2/3rds of American Employees Regret Their Degrees...And That's The Spin!

by Professor Doom

      I'm not a big fan of broadcast news...it's all a chorus at this point, so I can get the "mainstream" point of view when I'm forced to watch CNN every time I go to an airport, doctor's office (lots of that for me anymore), or most any place citizens gather and are trapped.

      Nevertheless, a CBS report caught my eye. It tries its best to distort the truth in a recent report:

Two-thirds of American Employees regret their college degrees.


      I want to talk about the truth here, but also the spin and attempts to obfuscate. We as a people have had our ability to comprehend fractions basically destroyed, in our public education system (here's the easy way to add fractions, and here's what is attempted to be taught in schools--turning adding fractions into a nightmare is a big pat of why people fear them).


     CBS could have just said 67% instead of scaring people. Perhaps I'm reading into this. The article begins by throwing some propaganda in:

• Science, technology, engineering or math majors, who are more likely to enjoy higher salaries, were least likely to report regrets, while those in the humanities were most likely.

       The gentle reader should read the above, because there's a big spin in there. We're told over and over again how STEM is the holy grail of higher education...but let's see if we can get to some truth here.

a PayScale survey of 248,000 respondents this past spring

     
     That's a nice big sample. I know, statistics are prone to manipulation and lies, but with numbers this big, the results are fairly reliable in terms of being representative.

      The article also mentions total student loan debt is close to $1.6 trillion; it basically goes up around a $100 billion a year now, with very little value for the money. Average student loan debt is around $33,000...up around 10% from last year. I doubt many of my readers experienced a 10% increase in pay, or wealth, from last year...but debts are surely rising.

Most satisfied: Those with science, technology, engineering and math majors, who are typically more likely to enjoy higher salaries, reported more satisfaction with their college degrees. About 42% of engineering grads and 35% of computer science grads said they had no regrets. 


     Wait...what? The top of the article leads one to believe STEM is great but that's spin. The article spins the first line by distracting the reader, waving dollar bills. But read those numbers carefully. MORE THAN HALF of engineering grads clearly had regrets. 65% of computer science grads have regrets.

       How can you say engineering and computer science are good degrees when the majority of people getting them regret it even when employed? In case you're wondering how this can be, my friends with such degrees explain it well enough: you have to compete with workers with similar skills on the other side of the planet, willing to work for half (or less) pay. Even if you get a good job...you're still in that competition, and inevitably lose your job a year or two later as the company realizes saving money on salaries helps their bottom line in the short term (although such companies generally have serious problems later--Hi Boeing!).

      The humanities majors fare the worst, about 75% of them regret their degrees. Honest, I have many good reasons to sneer at Gender Studies degrees, and as long as schools continue to hurt our kids by shoveling out such degrees, I'll continue to chastise them for it.

68% of math graduates who said they regretted their education. 


      Wait...what? Again. Didn't the top of the article say something different? Spin, spin, spin. What's happening here? Well, most math degrees are basically only good for teaching...but we're crowded out by "math education" degrees which substitute indoctrination for mathematics; they get better retention, of course, and help students to get their Gender Studies degree.

At least one sector of employment bucked the trend: Teachers and other professionals in education, which isn't typically a high-paying profession, were the second-least likely, after engineering grads, to have any regrets tied to their major, with 37% saying they had no regrets.


      Spin and spin and spin....read the above carefully, clearly 63% do have regrets. Is that really so much different than the titular "2/3rds" as to call it a bucking of the trend?

...older Americans were more likely to report that they have no regrets about their education. Among baby boomers, or 51% said they have no college regrets, making them the only demographic with a majority reporting no regrets. In contrast, just 37% of Gen Xers and nearly 29% of millennials reported no regrets.


      It really is amazing how the obvious stands out in the above: higher education, once great in the past, is failing now. The system of three or more generations ago may have been worthy of the kind of money we're pouring into it, but today's system is simply too corrupt for further investment.

