Re-Education Camps Now in the U.S.

By Professor Doom

     I’ve heard more than a few people refer to college as indoctrination centers or re-education camps. I have my doubts. Colleges, particularly community colleges, fail so extravagantly in their mission of education, how could they possibly serve as indoctrination centers? Even if so, wouldn’t we expect them to fail horribly at that as well? So, it’s been tough for me to take such claims seriously.

      To me, the concept of a re-education camp is a state-supported institution, where criminalized citizens go to learn a proper form of thinking. Naturally, the camps of socialist systems in the USSR, PRC, and DPR of Korea come to mind in particular.

     But community colleges for this purpose? Not with such a track record of failure.

      If indoctrination is the point of many institutions of “higher education,” I would have expected to see it in California schools…California has such a strong track record of absolute lunacy in higher education that indoctrination madness should be easily observed there. Yes, I’ve seen plenty of microaggression madness there, but indoctrination? Not so much.

      I was wrong to guess California, since white shaming is out of control in Oregon of all places. For a month the campus was devoted to letting the white people there know they’re a scourge upon the world, indoctrinating (yes, that word applies) them into the ideology of white privilege and all that comes with it.

     Perhaps Oregon was a weird fluke…but my being wrong about where the indoctrination would be most visible leads to me to at least conjecture that, yes, perhaps our colleges are now entering service as re-education camps.

     A snippet from the University of Wisconsin’s own website:

The Privilege of Whiteness — FULL
7-8 PM
Location: Red Gym, Morgridge Center for Public Service offices

Participants in this workshop will be able to describe privilege and marginalization. Participants will also reflect on and name the ways their privilege impacts their beliefs and behaviors by gaining the skills to identify the historical roots of White privilege and how it manifests today. The workshop is designed for a White audience. People of color are welcome. *This session will be capped at 25 students. FULL.

     Now, I grant this was only a 1 hour session, only for 25 students but: FULL.

      I know it’s disgusting, but I ask the gentle reader to look over the description of that workshop again, for maximum offense. The workshop is designed for White people, to learn about “their privilege.”

      What the hell…

      And, I repeat, this session was FULL. This is important, because that means there was a legitimate (?!?) demand for this workshop. Believe you me, there’s nothing that makes administrators more excited than a prospect for a course which will fill up quickly…it’s why we have college courses devoted to Game of Thrones, after all. 

     So, the full workshop will lead to entire classes filled with students lapping up indoctrination into this ideology, and I can easily envision the general education guidelines for degrees to have (the last) 3 credit hours of mathematics removed, and replaced with “You Suck If You’re White” courses. This may sound like a joke, but having seen so many degree requirements annihilated over the years (math and sciences reduced to just 3 credit hours of high school level, and foreign languages completely removed, as examples), I see nothing to keep administration from doing this to advance the agenda of this ideology.

      Again, just a 1 hour session, and perhaps I’m over-reacting. “1 hour” does not a camp make. But what to make of this:

Northwestern University is currently in the midst of a six-week “social justice education” program that is exclusively for white students. The program, titled “Deconstructing Whiteness,” is a “six part workshop series for students who self-identify as white,” according to the university website.

--Northwestern is in Illinois…still not California.

    Six weeks is getting dangerously close to a college course…and absolutely qualifies as a camp. Double-interesting here is this is Whites-only who get to feel bad about their “privilege.”

Northwestern does not appear to have any similar “social justice education” events exclusively for non-whites. The university will, however, sponsor a blacks-only “healing space” on February 25

     University of Vermont is likewise jumping on the re-education camp bandwagon.

“Examining White Privilege: A Retreat for Undergraduate Students Who Self-Identify as White” took place last weekend, and was first noted by Campus Reform Wednesday morning.

     The gentle reader should note that University of Vermont is a state-supported school…your tax dollars are paying for this re-education camp. We have state supported institutions training our citizens to think in a way consistent with a prevailing ideology. That’s pretty much what one thinks of when the phrase “re-education camp” comes to mind.

