72 thoughts on “Liberal Collectivist Academics At Vanderbilt Complain About Collectivism”

1. The biggest critics of capitalism are usually the ones who exploit its flaws the worst.
   Crony capitalism at its finest.

   1. The biggest critics of capitalism are drinking Starbucks and typing on their MacBook.
      I’d wager they also think that honest hard work is beneath them.

      1. Their hypocrisy is staggering.

2. “The shift of power further away from academics could indicate a threat to their control on the social narrative.”
   I doubt it. Administrators are no better, and as they don’t really even have to interact with students, may be far worse.

3. This article reinforces my belief that the education system needs to be abolished. When are the masses going to wake up and realise that the entire system of education is nothing but a scam, one which costs the taxpayers too much money and does nothing but set up the younger generation for great failure and disappointment?
   Education is simply a conveyorbelt- a converbelt which keeps going for 22 years, while indocrinating you and keeping you distracted from the real issues that should be looked upon with great concern, such as the fact that there may not even be a full time job for you. The whole system is indeed a racket, and the sloppy standards, useless content and curriculum taught to students has no real application or relevance to the real world. Instead, what it does is it creates brainwashed lemmings, who wake up at the end of that converbelt only to realise, that they were nothing but a disposable money bag for the whole eduction industrial complex.
   And the results are now showing in society:
   -Sloppy teachers and corrupt unions wanting more than they are entitled to.
   -Delusional college graduates with spoilt and self entitled mentalities.
   -Weak and defeatist attitudes within the majority of college graduates, who are rudely awaken in the post education life to realise that they are not special.
   -A student debt crisis which has exploded and surpassed over $1 trillion.
   -Corrupt educational establishments raising tuition fees to insane levels backed by the support of the Government.
   People really need to get their heads screwed on tight and start to understand that the whole system is going to collapse. Which is why the vast majority of colleges should be shut down, eliminate and remove these leftist public sector teachers and professors from their “jobs” and reduce the tax burden of having to subsidise the worthless education system.

   1. “And the results are now showing in society”
      A society which, in 20 years, will start looking like the good old days. The primary schools are only now getting up to speed and what they are churning out is both sad and frightening.

   2. What should we be learning then? I’m fifteen and currently in high school, what can I do to give me the skills necessary to use and succeed?

      1. Marty Nemko has some suggestions regarding careers for young people. He’s an honest academic and admitted the whole uni industry is useless for actual life. Trade schools, self-taught programming, coding perhaps…
         

         1. Self-teaching and finding a group of peers with similar interests is far more useful than the burden of student loans

         2. Does this apply to the UK as well?

         3. I don’t think Nemko does the analysis for UK… however it seems UK had IT skills shortages a few years ago. Not sure if it’s true now since it seems importing cheaper labor is one of the agendas in the globalized world. There’s the National Career Services UK that seem to do surveys on what is in demand and what is not in demand on the labor markets. Also remember if European Union survives the next few years you can find employment in the member states.
            http://blog.theitjobboard.co.uk/5-currently-demand-uk-job-vacancies/

      2. on an unrelated note, please tell your male friends about this site.
         Help wean them off the blue pill.

         1. I understand that I need to learn useful skills and am making sure I learn them but I would also like to earn a lot of money doing so. Is it possible to get rich without a university/ college degree?

         2. Absolutely. Most of the world’s richest men were college dropouts or never went to college at all.

         3. Yes, but there’s no one-size-fits all model. Some things that will help no matter what your skillset:
            keep a detailed database of all contacts, study the “Getting Things Done” system and use GTD software such as TaskUnifier every morning,
            frequently write thank-you notes,
            study and apply persuasive techniques (“Getting to Yes”, “Getting Past No”, some NLP for advanced work),
            work on your personal presentation (esp. dress, posture, vocal tone),
            cultivate a mentality that you deserve to be paid / profit,
            always push a bit beyond your comfort zone (even if you feel like you are faking it a bit),
            don’t stay up late, get enough sleep,
            work out (at least the biggest muscle groups, as much as you can lift for 3 sets of 3 to 5 reps, 3x per week).
            To start learning about money as a tool, try trading a forex practice (play money) account – you will learn a lot, though the odds of actually making a sustained profit are very small. (Most forex brokers offer these free accounts. Choose one that uses MetaTrader software. Also check out Forex Strategy Builder to accelerate your understanding of how systems work and fail, backtesting, forward-testing, avoiding curve fitting, the importance of money management, and basic program trading.)