      Now comes the real spin hidden in the above. This poll only was for the employed. One can easily suspect that those with degrees, and unemployed, almost certainly regret getting an obviously worthless degree. Unfortunately, the way how our government abuses the word "unemployed" makes it impossible to gauge how much higher than 67% the true number of people who regretted getting a degree is.

      There is even more spin.

      The poll also only focuses on those with degrees. Only about half of people who go to college, graduate.

      Again, it's a safe bet the people who spent years of their life on campus and walked off with nothing but (probable) debt have regrets about doing it.

       Bottom line, over 83% of people who go to college now regret it. 33% as per the study (from degree holders, half of those who go to college), another 50% (the non-degree holders), plus an unknown percentage because there's no good way to measure the unemployed degree holders.

      83% of people who set foot on campus regret getting involved with a system paid for by the student loan scam. Please...end it. Why is no presidential candidate brave enough to state the obvious here?


www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Oxford Debases For Diversity

By Professor Doom

     In the 20^th century, the American “system” of higher education affected how the whole world performed education and research at the highest levels. It’s now the 21^st century, and the corrupted American system is spreading that corruption across the planet. How else to explain the following madness:

Oxford University promises 25% of places to disadvantaged

     Huh. And here I thought academia was about scholarship, not about being “disadvantaged.”

     Before dissecting this article, I remind the gentle reader that a British study showed, quite clearly, that going to university decreases your income. How can Oxford, in the face of this study, determine that it should hurt the disadvantaged further by putting more of them in college? How vile is virtue-signaling when it forces you to hurt the very people you claim you want to help?

     Like every school in the US, Oxford beats its chest often about how much it’s doing for “those people.” As always, it’s never enough:

But vice-chancellor Louise Richardson says she wants to "accelerate the pace at which we are diversifying".

     Well, at least her name isn’t twice as long as her title. But I really want to point out these people are paid huge sums of money, but have yet to say anything more clever than “more.”

Oxford, along with other top universities, has faced claims of perpetuating privilege - with too many privately-educated students and not enough from poorer backgrounds.

     Seriously, why don’t these people know anything? Yes, these schools are where the children of the rich often go, but slamming more poor kids into these “elite” schools isn’t going to change anything. We tried this with the public schools, and all that happened was the wealthy pulled their kids out of such schools, and put them into private schools.

     Why would anyone suspect the same thing won’t happen when schools like Oxford try this stunt? Granted, a 900 year old school like Oxford has a great reputation, but it’ll be destroyed over time with policies like these, I’ve seen it often enough over here--Harvard's repeated (and often self-inflicted) black eyes certainly haven't done it any good.

Labour MP David Lammy has lambasted the university for admitting too few black students.

     Interesting. Exactly how many black students should Oxford have? Why does nobody else think this is a reasonable question? Of course, there will never be an answer to this question, beyond the obvious “more.”

     Maybe there should be more, but before we smash a 900 year old school in the name of Diversity, shouldn’t we have some justification beyond a clear desire to hurt “disadvantaged” students?

At present about 15% of Oxford's undergraduate students are from deprived areas - and the university wants to increase this significantly to 25% over the next four years.

     So, what’s the definition of “deprived,” here, and how much of the country is so deprived? The latter is rather important. If 5% of the country is deprived, then Oxford is doing a bang-up job of hurting deprived people (as per the study I cited), and thus doesn’t need to hurt a larger percentage.

       Once again, because nothing is defined, the people raking in the real money from all this can just keep asking for “more.”

       Actually the article does get into definitions:

What counts as disadvantaged?

It is not by income thresholds or ethnicity, but is mainly based on a socio-economic profile of where people live.

This uses two postcode-based systems, called Polar and Acorn, which measure local levels of deprivation or affluence.

      Basically whoever they say is disadvantaged, is disadvantaged. These measures strike me as pretty arbitrary, which I grant is something you want when you’re just going to ask for “more” no matter how much you get.