     There is one critical, pathetic, difference, however. The people in “traditional” re-education camps are prisoners, forced to stay in camp until they truly believe the garbage being forced into their brains.

     Our students aren’t prisoners, they are not forced into these things. Moreover, students are actually paying for these camps, going into perpetual debt for the “privilege” of learning about their alleged white privilege. It’s very sad, but it’s hard to argue with the facts here.

      Marx would be overjoyed.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

A Look Into A Poo Bah’s Mind

 

By Professor Doom

     I’ve seen so many “leaders” in higher education plunder and loot their way to financial independence, and get away free, that it’s a surprise when one of them actually gets convicted for even a small part of his (or her) criminality.

     New Jersey, among all the 50 states, is among the lowest when it comes to reputation for integrity. The Cartel is an excellent documentary detailing how New Jersey’s incredibly corrupt public education system is a disaster, despite spending more money on each child than any other state. Thus it is that I’m doubly surprised when a Poo Bah, and a New Jersey Poo Bah at that, actually goes to jail for his crimes:

Former Brookdale Community College president Peter F. Burnham has been paroled from the state Department of Corrections after serving two years of a five-year sentence for stealing about $44,000 from the college.

Burnham, 70, spent most of his time in a halfway house in Camden…

     Compared to other documented examples of robbery in this blog, this is just chicken-feed, but the fascinating thing here is the sheer arrogance of this Poo Bah, and how even with the light of day shining directly on him, he yet feels the need to blow smoke. I promise the gentle reader, he is hardly unusual.

Burnham must pay restitution and maintain employment, Gregorio said.

Gregorio said he was not permitted to release details of where Burnham is currently residing — he lived in Colts Neck before heading to prison — or what job he holds…

     I have to be a little curious about this. You’d think a 70 year old wouldn’t have to maintain employment…surely his life of crime has paid off more than enough for retirement at 70?

     His crimes were fairly petty, but revealing all the same:

He admitted using college credit cards between 2003 and 2011 to pay for expenses unrelated to his position with the college. The items, which totaled more than $24,000, included things such as meals, trips, groceries, personal items and even a Costco membership and a pair of cheap shoes from a factory outlet.

Burnham also admitted accepting a $20,000 tuition reimbursement for his son to attend Monmouth University…

      I’ve seen so many Poo Bahs get away with this sort of thing, I’m sure this guy was nailed on some sort of minor technicality. The prosecutor clearly thinks the Poo Bah was special, but honest, this description is just your run-of-the-mill Poo Bah:

In Burnham’s mind, he had grown beyond the role of college president, [prosecutor] Gramiccioni said.

 

“He was the king, and everyone else were [sic] his subjects,” the acting prosecutor said at the sentencing.

    The Poo Bah’s pay/compensation was also typical for our “leaders” in higher education:

“…the compensation Burnham was paid to oversee the community college: a $216,000 annual salary, which is $50,000 more than the governor’s annual salary; $1,500 a month toward his mortgage; a car and gasoline; up to $20,000 a year in tuition assistance for each of his two children; annual performance bonuses in the range of $10,000; a lavish travel and expense account; and an $11,000-a-year membership to the Navesink Country Club.”

--Brookdale has less than 15,000 customers, to give some idea how ridiculous the pay is…

     Seriously, the crime was so petty compared to the loot the Poo Bah was raking in that it’s nuts. Heck, he covered most of his crimes in a funny way:

Before being sentenced for what Judge Thomas F. Scully called Burnham’s arrogant and contemptible conduct, Burnham asked for more than $36,000 in pay from the college for unused vacation days.

Scully agreed to use the vacation pay due to Burnham to reduce the amount of restitution he must pay the college from $44,497 to $7,941.

--what’s really disgusting about this is whenever I change schools, I get absolutely nothing for unused vacation/sick leave.

     With the scene painted, now let’s look inside the mind of the Poo Bah involved. First, some crocodile tears from the man who spent 4 months in prison, and the rest in a halfway house:

"I was told I'd end up in a country-club prison," he said. "I ended up in maximum security."

