Education’s Role in Anti-Intellectualism and Dumbing Down

By Professor Doom

     A recent Psychology Today article discusses anti-intellectualism and the dumbing down of America. While certainly it has a few things right, it misses, often by a large margin, how education, both higher and “public” (more accurately, “government”), has played a role in the dumbing down of the population.

      Let’s hit what passes for highlights of the article before filling in the missing details:

It’s the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

     This is a little hit and miss. Arts and humanities departments are huge money makers on campus, with endless classes filled with hundreds of students apiece. Granted, these students are there because the classes are just power-point presentations and fill-in-the-bubble tests, with no writing or reading involved, paid for by the student loan scheme…but obviously there isn’t a complete dismissal.

      Moreover, the humanities in particular have been taken over by female-superiority and every-culture-but-Western-superiority hucksters preaching ever more ridiculous theories.  If you’re male or white, I can totally understand why you’d be dismissive of branches of knowledge that endlessly shout at you how you’re a worthless monster who should be gelded and/or made to suffer.

     Even when we look at Psychology--you know, the field that’s gotten much of the country addicted to various psychotherapeutic drugs--we still have issues. Key to the scientific method is experiments must be reproducible. About 60% of psychological studies fail the “can be reproduced” test. Taking addictive, expensive drugs, with side effects that generate even more revenue for the medical/pharmaceutical/psychological industry, based on studies that can’t be reproduced, seems pretty stupid to me. Being dismissive of the results of this field is, empirically the most reasonable thing to do…even if sometimes psychology has something relevant to say.

      Dismissal of other science likewise is understandable in this day and age. Government scientists, for decades, assured the public that “smoking is safe,” (a Gallup Survey conducted in 1958 found that only 44 percent of Americans believed smoking caused cancer) before finally admitting “yeah, smoking is bad for you, but in our defense we were getting a lot of money from tobacco companies.” So, I totally understand why people would dismiss government scientists, who get huge sums to say vaccines are safe, when they say “vaccines are safe.” Similarly, it’s tough to believe government scientists about global warming melting the ice caps before 2014…particularly when it hasn’t happened, and particularly when we know our best scientists can’t accurately guess next week’s weather, much less decades from now.

     Then we have government economists (economics being “the dismal science”) that assure us the US has a thriving economy right now…even with record numbers of people on food assistance, wild market swings, and steeply falling oil prices from decreased consumption (our modern civilization runs on oil…there’s just no way you can have growth without increase in oil consumption). So, again, I can appreciate why people reject “science,” at least when it comes out of a government scientist’s mouth.

     But what of the dumbing down?

“a whole generation of youth is being dumbed down by their aversion to reading anything of substance and their addiction to digital "crap" via social media.”

     Time and again I’ve tried to steer friends and students to articles online, articles with more substance than a Facebook post. Very often I get the response “I can’t read online,” even as I can’t pry their eyes off their cell phones long enough to see what I’m doing at the board. I know, it’s customary to hate on “the new thing kids are doing these days,” it happened with comic books and TV, when, generations ago, those were the new things. I concede a dumbing down, mind you, but I’m not convinced it’s just social media and cell phones that are causing the dumbing down to the point that people can’t learn on their own.

      In public schools, students are forced to read books…I can’t help but notice how often those books are gut-wrenchingly sad, affairs, guaranteed to make the reader feel bad. I’m not just talking old classics like Crime and Punishment or The Black Pearl, which, for all their legitimacy, are still bleak depictions of the world, but even “pop” novels force-read in school, like Bridge to Terabithia, are such heartbreakers that students apparently are trained to believe “if I read a book, I will feel sad and miserable.” And yet it’s supposed to be a puzzle why our kids don’t read?

     It really is curious how all our highly influential educationists with their fancy degrees can’t come up with “maybe if we made them read books with happiness in them, instead of misery, they won’t associate reading with misery?” I’m no expert, but it seems like it’d be something to try.

      It’s very clear reading as a pastime is dropping off:

  According to the National Endowment for the Arts report in 1982, 82% of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later only 67% did. And more than 40% of Americans under 44 did not read a single book--fiction or nonfiction--over the course of a year. The proportion of 17 year olds who read nothing (unless required by school ) has doubled between 1984-2004…

      Are government schools training people not to read? Quite possibly. John Taylor Gatto has already explored this theory in such detail that I could not hope to add anything relevant to it…even as nearly every mainstream article has gaps I try to fill in with this blog.