         4. Start with Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It’s basic but many people were so poorly taught about money that it’s a needed basics like the coach starting with “This is a football.”

         5. i have a friend who is a brilliant freelance programmer, making around 100k annually. he didn’t even finish high school, since he has problems with authority.

         6. Thank you for the advice I truly need. I have heard people say before that we should dress like what men should, but how is that exactly? Also what do you mean by keeping a detailed database of all contacts, NLP, GTD software, forex strategy builder and the “getting things done system”? Finally, isn’t one of the cons of uni/college that you come out with the mindset that you should get paid?
            I don’t mean to be picky, I just want to make sure I know what I missed.

         7. there’s an app called ForexMaster i started using that lets you practice forex trading. it’s pretty cool for someone just starting out.

         8. Well, here is a very long version, but you asked for it.
            Starting with the last: no, the danger of the college mindset is thinking that you should be paid for having jumped through a bunch of useless hoops; on the other hand, thinking you should be paid because you can convince people to hand over money and convince them that they got a deal is completely rational. School also fosters other bad habits of thought: that profit is unlikely in the short run and impossible in the long run, that owning a business is more risky than working for somebody else, and that schooling and approval from all relevant authorities is needed before you can expect to succeed at anything.
            Maintaining what is, by academic standards, a completely self-centered and unhelpful view – that is, a competitive mindset – is indispensable in getting a large fortune. To give you some idea, back when he was worth about 1/1000th what he has today, Michael Dell came to the “career night” at my Austin high school, and spoke to the dozen or so students who had bothered to walk the fifty feet or so from their dorms. A slightly pudgy guy in his mid-20s, wearing a hand-tailored white silk business shirt, he talked about the difficulties of dealing with twenty-percent-plus business growth year after year. Bragging, basically, and completely useless to high-school students. When I asked how he got seed capital and suppliers, he would reveal absolutely nothing. Why? First, because it wouldn’t have helped him (not least because it would have meant admitting that a good deal of his working capital came from slooow-paying his suppliers). Second because there was a chance, however slight, that it would lead to someone competing with him more effectively. To paraphrase a modern poet, “procure wherewithal; eschew anile canaille”. (Or in the original dialect: “Get money, fuck bitches.”)
            Contacts database: unless you record the names and information about friends, acquaintances and useful or powerful people you have met, you will forget and not only lose touch with them but lose the necessary clues to get back in touch. This is like flushing your social capital down the toilet. At high levels of business, deals between people who don’t at least have mutual contacts basically don’t happen. Top venture capital firms will usually debrief new hires over a period of days to find out every potentially useful person the hire has ever met, even using hypnosis. A contacts database should ideally include anybody you meet and talk to for more than about ten minutes, but certainly anybody with whom you have exchanged contact information and any personal contacts who are in any way prominent. If you can get portrait photos, it’s a huge help, as is recording the dates and locations of each interaction. Record any relevant information about the contact – job, course of study, relatives’ names and their jobs or accomplishments. (If you can get them to enter this information themselves, it can save a lot of trouble in transcribing.) Think of an average contact as being worth $20, and a quality contact as being worth $200 or more, and it will help give you the impetus to actually keep up your database. Without exaggeration, personal contacts are more important and lasting than your classwork.
            “Getting Things Done”, or GTD: do a web search on the title, buy the book or at least get it from the library. It is a standardized procedure for handling the stuff you need to get done as painlessly as possible. Here’s a brief outline: Gong through the (Stuff / In-box) decide if it requires action. If not actionable, (trash) or (file) [or put into the (someday) or (plans) lists, which have a review cycle and are a bit too complex to cover here]. If actionable, do it if it takes less than 2 minutes, or either delegate and put on the (waiting for someone else) list or defer your action. Your deferred actions can either be put on the (calendar) for a specific time on put on the (next action) list to do as soon as you have time or are in the right place. The (next action) list may have context-dependent sub-lists that group similar tasks so they can be done together: (email), (web), (at school), (at home), (at store) etc. The free software “TaskUnifier” helps automate the system, but you still have to actually use it at least every day. The point of the system is, as the title says, actually Getting Things Done, but the motivation for it is that you don’t have to keep things in your head, freeing up a great deal of mental capacity for more profitable and enjoyable pursuits.
            Forex: Foreign exchange practice accounts are essentially computer games, with the added attraction that they are just like trading in the real-world, using the same market data. If you can reliably score in the game you can make real money in the real world. (Though trading even a little real money vastly amplifies the emotional forces compared to play money.)
            Trading hunches is usually a bad idea; you need to have a rationally crafted decision method which defines the signals you use to trade and the discipline to actually implement that strategy consistently. Program trading uses basically a “software robot” to play the game for you, making the discipline of following a strategy much easier. Forex Strategy Builder (FSB) is a free program which loads a certain set of historical data, for instance a few weeks (up to 50k “bars”, or entries) of EUR/USD (Euro-Dollar) with 1-minute updates, each listing the opening price, the closing price, the highest price, the lowest price and the trading volume for that 1-minute interval (you can load many different currency pairs, time periods, and update frequencies (1m, 5m, 15m, 30m, 1hr, 4hr, and daily bars being standard) if you like). FSB has many different technical indicators that can be used to generate trading signals, a simple example would be a moving average of the 1-minute interval closing prices. The moving average might be over a relatively long period, say, the last 200 minutes.
            The strategy might be to sell when the price is a certain amount above the average, and to buy when it is below the average (the classic “mean reversion” as opposed to “momentum” strategy). The main variables in this strategy would be: 1. how long an averaging period to use and 2. how much above/below that average would the price have to be before you would sell or buy 3. how much to buy/sell on each signal, which will depend on how much money you have 4. (optionally) When to exit the trade – the take-profit and stop-loss levels.