He told fellow inmates he had a Ph.D., but most didn't know what that was.

     So, this mighty educator tries to bloviate about his education to prison inmates. That must have been a funny scene. Administrators are basically con men, especially at the Poo Bah level, and the man couldn’t help but ply his real trade as con artist in prison:

"They all thought I was a medical doctor, so they started to come to me with every ailment," he said. "After a while, I gave in. I'd tell them to take two aspirins and if it persists, go see the nurse."

--I was told by admin that dispensing even minimal medical advice was grounds for termination. Why do these guys play by such different rules?

     This great educator can’t even get basic ideas across like what his education is, that there’s such a thing as “doctorate” that isn’t medical. We pay these people like they’re tremendously good at education, but in decades of work, I’ve never seen one demonstrate any ability, and this guy is typical. If he weren’t a Poo Bah, he’d be committed to an institution as sociopathic with extreme narcissism. Time and again I’ve seen Poo Bahs flee colleges in disgrace, only to turn up, like an Ebola-and-Zika-infested penny, somewhere else in short order. Despite his criminal conviction, this Poo Bah is convinced that’s he’s a great leader:

At the conference in Chicago, Burnham passed out business cards and said he wants to get a job in education, if he can.

"I'll always have a scarlet letter. I'll never be a college president," he said.

     Hey, at least he has a small grasp on reality (though truth be told, I’m not ruling out him being Poo Bah somewhere else)…but he’ll still try to get hired in higher education somewhere, assuming the men in white suits don’t finally track him down.

     As always, the media fails to ask relevant questions, even though the man was available. The Poo Bah was interviewed at a conference where he gave a talk at the American Association of Community Colleges. There are questions here the media forgot to ask, but luckily someone in the commenter section asks them:

This guy got five years in a plea deal.  Probably guilty of a lot more. You have to wonder about the association that invited him to speak. Do they normally invite felons??

    The gentle reader needs to understand that community colleges regularly violate Federal law, and do so with impunity. So, seeing as the members of this organization are primarily felons, having a felon as speaker seems reasonable.

     And yes, it’s a safe bet this guy plea-bargained, and there’s no way to know what the “real” crime was that got him put away for years.

      Part of the reason our community colleges are riddled with fraud and corruption, why the education there is all too often quite bogus, is the people running the schools are the same people running accreditation. The Poo Bah is no exception:

In addition to heading one of the state's top two-year colleges for two decades, Burnham served as head of the state college president's council and chaired the Middle States Commission, the powerful regional college accrediting agency. 

      Does anyone at all see a problem with having the guy running the school also run the “independent” organization that decides if the school is legitimate and is being legitimately run? There’s just no telling what kind of looting was going on with this Poo Bah fox guarding the henhouse. This is the sad state of higher education, and does much to explain why we have so many colossal ongoing frauds in this “industry.”

     This massive conflict of interest is well known, and is as common as the plundering by the immensely arrogant leaders in higher education. Please, gentle readers, be very wary of setting foot on a community college campus, the places are incredibly corrupt and run by, as we can all see here, dangerously narcissistic sociopaths.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Rerun: For-Profit College Degrees Are Worthless

For-Profit College Degrees Are Worthless

By Professor Doom

     I’ve often said for-profit colleges generally offer worthless degrees at an extreme price, but I hate simply expecting the reader to trust my word on such things. A recent article, mainstream news even, gave some nice examples of the over-the-top uselessness of these degrees.

     Students across the country are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for degrees that end up being completely worthless.

     I do want to point out, however, that non-profit schools, while cheaper, also offer a great number of degrees that are, in terms of the marketplace, completely worthless. Back when higher education was cheap, this was not a problem…tuition was low enough that “work your way through college” at a fast food place was quite possible. But now that campuses are overrun with 6- and 7-figure salaried administrators (and 4-figure paid adjuncts teaching the actual courses), there are huge disconnects between the cost of education that students pay, the cost that is actually paid to the educators, and, most importantly, the quality of the education that the students receive. For-profits may be the worst, but a great many state institutions are only a few shades better.

