The Master’s of Arts Degree Exposed

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.

Exposing Grad School (My M.A. experience)

     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.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

    

ACLU Opposes Letting Accused Males Have Rights

By Professor Doom

     I remember when I was a big fan of the ACLU, as they would defend the underdog, some deplorable guy who, even if I didn’t like whatever he said, I still felt he should have a defense from an organization skilled in protecting the rights all citizens of this country have.

     Those days seems to be over, as the ACLU really seems to be converged, taken over by Leftists who now feel only the people who think rightly deserve protection.  Heck, they’ve pretty much declared they no longer care about defending civil liberties, at least not if gets in the way of their ideology.

     I’ve written many times before how Title IX has turned into yet another weapon the Left uses to destroy faculty and students on campus who do not adhere to Leftist values (basically anyone to the right of Chairman Mao is fair game). Particularly vile is how a male, when accused of sexual wrongdoing by a female, can’t really defend himself, because he has so few rights. Yes, I know this happens to some extent off campus (Hi Justice Kavanaugh! Isn’t it odd how the witnesses who recanted their testimony won’t be charged with anything, despite the clear harm they’ve done to his family), but how the kangaroo campus court system handles these things is over-the-top.

     Betsy DeVos recently proposed, among many other things, giving rights to those accused under Title IX. That sounds like the kind of thing the old ACLU would approve…but what of today’s converged ACLU?

INSANE: ACLU Now Opposes Accused Students Having So Many Rights, All To Bash Trump

     Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a real thing, I have some friends with it, so filled with hatred of the man they can interpret nothing he does in a positive way, and readily believe any accusation made against him, even with a media well established as being miserly at best with the truth regarding Trump.

      So, while ordinarily the ACLU would want rights given to the accused, the fact that Trump’s representative is asking for such means they have no choice but to oppose, or so the headline says. What kind of reforms are we talking here?

The Title IX reforms, as David French aptly describes at National Review, requires colleges to end their kangaroo courts when it comes to sexual assault…The new rules require colleges to permit cross-examination of witnesses including the accuser by attorneys for the accused, and stops universities from allowing evidence from those who refuse cross-examination. Furthermore, the new Title IX regulations allow the accused to see the evidence given against them – and yes, there were schools that prohibited the accused from even knowing the nature of the accusations against them.

     Having personally been involved with a kangaroo court where evidence submitted by the accused was systematically destroyed, and then the accused was convicted because he couldn’t prove his innocence, I assure the gentle reader the above really is how many of our campus court systems are run.

      Gee whiz, none of the above sounds particularly unreasonable. Additionally, the definition of “sexual harassment” was tightened up, because it was clear the very loose definition was being abused by Title IX fiefdoms on campus.

     Surely the ACLU isn’t against putting at least some due process into the court system here? Allow me to edit their official statement:

…We strongly oppose it…inappropriately favoring the accused and letting schools ignore their responsibility under Title IX to respond promptly and fairly to complaints of sexual violence. 

      Hey, I concede the rights the accused have definitely slowed down the wheels of justice, but to snarl at every change as bad, even granting the accused the right to know what he’s accused of, strikes me at plenty deranged.

      Since I’m citing a decent news site, they allow comments, and one bears further discussion:

So the ACLU just came out as opposed to "Innocent until proven guilty"? Wow!
Why are rapes being investigated by Gender Studies professors and not the police?

     Yes, the ACLU does seem to have put itself in a funny position here.

      Why are rapes being investigated by Gender Studies professors? It’s a good question, and the answer involves quirks in our laws which grant our campuses (the older ones) considerable autonomy in how alleged crimes are investigated and punished. Yes, admin could pass over their power to the local police/legal system, but that would cut into their power…it’s not gonna happen.

      I also feel the need to point out that the kangaroo system for investigating rapes is often the same system used for investigating “improper” behavior by faculty (note carefully: espousing views to the right of Chairman Mao would be improper on many campuses). One the other hand, wildly inappropriate behavior by admin gets such a pass that they seldom even make it to the campus court system (eg, here, here, here, and here, among others).