       And what of higher education’s role in all this? The article touches on it a little:

The very mission of universities has changed, argues Liu. “We don’t educate people anymore. We train them to get jobs.”

      While I agree with the “we don’t educate people anymore,” I have a real issue with that “train them to get jobs” part. There is quite a bit going on at the university that has nothing to do with jobs. What job requires students to know Game of Thrones? What job requires skill at rock climbing walls? What job requires workers to not shave? More importantly, why does it take 4 years to learn these skills? I could go on with this for quite a while but, honest, job training isn’t a high priority at many institutions.

     Should it be? Well, actually, insofar as student loans are driving higher education, it should be…in much the same way as tsunamis should follow earthquakes. Before my academic friends get angry, allow me to clarify.

     Next time.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

More Dark Education Arts

By Professor Doom

     So I’m looking at a typical institution of higher education, this one passing itself off as an art school, the Academy of Art University (AAU). Alas, higher education has fallen so far that “typical school” means “school focused on drawing in as many students in as possible, sucking them dry of their student loan money, and spitting them out.”

     Former employees make it clear that the previous description was business as usual for AAU:

Mallory Lynch, a former admissions representative who resigned in February, says managers told her to woo students with success stories and avoid mentioning the dropout rate. She felt uncomfortable selling the school to people who were clearly unprepared (including an unemployed mother of four, those who couldn’t afford the $100 application fee or prospective online candidates who had no computers).

     How do people that can’t afford college, nevertheless pay for it? Well, student loans of course. How do bogus institutions that charge ridiculous amounts of money for worthless degrees nevertheless get students to qualify for those student loans?

      Accreditation. 

      Accreditation assures that the school is legitimate. The government trusts the accreditor’s word that AAU is legitimate, so the government will send money to it. Trouble is, for the most part, accreditors trust the institution’s word that everything at the institution is legitimate. It’s why we have scandals going on at even our state schools that go on for well past a decade, without accreditation, or the government, ever catching on.

    The accreditor in this case is the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, WASC, which has a (should-be-illegal) regional monopoly on accreditation. The only way AAU can get accredited is to satisfy WASC’s rules.

      So, did AAU, a school with serious legal trouble for lack of integrity in recruiting, and actively deceiving students about its programs, satisfy the accreditation requirements? Of course it did:

Although WASC reaffirmed AAU’s accreditation for another seven years in July 2014, it issued a “formal notice of concern,”

--hey, if anyone wants to give me a billion dollars, 7 years of no oversight, and a ‘formal notice of concern,’ please use the contact form. It’s a great deal. It’s also the typical deal accreditation offers schools in exchange for lucrative accreditor fees.

     So, as far as accreditation is concerned, AAU is just dandy, and won’t have to worry about accreditation again for a long time. Accreditation really is a license to plunder. There is no penalty for any violation of accreditation, as I’ve discussed before. “Formal notice of concern” is laughable—the school (or the family that owns it) has, at worst, six more years of plundering, then has to close up shop, if they feel like it. I’ve seen just about every act of fraud, incompetence, unprofessionalism, and outright theft go on at institutions, and never has an accreditor said “hey, that’s a problem, we’re not accrediting you anymore. Good luck getting students to pay tuition with their own money!”

     Ok, there’s one violation I’ve never seen: failure to pay accreditor fees. Keep this in mind: if an accreditor doesn’t accredit the institution, the accreditor doesn’t get paid. This is just one of many conflicts of interest in accreditation.

      The student loan scam is key to the corruption of higher education today. Accreditation is the gatekeeper, but the flood of student loan money has long since unlocked the gates. Accreditation is now so useless, so far removed from education, that the gates to corruption are now thrown wide open.

      Allow me to demonstrate by looking at WASC’s own rules for accreditation and see that it could shut down AAU, and many other schools, just by being a legitimate regulator.

     Let’s go to the very first thing WASC claims it does:

Assures a school community that the school’s purposes are appropriate and being accomplished through a viable education program  — a trustworthy institution for student learning…

     And, game over. AAU sucks in every student it can, tells the student he can be an artist even if he’s never drawn so much as a stick figure, and tells the student that he’ll get a high paying job with his degree from AAU. It doesn’t tell the student his chances of graduating are slim at best, and, in violation of federal law, refuses to release the data showing how likely graduates are to get a job that would pay off the student loan:

AAU also tracks job-placement statistics…but it doesn’t publish them despite the federal requirement to do so. A spokesperson for the Department of Education says schools that don’t comply with the rule may be cut off from federal student aid if violations are deemed “egregious.”

