By Professor Doom
The student loan
scam had led to a deluge of money raining down on our campuses. There seems to
be nothing stopping our leaders in higher ed from pouring that money on a wide
array of useless expenditures.
I know, Social
Justice Warrior lunatics have taken control of many of our campuses and they
want that money spent on their ideology but…sometimes I wonder if the emphasis
on faux “Diversity” is just being used as a cover to splash more money into
administrative pockets.
A recent incident
at American University demonstrates what I’m talking about:
The link
above has pictures, but the story above basically says some chucklehead is
hanging bananas from “nooses” (I’m serious, that’s the word they use) on
campus, and it’s being taken as a racial incident. I really feel the need to
point out how most of these RACIST cases
are just hoaxes, perpetrated by the very people who are
claiming to be “oppressed” by such things as bananas. Because they’re hoaxes,
admin sees to it that they don’t spend much time in the news (as increased
scrutiny endangers the hoax being revealed). It’s important to understand these
hoaxes are to admin’s benefit, and they’ll get rewarded with millions of
student loan money for “addressing” the “problem.”
…telling students to get angry about a murky incident – and
perhaps renew their racial demands of the administration – but not pay too much
attention if American hides the results of its investigation.
A
clown hangs bananas and admin buries the investigation, all the while screaming
about how they have a problem with racism. How shall they ever deal with this
horrid crime of suspended fruit?
Wow,
$121,000,000 because a banana is racist. Imagine if, instead of pissing away
this money on several dozen Vice Presidents of Diversity, each with another
dozen support staff, and a glorious block of palaces housing it all, the
university spent that money on scholarships for a roughly 20,000 students?
There I
go, thinking like an educator. Instead of helping education, the school will
spend the money on a stupid Vision For Excellence plan:
The private university in Washington, D.C.,
plans to shell out $121 million in the next two years on its “Plan for
Inclusive Excellence.”
--the link doesn’t seem to work. Just as well,
I’ve killed way too many brain cells examining these plans.
One
big part of the plan is to rip out more of the “General Education” requirement
that used to be part of an education. Instead of students learning something
academic like mathematics or history, what will they get instead?
That
includes a mandatory full-year course for all freshmen starting this
fall, The American University Experience.
Holy navel gazing! A year of courses with
the university’s name in the title! I bet you’re curious what will go on in
this garbage scholarly course, so let’s follow the link and see.
The American University
Experience (AUx) is a full-year graded General
Education course specially
designed for students transitioning into their first year of college at AU. AUx
will become a mandatory course for
all first-year students in the fall of 2018 as part of the new AU Core Curriculum.
--emphasis added.
I often use the word “lunatics” after the
word “Leftist,” but this probably isn’t fair. They know their ideas are terrible
and no sane person would follow them, which is why once they have power, they
make following their rules mandatory.
Yes, it’s a bit hypocritical of me to
criticize this new course’s mandatory requirement, since often students have
mandatory math classes to take…but we’ve watered down the mandatory math
courses to the 9th grade level. I think a college graduate should
master the content of a 9th grader, so I rationalize, I guess, that mandatory mathematics isn’t so
bad. What kind of content are we talking about in this insult pair of
courses? Let’s examine the first in detail:
The American University
Experience I (AUx1): Drawing on many
academic disciplines including student development theory,…
I’ve been in higher education all my life
and will be satisfied if I end it doing honorable work there. I’ve never heard
of “student development theory” as an “academic discipline.” They’re obviously
obfuscating here, and so I can’t help but suspect this is a mandatory
indoctrination course. The rest of the course description is the usual student
orientation stuff that used to be covered in a few hours, given optionally for
all incoming freshman (as opposed to this mandatory four month course). Buried at
the very end of the course description:
…and diversity, bias, and privilege.
So, 90% of the course description is what’s
covered in the first week of class, at most, and hidden in the back of the
description is what the course is really about, with months of mandatory
indoctrination. Yuck.
I have no hope that the second course in
the sequence will be any better:
The
American University Experience II (AUx2): Race and
social identity-which include but are not limited to ethnicity, gender and
sexual expression, class, disability, and religion-are…
Yuck,
again. It’s so funny, courses in a sequence are that way because you can’t
possibly get through the second course without mastering the material in the
first course. That was back when education was run by scholars. Now it’s run by
people who are simply seeking power; there’s nothing in the second course that
requires any prior knowledge to understand, just ideological crud.
Sure looks like a waste of time to me,
but naturally the university believes otherwise and already has a study to show
it:
Assessment by university
researchers demonstrates how AUx helps students thrive in college. In 2016 and
2017, researchers found that AUx helped students to better navigate university
resources, feel included on campus, and identify mentors…
As I’ve identified before, every idea
proposed by our “leaders” in higher education always works according to their
own studies; they control the research at all levels and have far too much
vested interest to have any other result.
But look carefully at what’s being
achieved above. The actual purpose of higher education is to prepare students
for more. All this course sequence does is prepare students to be servants of
the campus, and gives them no education in any measureable way.
Is
this all about indoctrination? Or is it all about putting more money into
administrative pockets? More likely it’s a merger of corporate and state
interests on campus, which I believe is best described as our new word for the
day:
Edu-fascism:
the molding of higher education to enhance both administrative profits and
ideological training.
I suppose we can argue if edu-fascism
properly describes what our student loan money is being used for but, bottom
line, it’s not being used for education. End the student loan scam.
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