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Comment by eli_gottlieb | Hacker News Reader

Well then, please do reveal the mystery!

it's supposed to be an exclusive club for privileged upper middle class to upper class kids where they spend years 17-21 polishing themselves and expanding their social networks before heading into cities to get jobs as white collar professionals, attending graduate school, or pursuing a 'pure' career in academia if their families are sufficiently wealthy.

that's more or less how it still works at the good private schools, with exceptions at the margin for extremely bright talent from less wealthy family/means.

public schools are supposed to break this pattern, but the best ones basically have turned into the same thing (california, michigan, virginia, north carolina, etc.) with their own hierarchy of elite campuses/locations and in-crowd associations (greek, etc.)

the entire system breaks down if you treat it as something fundamentally different, or have some invented set of expectations for what you get out of it.

Or theye are a place for young adults to learn the reading and reasoning skilks they are no longer taught in highschool. The state of highschool grads these days is pathetic.

It's become, at least in many departments of many universities, about "culturation" rather than education - about making students fit into a culture of what "liberalism" has become, which is unquestioningly holding "liberal" values. That's not education; it's something between indoctrination and a social club.

I put "liberal" in quotes, because real liberalism is much more broad-minded than what's on much of our universities. Real liberalism isn't about making your opponent shut up; instead, it's about recognizing their right to exist and to have their say.

Because outside the university system is such a bastion of broad-mindedness. Turns out meeting a diverse set of people usually leaves people less willing to put with the more insular values they may have grown up with, go figure.

a diverse set of people

Sorry - by diverse set of people are you talking about people who would be inclined to get and would be accepted to receive a liberal arts degree at an elite university?

Those people would be ethnically diverse, perhaps diverse in terms of nationality, but probably not very diverse at all in terms of viewpoint.

Maybe in liberal arts and crafts, but this bullshit doesn't apply to STEM.

It absolutely applies to STEM. Even moreso. There's a set orthodoxy in STEM that you either accept, or you don't get to graduate in STEM.

Many STEM programs have a diversity requirement. At my school, pure engineering only had to take a few liberal arts classes, but if you were a physics, chem, or bio major, you needed to take a smattering of courses that satisfied requirements like "diversity in America."

You might disagree with the specific culture involved, but acculturation has always been the job of a university - making students of whatever background into members of the upper-middle (or, in more exclusive places/times, upper) class. Left-wing politics are indeed a class marker these days, but before that it was northeastern upper-crust conservatism that students were supposed to be indoctrinated with.

It's pretty clear that in 2017, diversity of opinion is a very low priority for universities. Do you think this has ever been any different? I wonder.

At one point, I think a university education served, sociologically, as another barrier separating the upper class from the rabble. Do you think diversity of opinion was perhaps more tolerated when the only students were children of the rich? Would universities have defended their cultural values as ardently as they do now, when membership in that culture was enforced differently?

Isn't that Pluralism?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism_(political_philoso...

What I said is true of pluralism as well. But as that link says, liberals "place liberty as their guiding principle". "If you disagree with me, I'm going to use institutional power to shut you up" has no place in true liberalism.

Wait - where did you get the second quote?

I agree with your sentiment, but I think downvoters are misattributing it to the Wikipedia article I linked to.

The second quote is my one-line characterization of the behavior of many "liberals" on university campuses. It has no relation to the Wikipedia article.

Sorry for the confusion.

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