       As a gratuitous kick, I also point out this is all paid for by the student loan scam.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Universities Banning ALL CAPS For Assignments—They SCARE Students

By Professor Doom

     I’m always impressed by the bumblings of our leaders in higher ed, but I suppose I shouldn’t be. These guys have Ph.D.s, research degrees, but never do research. They soak up tons of money, but never seem to leave anything in the budget to help with education. Finally, they have and use incredible power over what goes on in the classroom, in education…but have never taught a course themselves.

     On community college campus, these guys have the most power because faculty there seldom have any defense, and I know I hated how every semester I was told to cram some new “initiative” down my student’s throats, and that I needed to show the leader’s ideas were effective, or else.

     That said, you can certainly see these clowns in action on a university campus:

University bosses order lecturers to stop using capital letters when setting assignments because it might upset snowflake students

---I see I’m pretty generous in calling them “leaders,” and I have to admit “bosses” is more accurate. Nobody follows them because of their leadership, after all.

     When giving assignments to students, you generally give them some guidelines. Some aren’t particularly easy to miss, e.g., “be sure to put your name on the paper,” but some things you really don’t want students doing, and often, a simple warning isn’t enough. So sometimes to emphasize instructions you might well hammer the point home, eg, “DO NOT USE WIKIPEDIA AS A SOURCE,” (good advice for my readers, incidentally. Infogalactic has many of the same topics covered, and it’s often a great source of amusement compare the two’s information).

      Yes, writing in all caps is bad form, and looks like you’re shouting, but if you don’t do that, and the student ignores the instructions, then if you dock points he’ll complain to admin and say it’s your fault because  you weren’t clear enough. Trust me, I’ve been on the business end of such shenanigans enough times.

      Faculty who write in all caps can say “hey, I tried to emphasize it with all caps. Can’t we let the student take some responsibility here?”

·               A memo sent out to Leeds Trinity staff said capitals could 'scare them into failure'

     How did higher ed ever get so backwards that even so simple a faculty attempt to help the student follow directions is now “scaring them into failure”?

It suggested that writing a word in caps could highlight the 'difficulty' of the assignment and therefore worry the students. 

      Wow. Such a confusion of ideas could only come from bosses leaders who’ve never taught a course in their lives. It’s a shame faculty are forced to heed the “wisdom” of these leaders.

The lecturer at the university told the outlet that despite the intelligence of their students they feel that they are fighting against the education system who want to treat them like children.

Adding: 'We are not doing our students any favours with this kind of nonsense.'

     Gosh, “the lecturer” didn’t want to give his name as he dared criticize what the boss said? I know, I’m in no position to cast judgment, and I’m not…I just want to reinforce that this is what higher “education” is on campus: whatever admin says it is, delivered by a thoroughly cowed faculty.

     Bottom line, higher education today is presented as “job training,” to get a high paying job, even. If the students are so coddled that even the very gentle yelling of ALL CAPS is deemed too frightening for them, how are they ever going to deal with an actual boss in the real world?

     It’s not a question the bosses in higher ed will ever answer, both because nobody is in a position to put the question to them, and because they honestly don’t care.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

The Student As Prostitute…Now In The UK

By Professor Doom

       I’ve covered before how many college graduates now become prostitutes to help pay off their student debt, but that’s only addressing what happens after a student graduates and realizes her degree is worthless and has no choice.

       A far larger share of students become prostitutes, or semi-prostitutes (at the risk of splitting hairs) while still in college. There are entire sites devoted to them, for older gentlemen seeking “the girlfriend experience” with a college student, in exchange for paying off ever more exorbitant tuition.

