58% of Republicans in the USA think colleges and universities are bad for the country

[dfitzo53]

We've got Herring Run up here in Bmore, so it can't just be a Virginia thing.

 

Maybe if one of us had been to college we'd be able to figure this stuff out.

[s0crates]

http://amp.nationalreview.com/article/449418/right-wing-populism-next-target-american-higher-education

 

Quote

The Next Right-Wing Populist Will Win by Attacking American Higher Education

by Elliot Kaufman July 13, 2017 4:00 AM

. . .

Republican voters may disagree on policy and principle, but they can agree on whom they don’t like:

Radical professors, race-obsessed provocateurs, gender-studies grifters, anti-Israel fanatics, weak-kneed administrators, disgusting libertines, angry feminists, and illiberal student protesters.

Conservatives can get on board with this critique. They have long railed against the liberal bias of colleges and its effect on America’s young. They might get uncomfortable when the critique gets extreme, of course, but the extreme version of the message is not meant for them. It will hammer the same themes as before but excite populists with different terms. “Radical professors” will become “anti-American” or “Communist.” “Racial provocateurs” will become “anti-white racists.”

In short, everyone will hear what he or she needs to, and respond accordingly. The alt-right will cheer. Conservative thinkers will write treatises on the pernicious influence of radical intellectuals and call for a new type of American university. Policy wonks will cite studies demonstrating the decline in intellectual diversity on American campuses, drawing up plans to lower tuition or expand technical education while noting responsibly that universities are not for everyone. Each story about silly student protesters and each intimation of a speech code will spark a thousand “hot takes,” a Fox News interview, and comment from public officials. Populists will decry the “end of free speech.”

These blows will land for three reasons: 1) They’re partially true; 2) universities and the Left are in denial about their truth; and 3) Republican voters have been primed to believe them.

American higher-education is incredibly screwed up. Only its most servile apologists will deny that. For one, it’s a bubble. Tuition prices never stop rising, far outpacing inflation, even as the services rendered seem to have deteriorated. Exorbitant tuition imposes an immense strain on parents, who often must reshape their lives around paying college bills, and on students, many of whom struggle under the burden of student debt for years after graduation.

 

. . .

[Hersh]

5 hours ago, s0crates said:

http://amp.nationalreview.com/article/449418/right-wing-populism-next-target-american-higher-education

 

 

Says the guy studying political theory and history at Stanford.

[grego]

59 minutes ago, Hersh said:

 

Says the guy studying political theory and history at Stanford.

 

Why the ad hominum? Why not attack the ideas? 

 

I didn't see that so much as an attack on the left (if anything, it's a criticism of higher education) as it seems to be an observation. 

 

He calls Trump a buffoon, so I don't think this is cheerleading. 

[Hersh]

27 minutes ago, grego said:

 

Why the ad hominum? Why not attack the ideas? 

 

I didn't see that so much as an attack on the left (if anything, it's a criticism of higher education) as it seems to be an observation. 

 

He calls Trump a buffoon, so I don't think this is cheerleading. 

A guy atracking studies for not offering the promise of a job and generally bashing higher education is studying political theory at a prestigious university. What a giant ******* hypocrite.

 

Plus, the way he laid out his case is garbage. Anyone that disagrees with his analysis is just "falling into the trap." That's not a starting point to a conversation on higher education. 

[PeterMP]

7 hours ago, s0crates said:

http://amp.nationalreview.com/article/449418/right-wing-populism-next-target-american-higher-education

 

 

First, this is garbage.  It says:

 

"In covering the Pew survey, InsideHigherEd laid blame for the shift in Republican attitudes at the feet of “perceived liberal orthodoxy and political correctness in higher education.” This is typical of how these discussions go. There are only “perceived” problems. The evidence of how fields have drastically changed and how the professoriate has drifted radically leftward since the 1990s is ignored."

 

Really because I read the Inside HigherEd piece and it directly says:

 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/11/dramatic-shift-most-republicans-now-say-colleges-have-negative-impact

 

"Research has shown, however, that a healthy majority of faculty members and students in higher education skew liberal, particularly at four-year institutions. And debates over the value of college tend to revolve around four-year institutions."
 