…So at age 23, she enrolled in a two-year criminal justice program at for-profit Everest College in Chesapeake, Va.
But the wealth of job opportunities the school had touted never transpired, and all she ended up with was more than $22,000 in student loan debt. She said classes were terrible, she didn't receive any of the training she needed, …

     Criminal Justice is a popular field, because it can provide entry into the incredibly lucrative “law enforcement” industry (law enforcement, health care, and education are really the big job producers in last few decades of extreme government growth…do note government is now in the process of wrapping more of its tentacles around health care even as you read this). I had the pleasure of teaching an entire class full of police officers when one of my institutions set up a Criminal Justice outreach program. I know the police are often (and often justifiably) vilified, but, for what it’s worth, they are better than average as students (they are also slightly older, which may well be the important factor).

     Back to the point, the above poor student shelled out over $20,000 for coursework, supposedly job-related coursework, which provided none of the training or education she needed to get an actual job. Of course, the student didn’t actually pay that money. Instead, it was provided via a student loan.

     This is quite common, and so, for the sake of new readers, allow me to explain the game being played. The first thing a school does when it opens its doors is work to get accredited. Only accredited schools can qualify their students for the various Federal student aid programs, including those all-important student loans.

     Before the school becomes accredited, the school keeps tuition low, because it needs to attract students, and being affordable helps with that. The school also tries to be reasonably legitimate, as far as the education it provides. It needs this because accreditors need to have some reason to believe the school is legitimate before they will award full accreditation.

     Once the school becomes accredited, it all changes. First, the school jacks up the tuition to as much as they can get away with, which usually means whatever the student loan money available is. Then, the school sacrifices all integrity, annihilating all educational standards, the better to draw in, and keep, students that think that merely because they’re getting good grades, they’re actually learning something relevant.

      While the article focuses on for-profit schools, it’s the same pattern at many state and non-profit schools. I totally grant that there are many exceptions, but they are exceptions. Having worked to bring a school through the accreditation process and seen what happens once accreditation is awarded, my own eyes tell me that this pattern is the reality of higher education today…state schools often have a harder time increasing tuition, and that’s the ONLY reason they’re cheaper than the for-profit schools. But, otherwise, the pattern is the same.

      You might be wondering how the bogus schools can keep accreditation, but the reason behind this is simple: accredited schools generally self-report their legitimacy, and only need do so every 5 to 10 years. So, the bogus school self-reports that their students are getting good grades, self-reports that their students are getting good jobs, self-reports that their coursework is of the highest standards, and so on…and accreditors are perfectly happy with this.

      Of course, the rubber meets the road when it comes time to actually pay off those student loans, and that’s where problems become visible in a way that self-reporting won’t work. There’s a big difference between words on paper and checks for actual money, after all.

“…student loan default rate (of up to 27% for its Everest College campuses) is lower than other community colleges and its graduation and job placement rates are higher…”

     So, at this school, the self-reported graduation and job placement rates are (supposedly) as good as any community college (that’s a low, low, bar, since many community colleges “boast” a lower than 10% graduation rate). The student loan default rate, however, is not so easily buried, since someone has to write an actual check.

     Despite what’s said here, for-profit schools generally have a worse default rate than state schools. While it is claimed that this is due to the bogus nature of the for-profit coursework, I find this assertion dubious, as I’ve shown and seen many times that the coursework in state schools to be comparably bogus. No, the reason for the higher default rate is very simple: students at for-profit schools are charged more for tuition, and thus get deeper into debt. It is simply the larger debts that explain the higher default rates.

     But, back to the article:

“…the school spent six months convincing him to enroll -- promising to provide all the training and help he needed to find a high-paying computer science job…
But upon enrolling in the computer science program, he said the quality of education "was a complete joke" and job assistance was nonexistent…”

      
     The main expense of for-profit schools isn’t on education (like state schools, they pay the highly educated teachers very little), it’s on recruiting suckers/students to enroll. Google’s biggest customer, for example, is the for-profit University of Phoenix, which spends $200,000 a day on Google advertising. My own research on for-profits rather backfired on me—much like the luckless student involved, I too endured (and still endure) many phone calls from for-profits hoping to make a sale with me.