            FSB can tell you almost instantly how well the strategy would work over the several-week time period. It can also optimize the strategy variables individually and collectively. It can also automatically generate profitable strategies using any combination of hundreds of built-in technical indicators and compare the results in sophisticated ways. You can then play with modifications of those strategies. Many of the things that seem like good ideas or safety precautions in trading strategies are actually completely disastrous. It would take you years of unsystematic experimental trading to figure most of these things out, but with FSB you can learn it in a few afternoons.
            Though forex is the simplest market, with by far the greatest trading volume and the lowest transaction costs, trading forex teaches a great deal about markets and trading in general: long, short, mean-reversion vs. momentum strategies, volatility, trends and technical indicators, contracts, stops, orders, leverage, interest, leverage (forex allows anyone to borrow up to 50 times their deposit at around the very low central bank rate), correlations (search: “Oanda fxlabs”), economic indicators … far more than I can begin to get into here. It should be noted though, that price movements are very nearly random and this is essentially a fancy and educational form of gambling. You will need to do a lot of reading and research on your own before you are good at it, and even above-average traders in forex usually lose money in the long run.
            NLP: “Neuro-linguistic programming” – This is a field of advanced therapeutic and persuasive techniques largely based in conversational or “Ericksonian” hypnosis. Much of what is written about NLP is cookbook-style or rote procedures, and is useless at best. (I’m especially skeptical of interpreting the directions of eye movements and of the effectiveness of subliminal homophonic suggestions such as “you might think yourself above me, but I think you blow me”)
            Some of the more thoughtful NLP writing gives insight into how the mind works and how it can be covertly or overtly manipulated; this can be extraordinarily useful. The original book in the field was “The Structure of Magic” in two volumes by John Grinder and Richard Bandler. It is a bit heavy going, but worth it. Robert Dilts’ “Sleight of Mouth” may be better for practical use. Milton Erickson’s “And My Voice Will Go With You” will give many examples of how therapeutic hypnotic suggestion has been integrated into conversations. Tad James’ Tad James “Hypnosis – A Comprehensive Guide” gives a practical analysis of the patterns behind Erickson’s methods, as well as a practical and scholarly look at the other major schools of hypnosis. Search for Youtube videos of Darren Brown’s BBC show to see how remarkable the effects can be, for instance: covertly reprogramming a person’s sense of color so that even though they are not in trance, they honestly think that their car has changed color; subconsciously programming a moving crowd of passers-by in a mall to raise their hands at the same time; paying for things with blank paper; subconsciously implanting a whole bizarre ad campaign into advertising “creatives” heads so that they think they came up with it on their own….
            Just a reminder, though, that studying conventional negotiating techniques should come before such flashy tricks.
            Dress: You need to adjust this to the specific social group to which you want to be seen as belonging. If you want to be seen as upper-class, then dress like a professional, or at least like a professional would have dressed at your age. When selecting items, you might ask yourself whether you might plausibly have borrowed it from your (presumably imaginary) investment-banker father’s closet. If you can’t raid an investment banker’s closet, see if you can find a good thrift shop in a very wealthy district. Though it was actually a humor book, the 30-year-old “Preppy Handbook” conveys many of the finer points that would otherwise require going to a top boarding school to learn. (Dressing down while still giving an upper-class impression is actually a bit harder than dressing up, and the PH gives some help with this. However, the Handbook’s advice on golfing pants and madras is dated – these have long been dropped.)
            Simplicity, elegance, and quality are the basis of style, along with giving the impression of effortlessness – it should seem natural, not like you’re trying too hard.
            One instance of this sort of style comes from an early 1970s family story of my great-great-grandfather, an old-school Connecticut Yankee, Heidelberg graduate, president for many years of the family sewing machine manufacturing company, who as a matter of course would wear a white flannel suit to the seashore in the summer. Also as a matter of course, he would paint his wooden rowboat himself. In his suit. At over ninety years old. Without ever getting a drop of paint on his clothes. No matter how impressive this was to onlookers, that isn’t the main reason he did it – it was simply the way it ought to be done.
            Wardrobe staples: polo-style shirts, button-downs, chinos (slacks). At your age, a not-tucked in polo shirt is usual. Natural fibers are usually preferable, but better permanent press than wrinkled natural fibers. Brands: never wear anything with a prominent brand logo (anything bigger than 1 inch). Old brands known for having the right style: L.L Bean, Polo, Brooks Brothers and Land’s End. Other acceptable brands include Nautica, Hilfiger, Abercrombie & Fitch (though they aren’t the original A&F). It’s worth going to an outlet mall that has these sorts of brands, particularly on big sale holidays. In the unlikely event that your mom requires persuasion, point out that you have nearly stopped growing, that the right clothes will get you more visible status than an Ivy League degree at a hundredth the cost, and that it’s much cheaper and easier for her to do holiday shopping early (but be prepared for a lot of shirts for Christmas if you use that last one.)
            Occasionally dress up a bit for no reason – a silk rep tie (2-color stripes, e.g. 3/4 in. stripes in red/blue or green/blue) or foulard (small repeating design on single-color background) can stake out some territory as an ironic non-conformist. A plain, good quality, properly fitted blue blazer with a white button-down and no tie will make you look almost like a venture capitalist, and feel like a member of the ruling class. A black turtleneck can instantly transform you into a fully accredited bohemian intellectual.
            Unless you are wearing shorts, wear durable non-athletic shoes, they don’t have to be impractical leather-soled dress shoes unless you’re really dressing up. I usually use some of the less ugly models of Clark’s for daily use, but low-cut Doc Martens are fine, too. Bass or Cole-Haan penny loafers are useful, too and can be worn without socks, and if sockless can go with shorts. Don’t wear white tube socks with anything but athletic shoes. Get lots of identical black nylon knee socks, e.g. gold-toe brand. If you don’t run them through the dryer, they can last for decades. For dress shoes, Johnson & Murphy and Cole-Haan are the preferred brands, but any of similar style and durability are fine. Take care of your dress shoes (use those wooden-foot looking shoe-trees and polish them regularly with paste wax) and they can last a very long time. I still sometimes wear my father’s 38-year-old J&M wingtips (the pair weighs nearly 3 lbs.!).
            That’s about all I have time to say now. Good luck.

