given. The administrators at all levels largely didn’t care, just as long as the bodies showed up, paid their money, and were pushed through to make space for new ones. And if any of them didn’t pass, guess who got blamed?
I had to teach people who expected a free ride. I had to teach people whose command of English was barely acceptable. I had to teach people who couldn’t compose a simple sentence nor could they clearly express themselves. I had to teach people who barely understood even the simplest concepts in the course and who made no effort to do anything about it. I had to teach people who shamelessly cheated and knew they could get away with it because I wasn’t allowed to do anything and my superiors refused to punish them.
I had to teach all them and make sure that the class average was at least 60%. Anything less might besmirch Armpit College’s reputation for “student success” and could jeopardize government “gravy” funding, extra money that would be granted based on “customer satisfaction”.
It was basically teach to the numbers and let society take its chances. That doctrine, I fear, won’t change any time soon.
Maybe, but I no longer accept university degrees at face value. In my side business, I give written tests and exams. This weeds out the wankers before they even get to the interview stage.
I justify it very simply: this is 2nd year varsity material. If they can’t do it, how did they graduate, exactly?
Oh and never hire anyone who took 6+ years to do an undergrad. Unless they were a self-funded parents working two jobs and studying in the evenings.
While I was finishing my second master’s degree, I overheard one of my profs berating some undergrads, who, I assumed, were in their senior year. He said something like: “That’s stuff you should have learned as a sophomore! How did you manage to get this far?”
My respect for him went up after hearing that. I took a pair of courses from him two years earlier. He was tough, his exams were killers, but boy! did we learn a lot from him. However, by the time I heard that comment, he wasn’t terribly popular with the students because he was tough and demanding.
After I got my Ph. D., I happened to cross paths with him. I thanked him for expecting so much from me as I think he might have been responsible for me completing my doctorate, giving me the determination to tough it out.
Sadly, I don’t think there are professors like him in engineering any more.
And it is hardly a unique feature of Armpit College. You could be describing undergraduate education at almost any Canadian university. Almost every student I’ve taught for a generation *already had “earned” an undergraduate degree* before I encountered them, and a good number of them were certified “professionals”. I’ve had many excellent students, hard-working, intellectually curious, honest, principled, and articulate people; sitting with them in Convocation, however, are an even greater number of people who meet some of the criteria you describe above, who will be handed an identical parchment and will be able equally to place their degree on their resume. Like a prisoner, I mark an “X” each day on the calendar pointing to the day of retirement, hoping to avoid “cancel culture” and obtain the academic equivalent of an honourable discharge.
There are a handful of serious post-secondary liberal arts colleges in Canada, most, if not all, faith-based. People who valued their own liberal arts education should, in their charitable giving, set aside whatever they have normally given to the universities from which they graduated, recognize that those universities are counterfeits of their former selves, and send that much-needed money to authentic institutions which will use it to give their students an authentic education.
Queen’s university’s law school has decided to remove the name “Macdonald” from its main building, because Sir John A. was a…something-or-other. I am an alumnus of the university, and will be contacting the alumni department to take my name from all contact lists.
It’s not just quality. Most kids go to school now for the credential and the connections. You take away the latter with online learning and it’s a big issue. I know a few friends’ kids who are deferring cause the school is online in the fall. This is going to have big impacts in Canada as well.
Most kids go to school now for the credential and the connections.
It was like that while I was an undergrad in the 1970s. Make the connections now and get the promotions and win the deals later on. Actually trying to learn the course material because it might be useful or important was irrelevant.
Where I live, I have spoken to three families who previously had their elementary and high school kids in public schools. They won’t be going back. All three found they could teach what the kids learned at school in about 2 or 3 hours at home. No distractions, no bullies, no sexual attacks, no non-ending testing programs, no wide range of teacher abilities, no administrations and unions protecting incompetent teachers. In my area, the home schooled and charter schools (attended by internet) get together for sports, social events, and even graduations. The parents are finding out that their children don’t need or want the ignorant bullshit that comes with a public school education. Covid hasn’t killed a semi-useless institution, but it winged it.
Thank you for confirming my bias. I truly believe that public education will be much reduced or “gone” within 20 years. It is my understanding (I could be wrong!) that REgina Christian School is expanding as parents are willing to pay the tuition to ensure their sons and daughters receive a good education (and being Christian is a bonus!). They also are the only ones accredited to teach the International Baccalaureate Program. My daughter did the Math and Science certificate (she was a bit lazy and did not want to do full IB) and I will be forever grateful. It set her up well for university and she is now a successful computer programer.