     This is how the for-profits overcome their well-deserved reputation for worthlessness—extensive advertising for suckers that don’t know what they’re getting into. 

     And, again, accreditation totally doesn’t care how fraudulent these schools are. Even if it did care, accreditation can do nothing about it. For example, accreditation’s response to UNC’s 18 year scam of fake courses was to “make” UNC offer courses to all the students that felt they might be cheated by the fake courses. 

     “…after accumulating more than $20,000 in debt to attend the one-year program, he wasn't able to find a single job in computer science. He's still unemployed, is now homeless -- and he is convinced he'd be better off without the degree even listed on his resume. 

He says multiple employers have told him that they don't view his degree as credible because of the for-profit industry's reputation and because other people they've hired from the school haven't had the necessary skills for the job…”


      The Federal government knows these schools are scams (for the most part) but has no choice in the matter, as the law is written so that all accredited schools, no matter how corrupt, must play by the same rules when it comes time to doling out the student loan loot. It’s possible that the law might be changed at some point, of course.

      I agree, accreditation as it stands today is utterly useless and should have nothing to do with student loan money. But a better solution by far would be to take student loan money out of education. If University of the People can offer fully accredited 4 year degrees for $4,000 or so without taking student loan money, there’s simply no excuse for for-profits offering the same degrees for $100,000, after all.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Finally, Openly Fake Tenure

By Professor Doom

       “I am altering the deal. Pray that I don’t alter it any further.”

--Darth Vader, though I knew a deanling that took pride in her power to alter “agreements” any way she chose.

       Tenure, the supposed “job for life” that is met with so much disdain in the mainstream media, is basically dead. The only thing keeping it on life support is the law, a law that is all too casually ignored by both our lawmakers, and our rulers in higher education today.

      Yes, I admit there’s great potential for abuse in the idea of tenure…but the eradication of tenure, of the respect for tenure, is a big factor in why science is now basically broken, why education on many campuses is an open joke, and why our higher education system is now just a system of plunder.

     Seeing just how much money can be stolen by getting rid of tenured faculty, admin has been pretty aggressive in silencing faculty and other defenders of tenure. Still, those pesky rules and contracts and such have slowed down the plundering, to the point that something like 7% of higher education funding is NOT going into administrative pockets (7% is the amount of higher education costs that actually go to education). 

      After years of taking down tenured faculty one by one, admin is looking to annihilate tenure wholesale:

U of Wisconsin System Board of Regents approves new tenure policies, rejecting a series of proposals that professors said would have protected some of their rights.

      What, rights? Scholars want to be treated with respect? “That’s ridiculous,” says admin, “being educated is a sign of weakness, and is not deserving of respect. Don’t you see all the suckers on campus going deep into debt for rubbish now?”

      I rather see administration’s point, as it does seem like there’s an endless stream of students willing to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt for the most ridiculous of coursework.

Dept Head: “We’d like to remove the foreign language requirement for our graduate degrees in mathematics.”

Faculty: “We’ve had those requirements for years. Why change?”

“Dept Head: “Because the most common foreign language our students speak nowadays is English.”

     Still, a system where the educators had rights led to the US higher education system being the most respected in the world. It’s one of the reasons our graduate schools (still a little insulated from the corruption, as the most advanced faculty yet have tenure) are filled with foreign students studying actual subjects…even as our undergraduate, native born American, students are loading up on indoctrination-type coursework and heavily watered down material, at best.

Repeatedly during the meeting, Millner and other regents cited the need, in an era of tight budgets, for "flexibility" to close programs -- and eliminate faculty jobs in the process.

     I really feel the need to highlight what’s happening here. Instead of scholars saying “an educated person should know something of history, of foreign language, of science, of politics, “ and so on, that’s all going to be removed, to be replaced with courses filled with what administrators believe is important.