--emphasis added.

     In what universe is this sort of behavior “trustworthy?” And yet the accreditor says the school is fine, and won’t have its accreditation reviewed again until 2021. Talk about a free ride…

     Ok, “trustworthy” is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Is there anything else in the accreditor’s rules that might be a problem?

      Well, sure:

“…An institution must meet all legal requirements to

provide a program of education beyond the secondary level…”

     Again, the ol’ “not meeting Federal requirements to release their data” means we’re done, again. This school should not be accredited, it’s not meeting its legal requirements.

    

      Ok, maybe I’m just harping on violating law. Lots and lots of schools openly violate the law. Any other issues?

      Of course:

“…its commitment to successful student learning.“

     The school’s online programs (and online is a big part of the school) have a 6%, six year graduation rate. A school committed to successful student learning would completely shut down those programs instead of continue to push for their growth through recruiting and online advertisement. As long as those programs are open, as long as the school continues to seek to expand them despite the solid track record of failure, the school is in violation of accreditation, and should not have accreditation.

     Any other issues? Of course, it’s simple to just review the regulations to find yet another clear cut problem:

The institution must have a functioning governing Board

responsible for the quality, integrity, and financial stability of the institution

     As I mentioned in the previous post, the Poo Bah buys buildings for her personal ownership, and leases them to the school. Uh, can someone say “conflict of interest” here? The Poo Bah makes the ultimate decision regarding what buildings a school has, and how much is paid to rent them. Shady insider dealing is why many institutions (fully accredited institutions, I might add) are loaded down with construction projects, even as ever more coursework is moved online. A legitimate accreditor would be looking into those deals, and shutting the school down. Instead, WASC gave AAU a free pass. Again.

     I could continue to go through the accreditor’s rules, but it’s pointless: the accreditor isn’t going to follow them, and, in exchange for accreditation fees, will continue to assert that AAU is a completely trustworthy institution that is honestly trying to offer legitimate education and help its students succeed, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

      AAU is a private, for-profit institution, and something of a family business. I have no problem with that, but it’s very clear the primary business here is just plundering our citizens with the student loan scam. The Federal government is catching on to this scam, but even when it shuts down these schools, it leaves the students in debt. The Poo Bahs remain fabulously wealthy, keeping their golden parachutes as well as all the student loan loot they’ve plundered.

       And accreditors just keep repeating that all the schools out there are completely legitimate.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

      

    

The Dark Arts of Higher Ed

By Professor Doom

     A recent Forbes article decides to have an easy day: it shreds the shenanigans going on at an art school. It does a good job, but, as is so often the case, misses some important details which explain how the atrocities can take place.

     The article focuses on the life of the Poo Bah at the school. Life is sweet if you’re a Poo Bah:

‘…Stephens, 56, is wearing a fitted black skirt-suit with a Chanel clutch and a sparkling brooch the size of a Christmas ornament…Elisa made sure photographers snapped her with fashion designer Lubov Azria, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and former mayor Willie Brown. After the show, guests feasted on filet mignon topped with foie gras and drained the house dry of red wine.

…The Stephens family has turned that pile of art-school tuition into one of the largest real estate empires in San Francisco, with more than 40 properties in prime areas…the real estate is worth an estimated $420 million, net of debt, and the family pulls in tens of millions of dollars each year leasing these buildings back to the Academy of Art for classrooms and dorms.

…Stephens, her younger brother, Scott, and her parents, Richard and Susanne, are worth an estimated $800 million…”


     Wow, ruling over a university is a nice gig if you can get it (the article also mentions the family’s $70 million car collection). I’ve written before of the kind of money Poo Bahs get, and while there are plenty of articles bemoaning the pay, realize there are some hefty perks that make Stephens’ lifestyle not particularly spectacular for a Pooh Bah.

Stephens also went on a real estate shopping spree, buying 11 buildings in the 1990s and another 17 the following decade. The family leases all of them to the school.