      All this emphasis on hurting the poor by putting them in Oxford, while still allowing as many wealthy as usual, means, by definition the “middle,” the not poor or wealthy, are going to be squeezed out. This seems like a rational conclusion to me.

Such an analysis is rejected by Oxford - with the university saying there is no reason to assume that so many places will go to private school pupils in the future.

    In the near future, the above is rubbish: there are only a finite number of slots at Oxford. If you’re not reducing slots for the rich, while forcing extra slots to the poor, then it’s obvious the middle class will be excluded.

      That said, in due time, this won’t be an issue: as Oxford’s reputation crumbles into ruin, there won’t be quite so many wealthy applicants (much like what happened in the US public school system).

       While many Oxford students do come from private schools, a solid majority are still coming from those state schools, where middle class (and, yes, the disadvantaged) all have a decent opportunity to learn:

The next round of entry figures, covering 2018, will show 60.5% of students from state schools, more than about 58% in the two previous years, and the highest in these records going back more than 40 years.

     Setting new records, but is it enough?

    Oxford is a top school, I imagine most every wealthy parent with a smart enough offspring would be thrilled to have him there. And yet after meeting this demand, Oxford still has enough space for over 60% of their students to come from the non-wealthy classes. Do over 60% of the non-wealthy live in mansions? Do over 60% of the non-wealthy take regular overseas vacations? Do over 60% of the non-wealthy do the things we associate with the wealthy? Of course not.

       And yet, in the face of this egalitarian achievement by Oxford, only one word is ever heard:

“More.”

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Conservative Students Threatened With Doxing…Admin Unconcerned.

By Professor Doom

      It’s hard to believe, but the concept of “too much information” is becoming a real problem in our society. It is now all too easy to learn all you might want to know about a person. While the gentle reader would be unlikely to do anything untoward with such information, the sad fact is there are far too many dangerous Leftist lunatics running around, who have stared into the void of the Intolerance monster too long, and have become dangerously, violently, intolerant themselves.

      Conservative student groups are often targeted on campus, because they typically hold “racist” beliefs like thinking other races are not so inferior that they need special advantages, or “intolerant” beliefs like it should be tolerable to allow unwanted babies to live…both in direct opposition to the extreme Left (if the reader can forgive a phrase which seems ever more redundant).

      A group of such lunatics is targeting conservatives at University of Texas Austin:

“Hey #UT23! Do you wanna be famous? If you join YCT or Turning Point USA, you just might be. Your name and more could end up on an article like one of these,” the tweet said, linking to previous doxxing posts of conservative students at the school. “So be sure to make smart choices at #UTOrientation.”

       To clarify the above, “doxing” is to make public, information about a person which should be private. YCT refers to the Young Conservatives of Texas, and Turning Point USA is a pro-life group. Now, seeing as the “punch a Nazi” theme has led to lunatics attacking people with bicycle locks and other blunt instruments, the above could easily be taken as a threat by one group at the university towards other groups at the university.

       What group at the university is making the threat?

Earlier this month an anarchist group that consists of UT Austin students called the Autonomous Student Network…

      Hmm, the Autonomous Student Network, a group of anonymous students who threatens violence against other students by making them more public. You gotta hand it to this system of belief, it’s nothing if not hypocritical. When these kids go out in public, they do wear masks for interviews.

Overall ASN currently operates most effectively as a group that can form small, autonomous crews that can carry out actions with relatively low effort but high payoff. Propaganda, communiques, banner drops, and being a militant presence at demos have been our most effective tasks. While we would love to claim some kind of mass student influence or reach, we’re not in a position to do that. But we do stir shit up where we can and we’ve got a decent network of support behind us.

      The above is from their interview, where they detail many of their other activities, some of which aren’t questionable.     

        To be fair, they’re not that anonymous, as they have their own website, listing their affiliations with other Leftist groups, as well as Twitter and Facebook accounts. They also put out delightful news articles, such as this one:

THE YCT: NOT JUST RACISTS, BUT RAPE APOLOGISTS TOO!