Only the lazy, poor or “less than special” parents will put their children into the public schools. Sadly, we as the taxpayer, will still have to subsidize it.
It’s become obvious, to vote for any major political party results in maintaining “secret” policies and values never openly stated by those parties. There is essentially a UniParty in every Western English speaking nation. The differences are merely around the edges so it’s impossible to vote to defeat them when you get the other washing powder same as before in a different brightly coloured packet.
Matters not who gets your vote, you get some version of a fabian socialist, ruinous welfare Statist, Keynesian money destroyer, Stasi social “activist”, corporate/union rent seeker, closet marxist green etc etc.
The left captured politics because it brilliantly captured education, simple as that.
The Don is the only exception I can see anywhere. Once he’s retired in 4 years, it will be back to business as usual. Look to your affairs, plan ahead for that if you can.
The humanities have been dropping in enrollment for the past ten years. The pandemic and demographics suggest that this trend will continue, and perhaps accelerate.
Higher education, the effect that causes failure in logical thinking, and promotes the dunning-kruger effect. Give me experience any day, as it means the person has learned something useful.
Khan Academy:
“The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined
by Salman Khan”
“In THE ONE WORLD SCHOOLHOUSE, Khan presents his radical vision for the future of education, as well as his own remarkable story, for the first time.”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15898640-the-one-world-schoolhouse
https://patch.com/california/carlsbad/khan-academy-key-to-school-reform
Defunding victimhood theory faculties would be for society like the resection of a tumor for the cancer patient.
They only lead to hate and destruction.
I read Reynolds’ book recently. It’s a good read. Essentially the modern K-12 education system is an adaptation of a mid-late 19th century Prussian system which was intended to produce workers for a growing industrial economy in a very militaristic society. It served its intended purpose but never really adapted to the modern world. As for the universities, essentially he posits what most of us already know, i.e. that with a few exceptions they long ago abandoned any pretext of promoting excellence in any academic discipline and simply degenerated into self-perpetuating cash generating sinecures for academic mediocrities and bureaucrats.
The whacko profs are going to be on the losing side of this COVID BS when students just take the course remotely. Their influence and tenure may not be as secure.
Let us face facts. Universities have lost their focus. Yes, they are elite institutions designed to train the brightest minds. Listen to Jordan Peterson’s truthful lectures on intelligence and what people of various IQs are capable of doing. High school and job-focused colleges should be the place to train over 50% of the population, not university.
2.2% of people have very superior IQs and 6.7% have superior IQs and they will become the STEM researchers of the future. Simply fact. We should be training them better vs. admitting the lesser cohort of folks in the 110-119 IQ cohort 16.1%. Less than half of them, only those with high conscientious as as personality trait should be there. This is why all the universities have been dumbed down, as everyone says get a degree, but now those degrees are worthless and expensive. Most of these folks should go to college to learn a specific trade.
We will always have to provide care for many of the 15% of low IQ people, below 90 through social services and families.
Add to this mix new full pay immigrants, who graduate without really speaking or reading English or French. There are way too many people going to university in Canada, and our best people are not being educated well.
That is good news. So much wasted time, money, and young lives.
When we are ruled by effete elites,the definition of “Best People” can be very different to best equipt.
The natural greed and lust for power of very small men,is proudly demonstrated in our universities.
They are not just out of touch.
They are a cancer of civil society.
Cancel culture is what they do.
Let them add Molotov Cocktail tossing and explosive vest testing to the javelin catching they already feature.
Fine homes for the homeless.
The real estate is very nice,good locations and what “better use” than housing the lazy,shiftless and insane..who currently infest our under-bridges,parks and public spaces.
Funny how the homeless describe the activist student/staff so well.
The future?
I was amused when Justine’s People piled into this country and filled up the student residences,as this too was a better use of these publicly funded buildings.
But even then it struck me a most interesting that the fake refugees got priority over Canadians down in their luck or insane..
Universities are doomed,because they bit the hand that feeds them,became vanity projects of government and now the governments are out of OPM.
So Sad.
Too Bad.
The quest for mass university education was achieved by turning it into just another bums in chairs project. I can’t see how they can call the results graduating since that word means ranking the students ability which is, as we all have been told, unfair. We’re all equal !
Rochdale anyone ?