        This has been going on in the US for some time, but the UK has been copying our higher education system. It’s only natural for their students to become prostitutes as well, but at least the UK higher ed system helps them out:

UK university students receive advice at orientation on becoming prostitutes

      Ah, orientation, I remember it well. “Here’s the library, here’s the food court, here’s the rec room, here’s where you’ll be taking classes….” I hail from far more prosaic times, indeed. What kind of advice are the UK students getting at orientation nowadays?

The Sex Workers’ Outreach Project (SWOP), Sussex set up shop at Brighton University and Sussex University during their annual September “freshers’ fairs,” offering condoms and sexual health advice to potential sex workers among the students.

     Ok, so I guess I played a bit of a “gotcha” with the title, since clearly this isn’t part of the official orientation materials. Still, there must be some sort of market here, and the university didn’t shut it down. Are they really expecting that many prostitute/students?

“1 in 6 students does sex work or thinks about turning to sex work,” SWOP tweeted. “We can help.”

     Now, I’m not one to cast judgement on people, but perhaps we should ask some questions about an “education” system where 1/6 of the students are considering “sex work” to pay for the system. To clarify, about 60% of students are female, and, realistically, most prostitutes are female, so we’re looking at around a quarter of the females are prostitutes, or are at least considering it.

At Brighton University, the SWOP stall, which featured a colorful “wheel of sexual well-being” for students to play with, stood beside another advertising careers in finance.

     Now, I’m thinking that perhaps a college degree would be helpful in finance, but does anyone else think these two “careers” belong side by side? Honest, you don’t need a college degree to be a prostitute.

     As I finally start to recover from the first round of treatments, a question comes to mind:

       Just how proud should the United States be of shipping this new brand of higher education to the rest of the western world?

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Yet Another Campus Hate Crime Hoax

By Professor Doom

     Today I’m writing during a 6 hour stint in a chemo chair, as this is my status all 5 days (I’m out now, as I write my posts in advance). My apologies if I’m a bit vague at times, but the fatigue hits me harder when I get home.

      A few weeks back, some anti-Trump goober supposedly sent pipe bombs to a bunch of anti-Trump representatives (Clintons, Soros, CNN, etc), covered his van in fresh Pro-Trump stickers and waited to be arrested.

       Because none of the bombs exploded, had no chance of exploding, were basically movie props, he’ll likely receive a reduced sentence (and justifiably so). The goober was in Broward county (the same county that produced that weird school shooting which in turn produced those weird anti-gun kids), a heck of a coincidence. The goober lived in a van, and, obviously, isn’t very bright, and yet somehow he managed to get addresses of people that, frankly aren’t exactly in the yellow pages, managed to get the intercontinental packages to all arrive on the same day (trust me, this is tough), managed to use couriers so he must have flown to New York and other places to set this all up to get simultaneous delivery…and yet the mainstream media dares not consider the bizarre issues here, much less utter the word “hoax.”

      While the mainstream media insists the guy was a Republican and calling him the Magabomber…there are plenty of pieces that just don’t fit that narrative, but the media as always will lie by omission. It’s clear he’s a Democrat before he started sending fake bombs, he only follows liberals on Twitter, for example.

       Anyway, the Left sure does like to hoax itself. It’s an everyday event on campus, the rare thing is it even coming close to the making the news. A recent incident managed it:

HATE CRIME HOAX: Ohio University Student Charged After Claiming She Received Death Threats. She Sent Them To Herself.

      I’m not even going to try to recall the number of times females have sent death threats to themselves…I can’t recall a single time a male has done this, perhaps a gentle reader can identify such a case.

       The hoaxer in this case is a “member of the LGBT” community, as they say, a rich source of hoaxers to be sure (though not by any means the only source).

The latest in a long string of hate-crime hoaxes comes from Ohio, where a woman claimed she received death threats — only for police to discover she sent the threats to herself.

       Most hoaxes are quietly buried because they stay on campus. When the police get involved, it becomes a public matter, and so harder for the campus leaders to squelch.