      I won’t quote from the above, as the gentle reader can guess from the RACIST accusation in the title that it’s your typical left wing hate smear of no relevance.

      Now, maybe they’re all a hoax…but maybe not. Doxing, particularly of people who have been targets by violent lunatics, is a definite safety concern. Surely the administrators at UT Austin will leap into action here, to protect the conservative students on their campus.

      Heh:

Asked if UT Austin will take any measures in response to the doxxing threats of conservative students by the ASN, the Communications Strategist of UT Austin Shilpa Bakre told The College Fix: “Students should never be targeted or face harassment for their affiliations, political beliefs or any other reason. The anonymous group behind this doxxing is not affiliated with the university, is not a registered student group, and should not present itself in that way. As they did last fall, University Police are continuing to work to ensure the safety of any targeted students and monitor for any potential criminal actions.”

--note the title is over twice as long as the title-holder’s name, and emphasis added.

     As per my emphasis above, this hate group has been around nearly a year. To their credit UT Austin did get a Twitter account shut down (of course, considering how eagerly Twitter shuts down conservative voices, it’s no surprise they didn’t shut down this pro-violence group on their own), but I’m still a little curious here why more has not been done.

     I mean, our campuses have tons of money for background checks, the better to keep conservative students and faculty off campus, and with such a large administrative caste, they have the manpower as well. After so many months, they really should be able to figure out who’s running the website, should be able to figure out who’s publishing those hate articles, should be able to spot the kids posting flyers on campus, should be able to infiltrate this “faux” student group, identify the people there who are actively working to bring violence to campus…and remove them from a campus which should be about education and research.

      Does anyone honestly believe allowing these threats against conservative and pro-life student groups to go unchallenged are not going to impact the membership of these groups?

      I’m not the only one unimpressed with admin’s response to this hate group operating on campus:

UT Austin Law School alumnus…Mark Pulliam, remains skeptical. He tells The College Fix, “UT has taken strong action in the past to prevent non-registered groups from posting notices on campus, but the Autonomous Students’ flyers are ubiquitous on campus. There is clearly a double standard.”

In reference to the doxxing threats…he adds, “Unfortunately, I do not expect the UT administration to take any action. Under President Greg Fenves, UT has done little to protect the rights of conservative students on campus. When the YCT chapter’s rally in support of Brett Kavanaugh was disrupted by leftist protesters, Fenves was silent and the university’s belated response, by the Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement, sympathized with the [leftist] protesters.”

      Students on campus express concerns similar to the above, namely that admin will continue to do nothing about this dangerous group on campus continuing to recklessly endanger students.

      Is this lack of action because only “deplorable” students are being targeted? Or is it because UT Austin lacks the manpower or money to spend a few hours’ time or a few hundred bucks to properly deal with this long running threat? I’ll let the gentle reader make that decision.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

     

    

Harvard Rejects Parkland Survivor For Being Pro-Gun, Gives Bogus Reason

By Professor Doom

     The admissions scandal highlights how getting into Ivy League schools can be a little, well, quirky. Granted, having the right connections has always helped, and certainly it helps to have the right political views (hi Mr. Hogg, still waiting to hear why you're getting into Harvard even with those low SAT scores no Asian could hope to gain acceptance with). Of course, if getting accepted is capricious, it follows that rejection will likewise be for questionable reasons:

Harvard Rejects Parkland Survivor Admission for Teenage Racist Comments


     This whole "tunnel into your past to find evidence" procedure is madness. Let's overlook the inherent hypocrisy of how this procedure is applied (but for funsies, you can read about Hillary's approval of a KKK Grand Wizard), but consider instead how permanently damning any evidence found against the "deplorable" is.

     No redemption is possible, apparently. Our legal system more than allows for a juvenile to get a reduced penalty for a crime as opposed to an adult, but the Progressive madness rates all "crimes" equally, permanently damning someone for nonviolent behavior in a child.