         9. I know my fare share of millionaire programmers who never went to college.

      3. There are many online courses, a shocking number are free or cheap. Khan Academy, Ron Paul courses, many free or low-cost courses from the top colleges and so forth. Google them and also search for homeschooling courses too.

   3. Totally agree. Excellent analyses. I would also like to mention that the unconstitutional Dept of Education should be de-funded and dismantled. Whatever legitimate functions it ostensibly serves can best be managed by the State the local public school or college is located in.
      By the way, that conveyor belt you spoke of ends over the edge of a cliff.

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4. I remember during my graduation waiting for my name to be called to receive my degree, seeing how proud and happy my parents were that I was the first in the family to graduate from college, while thinking to myself “I just spent 4 years of my life here and really didn’t learn a goddamn thing”
   And every month for over 10 years I had to pay $130 for my student loans. I graduated in 2002, and I’m still in awe that even 13 years later people still flock to college even though the scam of it has been revealed over and over. People seriously need to just stop sending their kids to college. If they let their kids just stay at home while working full time and saving their money for 4 years, they would come out so far ahead of any college graduate.

   1. Exactly the same situation for me. Although luckily I was able to pay off my student fees while working part time in the security field. The realization of what a waste college was came to me after I got my first office job in property management and I realized that I could have done this job right after graduating high school with no experience.
      Only issue was that the current job I have demands that you have a post secondary education. Nothing that I learned I have applied at my job and I’m already doing courses in my field for property management so essentially 4 years of my life was wasted since I’m going to school again anyways for my designation as a PM.
      My advice to any kid finishing high school consider TRADES!! If it’s not your calling fine but it sure is a better alternative then working a wage slave job from 9 – 5. I’m 25 and considering getting into trades but it would have been a lot better had I started when I was 18.