      With the new administrative plan, the education our kids are going deep into debt for will be determined by administrators…people who all too often have no education themselves. I’ve pointed out bogus coursework where “don’t shave” is worth a full letter grade (and you can do this for three courses), where knowing the details of Game of Thrones is more important than knowing about anything going on in the real world, where straight up indoctrination and nothing more need be learned.

       Taking educators out of education will only make this trend worse. In the near future, a college degree will simply mean the student learned that white people are evil, communism is the best thing ever, and females are better than males in every way.  (I’m sorry if I’m heavy on the links today, but I feel the need to link things that a reasonable person in a sane world would find hard to believe).

     Administrators are couching the annihilation of worker rights as a financial decision, but this is rubbish on the face of it. Administratively controlled campuses are already boiler rooms, and the reason our higher education system is running out of money (no matter how much we pour into it) isn’t nearly so much because taxpayer support is dwindling as because administrators are plundering rapaciously and there’s no way to stop them (I’d provide a link, but nigh every other post in my blog documents such theft).

      In short, this change in the rules is to facilitate even faster plundering, even more debasement of our higher education system.

      The comments section of course is primarily outrage as the groundwork for future plundering of the system is laid down. One comment does bear response as it hits all the old canards against tenure:

Tenure should not exist in any form. It was originally established as a decentralization of power away from European monarchs, where it was indeed an advance for liberty. When professors are employed by private colleges tenure is a transfer of liberty from one private entity to another in an inefficient way that is destructive to productivity, especially as seen by the employer. Gee, why doesn't any other industry offer lifetime employment regardless of performance?

     This is something of a train wreck of a post, and I want to take it apart line by line:

“Tenure should not exist in any form”

      What does this even mean? The current “form” of tenure in most schools means the professor can be suspended without pay indefinitely for little reason at all. Does this sound like much of a job guarantee? This form of tenure is basically meaningless, but still the poster fears it.

      I’ll just call this line puzzling hyperbole and move on:

It was originally established as a decentralization of power away from European monarchs, where it was indeed an advance for liberty.

      Have we truly reached the end of history? Is liberty truly at 100% now, with no chance of further advance? How is decentralization of power away from plundering sociopaths a bad thing? Like I said, this post is a train wreck.

When professors are employed by private colleges tenure is a transfer of liberty from one private entity to another in an inefficient way that is destructive to productivity, especially as seen by the employer.

     Uh, private colleges aren’t forced to offer tenure, all contracts there are voluntary, so this is a non-issue. And most private colleges are for-profits that don’t have tenure in any event. Please understand, our accredited for-profit school system, which has no tenure, is openly predatory, with billion-dollar frauds being exposed in for-profit (i.e., private) accredited schools almost every month. This is one ugly train wreck to watch, but let’s continue:

Gee, why doesn't any other industry offer lifetime employment regardless of performance?

     Now this is almost an excellent question.  There are some issues, however, as there are false assumptions buried in the question.

     First, the assumption of “lifetime employment” is invalid—anyone with actual familiarity with tenure will happily tell you there is a review process, and tenure can be lost legitimately by non-performing faculty….performance is very much a factor in tenure.

     Second, the assumption of “industry” is invalid. Should education be an “industry,” with human beings being manufactured on the same level as cans of beans? We certainly have self-proclaimed “titans of industry” running our institutions of education now, but, I promise the gentle reader, if we got rid of these guys, in no way would any student’s education be harmed, and the freeing up of funds would probably help education (at the very least, firing one million-dollar-a-year Poo Bah would provide full scholarships to a hundred students a year in our overpriced schools, or a thousand students a year in a fairly priced university).

     I honestly don’t know for certain that having tenure is a good thing for higher education…but the annihilation of tenure has turned even our “non-profit” schools into ripoffs and our students into prostitutes. This didn’t happen when educators had some influence over education, and it’s fair to consider that reducing educators’ influence further will not improve the situation.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com