        So, this kid applies to Harvard, and being a survivor of yet another strange school shooting, figures he might have a chance.

Kyle Kashuv, 18, admitted on Twitter that Harvard rescinded his admission because of “texts and comments” he made when he was 16.


      So he said something stupid when he was 16. Does anyone honestly believe nobody at Harvard has ever said a naughty thing as a teenager? If they really are going to use this standard, then they would honestly have to reject everyone who applied. Why do I suspect more hypocrisy here?

He had previously become popular among conservatives for his opposition to the anti-gun measures supported by his fellow survivors.



      Yeah...I suspect the above is the true reason this deplorable is not allowed on Harvard's campus.

 Kashuv is himself Jewish and said that though he made anti-Semitic and racist comments, he did not mean any harm by them.



     Poor kid, he actually believed the edu-fascists running Harvard when they told him why his kind wasn't welcome there. Now, if Harvard were still an educational institution, it wouldn't even have considered some old comments made by a kid. Instead, academics would have been a factor. 

     But now, holding the right political views is what gets you into the Ivy League. As our schools browbeat themselves about how they'll no longer accept bribes in exchange for admission, the gentle reader need realize their ideology is paramount: I've yet to see a school promise not to exclude political views from campus, even when those views are held by half of the country.

“I’m embarrassed by it, but I want to be clear that the comments I made are not indicative of who I am or who I’ve become in the years since.”



      Give it up, kid, don't waste more time apologizing, you may as well apologize for filling your diapers nigh 20 years ago for all real adults care about what you said. I assure you, the racists and sexists at Harvard honestly don't care about racist and sexist things you said. On the other hand, it's your conservative views which will keep you off campus. Try disavowing those, and I bet your chances will improve greatly.

      If Harvard honesty believed its decision is reasonable, that one sin in the past damns a person forever, beyond redemption, then Harvard would shut itself down. Harvard was established in 1636; in its very long past, it is certainty Harvard had many faculty and students who owned slaves and held racist views. I won't be holding my breath for Harvard to show they have the courage of their convictions, by destroying itself for those past crimes.

      Harvard's ill decision only reflects poorly on Harvard, but there's a wider issue here, since Harvard hasn't received widespread condemnation. If now it is going to be considered socially acceptable to shut someone out of society forever for things said as a child, who among us will be safe from the un-personings to come?

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

"Sexist" Scholar Reported To Bias Response Team...Your Taxes Pay For This.

By Professor Doom

   
      With so much student loan money pouring onto campus, it's only natural for much of it to be wasted. One of the largest, most evil wastes of this money is to "Diversity Institutes," fiefdoms packed with $100,000 (often much more) a year commissars eager to enforce social justice.

      This waste just leads to more waste, as today's story shows:

‘Sexist’ business scholar reported to bias response team


      Yes, our campuses now have a "bias response team," a collection of NPCs who sit around bored for weeks on end, waiting for someone to cry RACIST. Our campuses survived for centuries without such teams, and yet now we have universities proud of wasting their surplus wealth in this manner, instead of using the money for education and research.

      Does it even matter what the complaint was? No. But let's take a look all the same:
The report also accused the professor of frequent sexist language, but the bulk of the complaint centered on his assigned readings for the business course.


     Since "sexist language," much like "hate speech," is in the eye of the beholder, let's focus on those assigned readings. What was the problem, citizen?

“I believe it to no longer be necessary when teaching the foundations of our country’s economic system and those who helped build [its] ideals to be presented in conjunction with their sexist beliefs that have already planted their roots within our global and local communities,” the student stated in her complaint, filed in December 2018


       It's hard to parse what exactly the problem here is, but do keep in mind that hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of commissars' time will be spent finding the wrong here.

       What would a scholar do? Well, as soon as the student said "I believe..." the complaint would be over. The scholar would trust the professor of the course to know more about the material than the student, close the complaint in a few seconds, and free up enough money for "full ride" scholarships for a dozen or more students.