      The Student Senate devoted time to discussing the notes. An emotional Ayers claimed she was “angry, frustrated and disappointed” after the first threat, and called her parents to tell them about it. Because two of the messages were found in her Student Senate desk, the threats were at first believed to have come from another member of the organization.

      At first, the threats have to be taken seriously, so off it goes to various student groups, and the Diversity Fiefdom is only too happy to get involved…each hoax costs many hundreds of thousands of dollars of wasted time, I assure the gentle reader.

Ayers went on to call the threat sender cowardly, weak, and worthless, according to the Post.

      It sure makes my teeth itch when I see a hoaxer act so brave like this, and my teeth itch in a very special way from seeing it so much. I appear to be the only one to notice, though, as they always get heaps of praise loaded on them for their “courage” in standing up to…themselves?

On Monday, Ayers was arrested by OU police for sending the threats to herself. She was charged with making three false reports to police. A false report of this nature is considered a first-degree misdemeanor. She faces a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for each charge.

     And, game over. She went to the police. Oops. Considering the damage she’s caused, the fine is miniscule. In addition to all the expense, you can bet yet another $100,000 assistant Diversity Commissar will be hired as well.

      I’m not saying there are no people out there who really hate LGBT members to the point of violence, I’ve never met one or even heard of one personally, but I can accept they exist. But bottom line, most people just hear of the death threats like the above. Few hear the revelation that it was all yet another hoax, much like with our “MAGAbomber,” as those reports get buried. If we subtracted all the hoaxes from our collective consciousness, we’d realize that world isn’t nearly so filled with violent racism that needs to be PUNCHED as the Left is constantly screaming at us to believe.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

The Result Of Common Core? The Worst ACT Scores In A Decade

By Professor Doom

     I recently realized this is the most time I’ve spent off campus in, well, my adult life, so allow me to wander off campus in my writings as well, at least for a little.

“…Back in 1952 the Army quietly began hiring hundreds of psychologists to find out how 600,000 high school graduates had successfully faked illiteracy. Regna Wood sums up the episode this way:

After the psychologists told the officers that the graduates weren’t faking, Defense Department administrators knew that something terrible had happened in grade school reading instruction. And they knew it had started in the thirties. Why they remained silent, no one knows. The switch back to reading instruction that worked for everyone should have been made then…”

I very, very, strongly encourage the dedicated reader to check out this source.

      I’ve written of Common Core before, several times even. It’s been very clear for a very long time that something is very wrong in public school system. While the above hints that an easy solution would be to revert to known, successful methods of teaching children, that option never seems to be on the table.

     The reason for this, I believe, is that if someone can come up with a method of teaching children, any method even incrementally superior to what we’re disastrously doing now, they get the endless rewards of being an Education guru (that, so far, such gurus have all been utter failures doesn’t seem to impact the rewards, however). There’s just no way to take credit for “let’s just use what we’ve known works based on the last few thousand years,” after all.

     So, it doesn’t matter that Common Core ignores science, that it further separates parents from their children (by changing the methods so much that parents can’t help their children learn, a critical part of learning), that it “teaches” in ways that any experienced teacher knows can’t possibly be effective…Common Core it is.

      The gentle reader might be curious how that could be, but part of the reason (beyond simple governmental force) is the effectiveness of Common Core is backed by “studies.” I’ve seen many such studies, and even when they’re blatantly rigged to generate positive results using statistical manipulations up to outright fraud, it doesn’t matter: nobody dares question these things.

      So, the fantastically rigged studies show Common Core is amazing, simply amazing, when it comes to the success of their weird, nearly inhuman, ideas about how to teach children. What happens in the real world when kids are subjected to Common Core?

Years After States Adopt Common Core, 2018 Sees Worst ACT Scores in over a Decade

     So, there it is, then. You can certainly criticize standardized tests, but the fact remains whatever the ACT measures…our students have less of it, thanks to Common Core.

Only 40 percent of high school students met the ACT College Readiness Benchmark in math. That’s down from an ACT high of 46 percent in 2012, and the lowest mark since 2004, the ACT report noted.