And in general Inside HigherEd has covered the liberal bias of faculty pretty extensively recently and over the years:

 

Just from Feb of this year (2017):

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/02/27/research-confirms-professors-lean-left-questions-assumptions-about-what-means

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/02/28/higher-education-should-acknowledge-many-americans-believe-colleges-indoctrinate

 

2016:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/05/new-analysis-new-england-colleges-responsible-left-leaning-professoriate

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/25/academics-fact-check-pervasive-idea-liberal-academics-indoctrinate-their-students

 

2014:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/06/30/u-colorado-system-survey-examines-political-climate-and-attitudes

 

2012:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/24/survey-finds-professors-already-liberal-have-moved-further-left

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/08/survey-finds-social-psychologists-admit-anti-conservative-bias

 

2008: 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/27/politics

 

2007:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/16/conservative

 

And there are plenty of more.

 

The idea that Inside HigherEd is "hiding" the liberal bias of faculty from its readers (intentionally or not) is laughable.  They not only regularly report on it, but report on research related to it (what causes it and what affects it has on students).  A regular reader of Inside HigherEd is more educated on the liberal bias of faculty than 99.9% of the US population.

 

But more importantly, how about a solution?

 

Where I work there is a significant amount of research being done around ecology and the environment (in both the biology department and there is essentially a separate environmental department) and of course they all accept that by far the most likely cause of climate change is humans and so would be identified as "left"?  Should they go out and hire and tenure a climate skeptic in the name diversity?

 

Should economic departments go out and hire and tenure Austrian economists in the name of diversity?

 

(Realistically, this appears to be a hit piece by the conservative media to make conservatives even more anti-higher education (they are so biased they can't even admit/recognize they are biased) and so wouldn't really expect it to add anything productive to the conversation.  The poster on the other hand...)

[PeterMP]

On 7/11/2017 at 11:52 AM, s0crates said:

 

One more from Jordan Peterson, because he says it better than I can:

 

 

I was going to stay out of this thread, but if I am going to post, let me also say, the opinion expressed in this video is dangerous.  While I am a Christian and am a big fan of the carry your cross component of Christianity and think the diminishing of that part of Christianity is a huge issue in modern American Christianity, but forcing that approach on others I think is dangerous.

 

And would have prevented the American revolution, the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and the speaker in the video complaining about laws related to gender neutral pronouns (he was threatened with being victimized by not using the pronouns that others wanted him to use.  He could have shut up and acquiesced and seen it as his cross to bear, but did not).

 

(He also misdiagnoses why at least much of the far left shuts down lectures by conservatives.  The first key thing to recognize about his misdiagnosis is a lecture is not a dialogue.  It isn't with respect to raising kids and isn't with respect to a political event either.  And that then leads to other issues, which would cause a complete derailment of this thread.)

[s0crates]

58 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

I was going to stay out of this thread, but if I am going to post, let me also say, the opinion expressed in this video is dangerous.  While I am a Christian and am a big fan of the carry your cross component of Christianity and think the diminishing of that part of Christianity is a huge issue in modern American Christianity, but forcing that approach on others I think is dangerous.

 

And would have prevented the American revolution, the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and the speaker in the video complaining about laws related to gender neutral pronouns (he was threatened with being victimized by not using the pronouns that others wanted him to use.  He could have shut up and acquiesced and seen it as his cross to bear, but did not).

 

(He also misdiagnoses why at least much of the far left shuts down lectures by conservatives.  The first key thing to recognize about his misdiagnosis is a lecture is not a dialogue.  It isn't with respect to raising kids and isn't with respect to a political event either.  And that then leads to other issues, which would cause a complete derailment of this thread.)

 

1. I'm having trouble understanding what you think is "dangerous" about advocating personal responsibility. Jordan Peterson has quite the following of young men in particular answering his call to "clean your room" and "sort yourself out," and what he's doing seems to be helping them. 