      The gentle reader should keep that above in mind always: if the people running our schools honestly cared about helping students, they could do so easily and generously simply by using all that money for education instead ideological pursuits.

In the female student’s bias report, she stated that while her professor “never applauded these philosophers on their sexist beliefs,” he “never outright said they were wrong” and “continued to place them upon a pedestal.”


      It's unknown who the philosophers (in this case, economists, the closest business classes come to philosophy) are in this case, and perhaps they are outright wrong but...that's not the purpose of education, which is far more about discussing ideas than shouting down those with whom you disagree.

       Again, this aspect of the complaint would be ignored by a scholar.  I guess we'll examine the charge of "sexist" talk.

She continued that she began to “fear” his sexist banter and said she “also began to fear the readings and I could not even finish one assigned reading due to its clear sexist message.”


       Fear? Poor kid, she's so afraid she can't read. Obviously, the proper response is to kick her off campus for her own good, though I suspect the Bias Response Team would never show such integrity.

According to the complaint, the student was especially disturbed by a conversation that took place on the last day of class about robots taking jobs from working Americans. The professor allegedly claimed that “while all our jobs will be taken by robots,” he will be “retired living in Tahiti surrounded by 40-45 beautiful women feeding him grapes.”


     The last day of class? The kid had to wait until the end of the semester to come up with an example? I'd look at this as a joke rather than "sexism," but now I want to point out the reality here, a reality an educator knows, but not a commissar.

     This kid is failing the course. By her own admission, she had not finished even one assigned reading, and I suspect she wasn't doing well on the class assignments, assuming she attempted any.

      Rather than just fail the course, she appeals to the Bias Response Team and levels a series of charge. You better believe the professor has gotten the message here: fail a student, and a pack of crazy ideologues might be breathing down your neck in short order.

      Does anyone honestly believe education is improved by the addition of Bias Response Teams on campus? Anyone off-campus, that is?

     This is what I mean by edu-fascism, the merger of administrative and ideological interests on campus. Bias Response Teams, despite being wasteful and harmful to education, are on campus because both the ideologues (to enforce their beliefs) and admin (to expand the number of subordinates) want them.

      This whole complaint should have been shrugged off as insignificant, even if it wasn't just an obvious ploy by a failing student. What's the criterion for investigation?

According to the university’s Office of Inclusive Excellence website, an act of “bias” is “any act of intolerance, motivated wholly or in part by bias or prejudice against an individual’s race, color, ethnicity, age, religion, size, disability, national origin, language, gender, veteran status, identity expression, sexual orientation or age—regardless of severity.”

--emphasis added.


      Holy micro-aggression madness! Regardless of severity? Talk about defining your own job parameters. Even if the severity is absolute zero, nothing, you STILL are engaging in bias!

       I bet if students had a choice in the matter, or the lunatics running the schools cared about the students, severity would be cranked up to "actual harm caused," in exchange for freeing up enough resources to offer full scholarships every year for a few dozen students.

       Lest the gentle reader believe this kind of waste is only happening at one school, the College Fix has a helpful list of similar Bias Response Team activity at other schools across the country:

Indiana University: Janet Jackson’s nipple triggers bias complaint at Indiana University

Virginia Tech: Virginia Tech on the hunt for campus penis artists

North Carolina State University: Troll mocks campus anti-bias effort with complaint Warren’s Native American DNA claim was triggering

Michigan State University: Student files bias complaint against dorm roommate for watching Ben Shapiro video

University of Oregon: Bias report filed against professor for defending Brett Kavanaugh

Portland State University: Making jokes at Portland State gets you reported to its bias response team

SUNY-Binghamton: Off-campus road rage incident reported to university’s ‘Hate or Bias’ system

University of Florida: Recent bias complaints filed at U. Florida cite a grumpy professor, a racist Snapchat, and a crass joke

      This is all paid for by the student loan scam. End it.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com