     I remind the gentle reader around 70% of high school students go on to college after graduation. When one considers only 46% (more like 40% today, thanks to Common Core) of graduates are ready for college, that means we have a large number of kids flowing on to campus who demonstrably are not ready for campus.

      The reason nobody asks our leaders in higher ed about this obvious discrepancy is similar to why nobody ever challenges those fake studies showing the efficacy of Common Core.

“We should be concerned as a country,” said Matt Larson, immediate past president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “There’s a need to restructure how high-school mathematics teaching and learning is done in the United States.”

     The ACT basically measures two things, math skills and English skills. It’s clear Common Core has failed to help our kids with math, and I must particularly grieve over this. Is Common Core better with English?

The report also noted that high school graduates college readiness in English is also slipping. The report said 60 percent were considered ready, based upon their scores, a drop from 64 percent in 2015. The 2018 level was the lowest since current benchmarks began to be used, ACT said.

      More failure. Not to worry, I suppose, as I’m sure some new method of teaching (something called “Homeland Core,” perhaps) will be invented soon, and there will be plenty of studies showing how great it is.

      But, honest, we really have known since the 50’s how we can easily improve our public education system, and at least one school is getting a clue:

Florida School Drops Common Core – Soars To Number One

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Higher Ed Chart Of The Day

     As I recover from a 40 hour week of chemo, I’ll take the lazy route and just look at a picture, explaining how every single one of the bars is somewhat mis-representative, and how they all represent failure, often on an obvious level.

      The first bar, full time faculty, requires the second bar to think there might be a problem—faculty have not increased relative to students. One might think the failure to increase might not be so bad (particularly with that last bar so high), but there’s deception here.

      Admin have taken to awarding themselves faculty positions, even when they clearly do not teach or do research. The most outstanding example of this would be the president of Penn State, who received a 600k a year tenured faculty position as part of overseeing the Sandusky affair, but many colleges classify all the library staff as faculty, and even some fiefdoms, even if, at best, all they ever do is run a few workshops, still grant faculty status to all the royalty there. In terms of teaching, the number of actual “full time faculty” in the sense most people outside the industry think of them, has dropped off, particularly in relation to students.

      This is a dated chart, but as of 2011 enrollments were likely up 91% (probably down from that in 2018). This huge push to slam everyone into college has been most detrimental. College really was intended for people that could handle serious work, and the only way to accommodate the extra students was to lower standards, to the point that college graduate IQ is in free fall today. That 91% increase is a testament to the massive failure of our “leaders” in higher ed to restrain their greed. Despite the dated-ness here, keep in mind the loans of students in this chart are mostly still unpaid.

      Full time administrative numbers are up, way up, far past faculty and even students. The whole point of good administration is to do so effectively and at low cost. That one bar demonstrates clearly how badly our leaders have failed, all the more so since they’ve done nothing for the students any more than they’ve done for higher ed.

      The fourth bar reinforces the point. In every other industry, there’s an economy of scale…all those extra students should have brought the cost per student, i.e., the tuition, down, and yet tuition nearly tripled. Yet another demonstration of the tremendous failure of our leaders in higher ed.

       And now the fifth bar, which reveals the reality of education. While “real” faculty numbers have dropped in a way that’s difficult to measure, the soaring numbers of part-time faculty, generally paid so little they qualify for welfare and get no benefits, reveal that most courses are now taught by these minimum wage (at best) workers in higher ed. The people at the top of higher ed are making fortunes, but the actual teachers make nothing, being at the bottom of a Ponzi scheme.

     But it’s even worse than that. Our kids are being shoveled into higher ed with the premise that “education” means “money,” but they’re being taught by the most educated members of our society…who are getting no money.

      I assure the gentle reader, though this chart is from 2011, very little is different today, except possibly tuition being much higher. All this failure has been purchased at great expense via the student loan scam. Just shut it down already.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com