 

2. I think you have your claim about the American Revolution and Civil Rights Movement exactly backwards. Both of those emerged FROM the tradition Peterson is defending, not in opposition to it. How is Martin Luther King Jr. NOT an exemplar of the Christian archetype? Isn't Peterson saying men should "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"?

[s0crates]

3 hours ago, Hersh said:

 

Says the guy studying political theory and history at Stanford.

 

Does that make him more or less credible on the topic of politics and higher education?

[Hersh]

10 minutes ago, s0crates said:

 

Does that make him more or less credible on the topic of politics and higher education?

 

Neither. He isn't addressing nor suggesting meanful ways to improve higher education. As I said, it just makes him a hypocrite. 

[PeterMP]

37 minutes ago, s0crates said:

 

1. I'm having trouble understanding what you think is "dangerous" about advocating personal responsibility. Jordan Peterson has quite the following of young men in particular answering his call to "clean your room" and "sort yourself out," and what he's doing seems to be helping them. 

 

2. I think you have your claim about the American Revolution and Civil Rights Movement exactly backwards. Both of those emerged FROM the tradition Peterson is defending, not in opposition to it. How is Martin Luther King Jr. NOT an exemplar of the Christian archetype? Isn't Peterson saying men should "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"?

 

I can advocate personal responsibility without appealing to the idea of people having a cross to bear.  The two concepts are not really related and my post did not say anything about personal responsibility.

 

Everybody that supported reparations and redress for Japanese Americans interned during WWII was not against them and their descendants also having personal responsibility.  I believe that the state should compensate and offer redress to people that it falsely imprisons.  That doesn't mean that I believe that falsely imprisoned people should be irresponsible for the rest of their lives.

 

MLK could have seen oppression by the political powers at the time as the cross that the African American population of the time as the cross they had to bear and not called for actions that would result in political change.  He didn't.

 

The founding fathers could have seen the oppression by the British as their cross to bear and not taken actions to end it.  They didn't.

 

I can believe that people should clean their room, sort themselves out, not be judged by the color of their skin, AND that people should work to relieve and redress societal and governmental wrongs (including oppression).

[Going Commando]

8 hours ago, s0crates said:

http://amp.nationalreview.com/article/449418/right-wing-populism-next-target-american-higher-education

 

 

Such a national review piece.  I love the good old conservative instinct to immediately figure out how they can try and score points on or blame liberals for everything, including the fact that their party has become overtly anti-education.  And I love the slimy little ****heels at the national review who pretend like they don't do the same kind of propagandizing as breitbart and Fox News.  They just do it for the 12 college educated voters left in the GoP.

 

I agree with the author of that piece in one respect.  The republican base has definitely been conditioned to receive an anti higher education message by their opinion-makers.  What he failed to realize is how ****ing bad this kind of attitude actually is for his party.  Sure, **** on going to college.  Get yourself trapped in permanent unemployment/underemployment in dying rural hellholes because you don't have the education you need to advance in an economy where low skill labor has been killed off by automation.

 

It's an issue for Republicans that they think institutions like colleges and the mainstream media are the left wing versions of their churches/media.  That they're the liberal propaganda ministries.  But a thief thinks everyone else is a thief.

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

14 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

Everybody that supported reparations and redress for Japanese Americans interned during WWII was not against them and their descendants also having personal responsibility.

Mooching Japanese internees. Don't get me started.

[s0crates]

I feel compelled to respond to some of you here, although I'm finding it difficult because you've engaged so little with what the writer actually said. Kaufman's thesis as I understand it is basically this: There is a storm coming, and we ignore it at our own peril. The storm is a right wing attack on higher ed, and our ignoring it is denial about the element of truth that will be contained in that right wing attack. To those of you who take umbrage with his article I'd ask, do you doubt the storm is coming, or do you think we can safely ignore it?

[Kilmer17]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/do-unto-other-harvard-students/533514/

 

Their original transgression was discriminating on the basis of gender. But even co-ed versions of these organizations ought to be verboten, according to the panel’s majority. “The Committee considered the importance of allowing our students to select their own social spaces and friends,” their recently released report declared, “but we also recognize principles such as inclusiveness and equality, which many members of the Harvard community consider of paramount importance to our mission."

