The Hypocrisy of Higher Ed

By Professor Doom

      A brief post today, hopefully for better impact.

“We need more women in mathematics, there aren’t enough.”

--from a student; I’m not criticizing the student, they’re all trained to say this.

     Like so many false thoughts, the “need” for more women in mathematics has been ground into our heads since childhood. Don’t get me wrong, I totally acknowledge there are fewer women than men in my advanced math courses, no doubt at all about that, though I’m not worried about it.

      There are also fewer women boxers, too…I’m ok with that as well.

Admin: “We’re starting a new initiative to attract more female math majors.”

--I doubt I’ve gone two consecutive years in higher ed without seeing something like this, and usually I’m fanned by nodding heads in support of it.

      But just because there is a perceived shortage of one gender or another in a field doesn’t mean it must be rectified. Such considerations are far beyond my pay grade, however. Administration always wheels out “in the past, women were discriminated against, so we need to give them extra help now.” Trying to explain that “two wrongs don’t make a right” is a quick path to the unemployment line, and so I, and most other faculty, keep quiet about it…it’s hard to see much harm being done with such programs, even if they are immoral.

      It’s not just mathematics, of course, that must engage in such immoral behavior:

The 10 Best Colleges for Females in STEM Fields

--I encourage the reader to consider the writing in the above carefully, the better to see the immense sexism there. The first school openly admits their sexist hiring policies, for example.

     Throughout higher ed there is immense effort to rectify this “problem.” It doesn’t matter that, overall, far more college students are female than male, they outnumber males by the millions, in fact. Always, the drive is for more, and it’s beyond the excessive fetishization of growth that higher education administrators already hold. They don’t just want moar, they want more females in specific fields. There’s even such a thing as “feminist biology,” to give an idea of the willingness to dement academics in pursuit of this goal. I’m hard pressed to find a good analogue for “feminist,” but I’m dying to see if there’s a degree program in “masculinist biology.” If anyone knows of such, feel free to use the contact form.

     Whatever, we’re all about equality in higher ed now, even if some genders are more equal than others. Thus we have endless programs to recruit female students, to retain female faculty. Let’s go with the flow, then, and assume admin is telling the truth that they’re really interested in doing something about a minority that has suffered discrimination.

     Males dominate mathematics and STEM in general, so we need to have special programs to make males less important there. Let’s look at another faction that dominates higher education:

Survey finds notable increase in proportion of professors who identify as "far left" or liberal, and declines for all other groups.

--note: “notable increase.” The Leftist bias has been there for a very long time, it somehow managing to become even more extreme is notable.

     There’s a huge leftist slant in higher education, not merely in the administration, but also in the faculty. There’s also a strong record of anti-conservative bias and discrimination in higher education as well, not just faculty, but students have lost their jobs for being conservatives. It isn’t safe to be a conservative on campus. Many faculty advise conservative peers to not to reveal their views until after tenure, and a conservative student who reveals his point of view to the wrong faculty will find himself failing the course. 

     So, conservatives are a minority in higher ed faculty, and conservatives have been discriminated against, both at the student and faculty level.

     Where, pray tell, are the endless programs seeking to recruit and retain conservative students and conservative faculty?  Is there even one such program, anywhere? 

 

      Female STEM students are a minority, and discriminated against, thus we must have programs to recruit more of them.

     Conservatives are a minority, and discriminated against…and higher education sees nothing wrong at all.

      And so the hypocrisy of higher education is demonstrated.

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