How bad have universities got?
thomasprosser.substack.com
thomasprosser.substack.com
"The idea that most objects of inquiry exist independently of the social world," is not, as the article states, "a central Enlightenment value," and it was the knowledge about racism acquired through research that uncovered the fact that many "technical" subjects have always been politicised, rather than "the emergence of Black Lives Matter" that politicised them. We've become more aware of the biases that have long existed among us. The discovery of those biases did no more create them than the discovery of microorganisms created the need for hygiene. In both cases, though, the discovery has certainly made some people uncomfortable.
The linked paper gathered opinions from American academics via an email survey where the respondents self-selected and the response rate was 2-4%. So the results seem about as statistically useful as a Twitter poll.
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/center-for-study-o...
On a side note, I'd really prefer not stating something as fact, then linking only to a 200 page report without any hints about where to actually find the info.
Edit: I'm not thrilled with the linked report in general, but:
The author says
> Nearly a quarter of American social science and humanities academics support dismissing colleagues who have unorthodox views in areas such as immigration or gender differences.
From page 24 of the report, I see where the author finds this information, but it's worth noting the support for dismissing academics comes almost entirely from the topic "women and minorities lower organizational performance"- more conventionally conservative topics don't seem to have anything like a similar rate.
I can't find anything obviously like the 4 out of 5 PhD students discriminating against right wing scholars.
https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/8614/Academic-Freedom-in-the-UK...
https://source.wustl.edu/2020/08/free-speech-nearly-half-of-...
With maybe the exception of Australia, the US is clearly "ahead" on this crisis in higher education.
Here in the UK, there has been some issues, but still enough open discussion to prevent the open door to begin closing.
Edit:
> what the customer wants
On that basis, one does not see how the entity can ever emit a valid title.
Both sides would agree with that.
How is brexit a "conservative" vs "liberal" issue? It's not even a conservative-vs-labor-party issue, with the vote splitting the supporters of those parties as well.
It taught me a valuable lesson - when it comes to highly emotional and politically charged people, simply agree with whatever they are saying, then get the hell away.
One of the characteristics of facism according to Wikipedia is “forcible suppression of opposition” which is ironic because facism is typically considered a far-right ideology.
Not to say this isn’t bad, but it’s important to make sure to take context into account.
No. We seriously need to delete FPTP in favor of something more proportional. No one should ever be able to say e.g. "So you're voting for Trump?" because you don't want to vote for Biden.
The issue is, the students attend to university in order to acquire and develop the intellectual instruments: how come those who "came to learn" by definition became tyrants over, possibly, the learned?
There is a basic cultural societal fault in the acceptance of the empowerment of the «emotional and politically charged». There is the foremost problem, in social disgregation impeding communication and discussion - the basics are shaken.
If you care about people getting fired, work for labor rights.
Isn't this reasoning circular?
It seems the author is taking a correlation ("liberal attitudes" and "higher education"), and then claiming that because the correlation exists, there is a causal connection that will perpetuate the correlation? But the cause is just glossed over, an implicit step in the circular thought process?
Assuming for a second that compressing political ideas down to a single "liberal vs conservative" axis is useful (I think it is actively harmful), my first question here is: why are "liberal attitudes" correlated with education?'
edit: there is a single, but shallow and unsatisfying point about the "educated class" tending to come from "creative fields" that are somehow better-suited to "liberal attitudes", I guess, but that's not really doing it for me
Here's one perspective on that:
https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/why-do-in...
I think the entire debate is just the politics of a first-past-the-post voting system spilling out into academia.
Because first-past-the-post trends towards two parties, and it's in each party's interest to maintain the status quo, everyone who picks a side in the battle has an interest in acting as if political discussions can be usefully framed as "us vs them"
Any "debate" that acts as if "liberal" vs "conservative" is missing the forest for the trees, in my view at least
There is no accountability. A university can offer a degree and teach nothing. They don't have to prove their graduates go anywhere, and often lie with statistics like "90% of our students get a job in their field". Meaning maybe a desk clerk.
As for discrimination of opinion, its more akin to the spanish inquisition. Take for example these mask mandate rules. Students have to wear a mask, all the time, except not outside, or off campus, or when partying in housing. But the University police will threaten students if they are by themselves not wearing a mask. Everyone is vaccinated. It's all heavily politically motivated. They don't want their democrat institution to look bad.
These factual points have been brought up plenty of times and the school admins know they don't have to listen to anybody. They're getting paid, if the school goes belly up because of the lack of students ( 1 million fewer students overall this year), they know they can just leave to destroy another institution.
It's really bad, people don't realize just how bad COVID rules destroyed some of these uni's, how quickly they had to build new systems for "online learning" just to stay afloat. All because they can't manage costs and play politics. That all comes back down on the students.
No. University staff - academic and administrative - work for their paycheck. I would assume most of them work hard, although my evidence is local/anecdotal.
> While the students are hammered with having to make money to afford to live there
This is not a problem in every country, but yes, I agree that university education should be gratis.
> We are pushing out students with little to no real world experience
To the extent that the university is not the real-world - this is a tautology.
> very little ability to critically think or find answers on their own.... we give them no time to and instead make them write about what Plato did, or how we can create more gender neutral environments.
This is an over-generalization. Perhaps this happens in your department, in your university, in your country - and perhaps some others; I doubt this is true in the majority of cases. Although I'll grant you that institutions properly fostering critical thought is somewhat of a rarity.
> There is no accountability. A university can offer a degree and teach nothing
In many/most countries this is false: There are periodic appraisals of various academic tracks by other universities, the state, relevant industries etc (details vary by country).
> people don't realize just how bad COVID rules destroyed some of these uni's
This may be true, but I'm not in academia these days so I wouldn't know.
University is seen as good because it's what we have. If we defund it and rebuild we can have something far better that actually meets the needs of the market and society.
I’m only denying the identity of their colleagues, why do the liberal professors hate me? This is cancel culture!
> Nearly a quarter of American social science and humanities academics support dismissing colleagues who have unorthodox views in areas such as immigration or gender differences
The poster's comment has large gaps in matching the quotation.
Edit: actually the poster's comment literally seems to support «dismissing colleagues» out of «hat[red]» (on obscure basis, but at this point, giving "hatred" a weight, it is already irrelevant).