 

And a rebuttal-

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/steven-pinkers-critique-of-helicopter-colleges/533667/?utm_source=atlfb

 

This is a terrible recommendation, which is at odds with the ideals of a university.

A university is an institution with circumscribed responsibilities which engages in a contract with its students. Its main responsibility is to provide them with an education. It is not an arbiter over their lives, 24/7. What they do on their own time is none of the university’s business.

One of the essential values in higher education is that people can differ in their values, and that these differences can be constructively discussed. Harvard has a right to value mixed-sex venues everywhere, all the time, with no exceptions. If some of its students find value in private, single-sex associations, some of the time, a university is free to argue against, discourage, or even ridicule those choices. But it is not a part of the mandate of a university to impose these values on its students over their objections.

 

[PeterMP]

5 hours ago, s0crates said:

I feel compelled to respond to some of you here, although I'm finding it difficult because you've engaged so little with what the the writer actually said. Kaufman's thesis as I understand it is basically this: There is a storm coming, and we ignore it at our own peril. The storm is a right wing attack on higher ed, and our ignoring it is denial about the element of truth that will be contained in that right wing attack. To those of you who take umbrage with his article I'd ask, do you doubt the storm is coming, or do you think we can safely ignore it?

 

1.  The attack isn't coming it has been on going for decades.

 

2.  It isn't being ignored and the "problem" (the left lean of college faculty) has been the subject of intensive research with respect to causes and effects by those faculty.  However, it is a "problem" without any easy solutions.

 

Simply pointing out the "problem" does nothing at this point in time, but he didn't just point out the "problem".  He claimed that faculty (using a misrepresentation of the story in Inside HigherED as a proxy for faculty) are ignorant of the "problem", which as I've demonstrated is false.

 

It is a kin to claiming that climate scientists are wrong about climate change because they ignore the effects of clouds, while ignoring that climate scientists, including those that support significant AGW, have spent a lot of time studying clouds.

 

Maybe you missed this post:

 

http://es.redskins.com/topic/414117-58-of-republicans-in-the-usa-think-colleges-and-universities-are-bad-for-the-country/?do=findComment&comment=10992343

 

[NoCalMike]

Feels like this topic could go the same way as the one on economics goes.  You take valid concerns and apprehension about the University system and slowly warp them into being because of a "boogeyman"

 

With the economy it's immigrants, minorities, "others"

 

With College it's "unhinged liberals"

 

If these articles wanted to actually address rising tuition, useless degrees, students not being steered towards degrees to help them get well-paying jobs, etc etc....then I'd say, "Ok, lets have a discussion" but from the looks of it, it is just another "Those libruuuuls are ruining MY America!!" piece.

[s0crates]

8 hours ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 But a thief thinks everyone else is a thief.

 

I agree with you in one respect.

[grego]

9 hours ago, Hersh said:

 

Neither. He isn't addressing nor suggesting meanful ways to improve higher education. As I said, it just makes him a hypocrite. 

 

Hersh, that wasn't the point of the article. He was just saying how he thinks the Republicans will win in the near future. 

[s0crates]

9 hours ago, PeterMP said:

I can advocate personal responsibility without appealing to the idea of people having a cross to bear.  The two concepts are not really related and my post did not say anything about personal responsibility.

 

Everybody that supported reparations and redress for Japanese Americans interned during WWII was not against them and their descendants also having personal responsibility.  I believe that the state should compensate and offer redress to people that it falsely imprisons.  That doesn't mean that I believe that falsely imprisoned people should be irresponsible for the rest of their lives.

 

MLK could have seen oppression by the political powers at the time as the cross that the African American population of the time as the cross they had to bear and not called for actions that would result in political change.  He didn't.

 

The founding fathers could have seen the oppression by the British as their cross to bear and not taken actions to end it.  They didn't.

 

I can believe that people should clean their room, sort themselves out, not be judged by the color of their skin, AND that people should work to relieve and redress societal and governmental wrongs (including oppression).