      1. Lots of guys get into trades in their 20s.
         You know what really works in the trades? Showing up on time. One of the problems with trades is that it does end up with a lot of dregs in it. Dropouts, just got out of jail, etc.
         The number one complaint I hear from foremen and site supers is how hard it is to get men who simply show up on time to do their job. Be “that guy” who always shows up and use your brain a bit to have initiative on the job (read: not having to be handheld or fucking off if there is no taskmaster having to tell you what to do) and you can go far in any trade.

         1. My old man ran a machine shop for a long time and when he sold it in the mid-aughts one of his biggest problems was finding qualified machinists. The few that would were the dregs as you say. The vo-tech high school in our town was churning out crap and I think eventually shut the program down.

         2. I guess that’s the one downside is showing up on time. Trades positions don’t have regular hours like your standard cubicle job but heck every job has its benefits and its downfalls.
            I did a part co-op back in highschool for one summer working in a wood working shop at a highschool all at the other end of subway line from where I lived. I woke up every morning at 5:00 am, left the house by 5:30 so i could make it on time for 7:00 am taking the bus.
            Was it a pain? Sure but I enjoyed it much more than the monotony of sitting at a computer screen for 8 hours a day. Point is for Trades you don’t have to get yourself into debt to an institution only to finish with less money in your pocket then when you started. In Trades you can start your own business with a higher chance of turning a profit if you work hard that is.

         3. The Death of Apprenticeship

         4. Random question. Are there any trade fields where you can benefit from having a university education?
            Or is it completely separate worlds with no connection?

         5. That depends.
            If you go into a “laborer” trade then I would say no. This is the bottom rung, no experience required.
            While a construction company has people with degrees, the tradesmen seem to be in a different world. I have worked in every kind of job from military to office cubicle with a shirt and tie, and found that in my construction gigs the overall company was run from an office that for the most part was just like any other, and that’s where the people with the degrees worked.
            What degrees? Actuarial and if they do their own blueprints, engineering to some extent. Then there are the HR weenies with their degree in basket weaving which don’t (if they ever) really count.
            If you go into the trades with a college degree and that degree can relate to the overall business in some manner, you might get “kicked upstairs” anyway and find yourself right back into an office job.
            But for the most part, a guy who can install pipe with a college degree but was hired to install pipe is very likely to only be known as a guy who installs pipe and nothing more. If you are good at is, and have good organizational or math smarts then you might get to foreman or even site supervisor faster than most of the other stiffs.

      2. Three skills we must have are salesmanship, marketing, financial intelligence (how to read balance sheet to know where the cash flow and which are your assets). Those help to build and manage wealth created by your other skills and assets. Instead of school, if one was interested in, say, real estate, I would tell him to go to a few real estate investor assn, find a successful investor and offer 3 month’s free labor as a virtual assistant. It will really open your eyes.

   2. Only in trade schools do you really learn anything.
      Heck I’m not in the automotive field but I did take a semester of automotive engineering and to this day I can still do an alignment on just about any car.
      I can also program computers. But I don’t have a piece of paper saying I can. And if I try to get such a job, the people deciding if I get it or not, why, they paid in so how dare I learn how to program computers in the field our of pure need and then get a 2 year degree (two of them actually, on in electronics) going to night school while in the armed forces.
      No no. How dare I spend 2 years on 5 hours of sleep a night, doing active military service and night school, and NOT go into 1000s of $$ in debt learning how to drink beer and womens’ studies.
      So I could never land the “real” programming jobs and make big $$. America now has a guild system of the sort that was what drove millions out of Europe into America in the first place. All anybody really wants is the merit of being rewarded for their hard work. America was all about that once and it was a better place back then.

      1. That is when it had the Westward expansion, a smaller population, and more easily accessed natural resources.
         The same thing could be seen in Ancient Greece (the golden age of Athens) or Rome (the Republican era or the golden Age of Augustus.)
         The question is what is the prevailing ethos of the culture? Medieval Europe preferred the Guild system for its stability, Americans of every stripe want to be king shit
         Eventually every society and civilization reaches its’ zenith, and either has to find a long term solution or choke on its own hubris.