     Now, Stephens rules over Academy of Art University, an 86 year old for-profit university. When she took over the school a few decades ago, it had a mere 2,200 students, but she followed the golden rule of all administration: growth is everything. Now it has 16,000 students, and the money has been pouring in. The Poo Bah is also buying property, and leasing it to the institution…bizarre real estate deals are par for the course in higher education today. Forbes’ explains the successful plan for growth:

…luring starry-eyed art students into taking on massive amounts of debt based on the “revolutionary principle” (Stephens’ phrase) that anyone can make a career as a professional artist. No observable talent is required to gain admission to AAU. The school will accept anyone who has a high school diploma and is willing to pay the $22,000 annual tuition (excluding room and board), no art portfolio required…

…And the school is fighting a whistle-blower suit by former recruiters who say they were paid more, illegally, if they enrolled more students…


      So, this school followed the template that most other state and non-profit schools followed: annihilate standards, abandon integrity, open admissions to everyone, and grow, grow, grow. Just as now colleges regularly admit students that can’t function at the 6^th grade level, so does this art school admit students who can’t demonstrate any interest in art. Old accreditation wouldn’t allow this, because old accreditation requires admission requirements. This rule, much like every rule that cut into growth, was removed.

      This is this big thing the article missed: it doesn’t look hard at accreditation’s role in allowing students to be scammed. This school, like so many others, is focused on plundering the student loan money:

Just 32% of full-time students graduate in six years…and that rate drops to 6% for online-only…

…But exactly how many of AAU’s grads actually land a job in their field of study is a bit of a state secret….


     Hey, there are plenty of schools that aspire to have a 6%, 6 year graduation rate. It isn’t merely that graduation is not a goal for this school, it’s also that graduates get degrees of no value (despite paying about $100,000 for that piece of paper). 

     Graduation rates are tracked for all schools; post-graduation employment, on the other hand, isn’t….well, it is here, but the information isn’t revealed. I’ll get to that later.

      So, when challenged on the abysmal graduation rates, administration just wheels out an excuse similar to what other bogus schools offer:

Stephens insists that graduation rates are a “red herring” at a place like AAU. “If a student can get that portfolio built before they finish all their requirements, and they get a job in their field of study, then we don’t want to keep them here,” she says.


     I have to chuckle at this, because it’s so similar to the lie I heard many a time at a community college with atrocious graduation: “We’re a transfer institution, so we don’t produce many graduates.” Never mind that with thousands of students, it should be easy to produce a great number of successful students that got their start at the school…such students never seem to appear in great quantity, although one, perhaps two, students for each year of operation do manage to succeed. Among thousands.

     Most students, even the ones with shiny degrees, get nothing:

After graduating from AAU in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in animation and visual effects, Jacob Fraga spent two years working at Starbucks. He was drawn to AAU because it touted connections to companies like Pixar, but he says he didn’t get meaningful guidance for finding a job. “It just didn’t feel like anybody really cared where you ended up,” he says. Fraga, who owes $25,000 in student loans, is now driving for Lyft and taking computer science classes at a community college in hopes of getting a better job. “I’ve felt pretty helpless. How am I going to get out of this debt?” he asks.

--Poor kid, after being suckered by AAU, is now going to community college, where he’ll get suckered again. My own community college also had a computer science program; even though we desperately needed help in our IT department, we wouldn’t hire our own graduates because the program taught nothing useful. He’ll find out how that works when he graduates. Poor, poor kid.


     Universities, like all large bureaucracies, are obsessed with collecting data. AAU is no exception. They have the data on job placement, but won’t release it:

AAU also tracks job-placement statistics, Stephens says, but it doesn’t publish them despite the federal requirement to do so. A spokesperson for the Department of Education says schools that don’t comply with the rule may be cut off from federal student aid if violations are deemed “egregious.”…The Department spokesperson says all schools that voluntarily collect job-placement rates must share them and the method used.


     Does the gentle reader really suppose that, if AAU’s data showed their graduates were successful, AAU would violate federal law by refusing to release the data? AAU knows full well their degrees are basically worthless, that the money they’re raking in from the Federal student loan scam is just going directly into Poo Bah pockets, while the students rack up debt they’ll never be able to pay back.

     A former employee at AAU explains the reality at this school:

“…who now heads production at a Bay Area animation studio, says that while AAU has success stories, its business model is based on underperformers. “There are many students left behind,” he says. “From an initial class of, say, 100 students, we get maybe 5 kids at the end that are employable.”


     Because these schools generally offer no protection to their faculty (or honor it even if there is such protection), I doubt we’ll get any quotes from current employees. If we did, they would say much the same. Again, it’s what I saw at the community college level: perhaps 1 student in the class was legitimate, and the rest were being robbed. Admin doesn’t care.

      But what of accreditation’s role in all this? Accreditation is supposed to look at a school, and assure the school is legitimate. We’ll take a look at accreditation’s colossal failures here next time.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com