 

 

1. You said the opinion expressed in a video I posted is "dangerous." I do not understand why you said that. The part of the video you seem to be concerned about advances the idea that postmodern types should stop being victims and take responsibility. So quite naturally I asked if you thought the idea of taking responsibility is dangerous. 

 

Nobody said you had to appeal to the idea of people having a cross to bear, and nobody is "forcing this approach on others." It seems to me that you are objecting to others choosing to take this approach themselves on the grounds that it is somehow dangerous to do so.

 

2. I'm pretty sure the concepts of personal responsibility and having a cross to bear are related. Your attempt to divorce Martin Luther King Jr. from a Christian context runs so contrary to my understanding of the man, I'm not even sure where to start with it.

 

 

[Hersh]

55 minutes ago, grego said:

 

Hersh, that wasn't the point of the article. He was just saying how he thinks the Republicans will win in the near future. 

 

Which he should be forcefully against. It's a garbage article filled with lots of BS. 

[RedskinsFan44]

When I wss in HS I hung out with guys who were not on the college track. Hell, most of them either got a GED or dropped out. It was a popular idea that kids who got to go to college had it easy. This from guys who were having a hard time making it through HS. Lots of people will always degrade the other, be it pansy ass college kids or dumb **** blue collar workers. I have worked manual labor and struggled with higher educatipn. Neither is easy and neither makes you better than others.

[PeterMP]

11 hours ago, s0crates said:

 

 

1. You said the opinion expressed in a video I posted is "dangerous." I do not understand why you said that. The part of the video you seem to be concerned about advances the idea that postmodern types should stop being victims and take responsibility. So quite naturally I asked if you thought the idea of taking responsibility is dangerous. 

 

Nobody said you had to appeal to the idea of people having a cross to bear, and nobody is "forcing this approach on others." It seems to me that you are objecting to others choosing to take this approach themselves on the grounds that it is somehow dangerous to do so.

 

2. I'm pretty sure the concepts of personal responsibility and having a cross to bear are related. Your attempt to divorce Martin Luther King Jr. from a Christian context runs so contrary to my understanding of the man, I'm not even sure where to start with it.

 

 

 

1.  It is a method to prevent people suffering from oppression from seeking recourse from their oppression.  It is a logical stance that could lead some to conclude that Martin Luther King was wrong and acting in a non-Christian manner.

 

I tend to think that the 1960s Civil Rights movement was good and that a logical argument that could have prevented it is dangerous.  In that context, it isn't hard to argue that MLK was acting in a non-Christian manner in rejecting a cross to bear (also let's not overly Christianize MLK to claim that all of his actions were consistent with the teachings of Christ.  He also clearly committed multiple infidelities over a long period of time.)

 

"Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth"  Would you say that MLK acted in a meek manner?

 

2.  Then you badly misunderstand the Christian concept of having a cross to carry.  In accepting his crucifixion, Jesus accepted suffering that had nothing to do with his personal actions.  He was not accepting the suffering of the crucifixion as repentance for something that he personally had done, but for the sins of all of us.  A personal responsibility argument might go something like, you knew the penalty for committing a crime, you committed the crime, and now you should show personal responsibility and accept the punishment.

 

Jesus accepting his crucifixion is Jesus going beyond that.  A personal responsibility argument does not include that you should accept the punishment for somebody else's crime (and in fact a personal responsibility argument can be used to reject that idea because the true criminal is escaping their personal responsibility because of your actions).  As Christians, we are asked to accept suffering and oppression that is beyond what our personal behavior makes us responsible for.

 

Ayn Rand would accept personal responsibility arguments.  She would reject a Christ-like action as a good thing.  As Christians, we not just asked to bear responsibility for ourselves, but also to carry the burden of others.

 

Oppressed people should accept personal responsibility, but they (and all of us) should also work to relieve their oppression.  We should not accept the oppression of some simply because some others are also oppressed.

[No Excuses]

Someone explain this one please:

 

 

[Warhead36]

1 hour ago, No Excuses said:

Someone explain this one please:

 

 

Alternative math