By Professor Doom
“I’ll get
my graduate degree!”
--it’s
weird how there’s always a personal pronoun, in this case “my,” in these types
of statements.
Quite a number of college graduates
get their spiffy degree, go out into the real world…and find out their degree
is worthless. Trouble is, even with a worthless degree, they’ll still have to
pay off the student loan debt, and doing so on a barista’s pay is daunting, if
not impossible.
But if you go back
to school, to get that ever so precious “graduate degree,” you don’t have to
make payments on your undergraduate debts. So now we have throngs of people
filing in to graduate school.
Now grad school
tuition is much higher, and accreditations says even less about graduate
education than it does about undergraduate education. So we have a huge profit
motive, and a huge potential for corruption.
I’ve noted that
Administration grad school is a joke, and of course I’ve shown Education grad
school is a joke. To be fair, you generally don’t fail graduate courses no
matter how little or how poorly you do in them (my own eyeballs saw it enough
times in grad school), so retention and other stats look good. On the other
hand, actually getting the mathematics MA requires passing some tests outside
of the classes being took—this allows the department to satisfy administrative
demands, while still preserving the integrity of the degree.
But those are only
the degree programs I can discuss in any detail. One of the most common
graduate degree programs is a Master’s in Communication. Because the basic
Communication degree is worth so little (because it demands so little), there’s
an extra demand for a “better” Communication degree.
A YouTube video
gives a first hand account of what an MA Communication degree entails. This is
important because, much like with community college coursework, it’s reasonable
suspect that what’s printed in the catalogue is unhinged from the
reality of the actual courses.
A typical Master’s
degree runs around a dozen courses, taking three a semester for two years,
though some places offer a “super-convenient” 1 year Master’s program. What
were her courses like?
“…people
who go into Communication tend to be vapid…”
Good to see she
knows her degree isn’t actually a brain-strainer.
“…as we go
around the room on the room…sinking feeling…research interests are queer
studies…Marxism…more Marxism…”
Wait, so now
Communication is now about ideology, too? That’s a shame.
Her conservative
leanings quickly led her to being attacked by the other students; I sure don’t recall anyone in Math grad school caring about politics. We
were too busy trying to understand mathematics.
“Cultural Analysis…I
gave a presentation on (the British) Empire, and showed them a clip…
--I apologize
for a weak transcription. The clip is a balanced discussion of the British
Empire, pointing out both its cruelties and its accomplishments.
After her
presentation, she had a discussion with the class about the balanced discussion
of the effects of the British Empire upon the world.
“The
Professor of the course posted on Facebook how I’m a defender of colonialism…”
Hey, remember when
a professor caught heat
for publicly supporting a student who believed in heterosexual marriage as a
good thing? I won’t be holding my breath to see if the professor here
will get the same rough treatment.
“…in this
course we read the original texts of Marx…”
--Seriously.
I can’t make this stuff up. I remind the reader this graduate study in
Communication.
The grad student
then goes on to list course after course of simply ideological indoctrination.
I concede I don’t know exactly what should go into a graduate level
Communications program but…it seems like it would involve how to operate at
least some of the modern communications equipment which is so critical to every
aspect of the modern world.
I would have
never suspected Communication was mostly about ideology.
“…in one of their classes they just meditated…”
I point out,
these students are paying many thousands of dollars for such “material.”
Meditation is fine, mind you but…why pay so much? Honest, you can meditate at
home.
“…I wrote a
lot of reflection papers….”
A reflection
paper is just a short essay giving an opinion on something…you can’t do this
wrong (great retention!), but is this really worth the graduate level tuition?
“…this was
mostly a nothing class…”
Bottom line, these
guys pour out of grad school after taking a dozen or more courses, filled with
ideology, nothing, or, at best, meditation.
This student
waited until after she graduated before spilling the beans on what her grad
school experience was like, so she’s obviously clever, even as she’s
annihilated her chances at a career in academia. She’s something of a
celebrity, but her identity isn’t the issue here. It’ll be a long time before
the fraud of (much of) graduate school is exposed, I admit, since we’re not
even close to revealing the fraud of (much of) higher ed in general.
But that day,
like the day I’m finally done with cancer treatments, is coming. I sure hope to
live to see it.
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