   3. My parents are disappointed that I’m not enrolled in a PhD program. A PhD would take me another 5 years to complete and I would be making no money during that period. I’ve already got an MA and read constantly. Have I really not proven yet that I have some smarts?
      I think the older generation honestly has no idea how the modern world works right now.
      Here’s an example. I caught up with an old Humanities TA I had back in undergrad (~6 years ago). The fucker is still doing contract jobs making practically no money and talking to me about making a career change. I am at least 5 years his junior and he is in his mid-30s. Wanna hear the dumbest part of all? He is a proud Marxist.

      1. “I think the older generation honestly has no idea how the modern world works right now.”
         You got that right. My dad was very smart and alpha in many respects but he was also a perfect example of how his generation was indoctrinated to the idea of always being under some kind of mortgage debt. It was natural for him and just about everybody else in his generation that I have known to be in debt deep enough that working 2 jobs at least was just a part of life.
         Yeah these were the guys who at 40 looked 60 and few of them were able to make it to retirement before dropping dead or those that did make it to retirement were too worn out to enjoy it then hobbled around for a few years then died.

         1. Hey btw check this out I thought it was neat.
            http://teslasuit.com/

      2. Your parents are entirely out of touch and have no idea the situation you face.

         1. It’s ok I tell them they’re dumb all the time lol

      3. “A PhD would take me another 5 years to complete and I would be making no money during that period.”
         And there is the question of finding a job after promotion.

         1. If there was good probability that I’d get a decently funded professorship or decent position in industry I’d make the sacrifice.
            But it basically seems like a crap-shoot right now from where I’m standing.

         2. HEy I saw this on the RooshV forum and thought you might appreciate it.
            I saw this phenomenon during my 2-3 years in academia and it’s one of the main reasons I said fuck it. I know you share a similar sentiment.
            http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-women-in-science/index.html

5. There’s a socialist I like to argue with on Facebook and his arguments are monstrously easy to take down, and he practices capitalism too.
   Heck while I struggle he boasts about how much money he made last year AND how much Obamacare is saving him.

   1. There’s a socialist I like to argue with on Facebook…

      You’re smarter than that.

   2. A socialist average american who uses capitalism for gain?
      Since he is proud of it, have you pointed out he is practically an economic supervillain or at least training to be an economic supervillain?

      1. Just about almost all super rich men since 1860’s were big believers in “the communism of money” (Grover Cleveland’s words). One republished cartoon in The Creature From The Jerkyll Island showed Teddy Roosevelt introducing Karl Marx to Rockefeller, Morgan and others on the Wall Street. Many supported the Communist coup in Russia and got fat loans and contracts for it.

   3. the only people O care seems to have helped at this pt are single moms…I think your friend is full of shit

6. I know Zeppos. Any defense of him is misguided.

7. These kinds of letters are actually not as unusual as you might think on college campuses. It is also not unusual for the originators of such letters to feel the sting of retribution in various forms.

8. Colleges can be alright. Despite having my JD and a good job, I still support our local university and take the occasional class to help further my career. Just today I was checking out when the advanced accounting class was being offered.

9. I got tenure at Vanderbilt University. The final decision was supposed to have been made around March or April 2003 (I don’t remember exactly, now), but Zeppos said he “forgot” to do it then. There’s a longer story, but suffice it to say that I can believe one of the charges in the letter.

10. “…the monopoly on higher education through “mass production”
    We have an educational system in which one follows a series of dumbed-down, easy-digestable lectures at some university, ultimately ending in a piece of paper. This person is henceforth marketed by the higher edu establishment as an “expert”, the degree of “expertise” depending on the piece of paper attained.
    On the other hand, we have a man who spends hundreds to thousands of hours of self study on the same topics, meticulously analysing every detail. Is considered some barely literate idiot who knows nothing, because his investment isn’t rubber-stamped by the higher edu cartel.
    Higher edu doesn’t like the idea of men taking matters of learning into their own hands. What they do like, however, is to throw out the proverbial baby and keep the bathwater.

    1. That will change. Check out Udacity and Massive Open Online Courses. In the tech industry, they’ve discovered much of what we already know, minus the politics, that education is too slow and inefficient and just plain sucks. You can now get certifications sponsored and many times created by major companies such as IBM and Cloudera. I’m working on my Big Data Analyst Certification. And its mostly free if not very cheap. So, maybe you don’t have “harvard” but you have IBM and its targeted and specialized. Self, customized education will fucking KILL these assholes and many institutions such as MIT, Stanford, are offering free classes with ways to legitimize your credit. No, not the same as a degree…yet. But ways to get credit will only improve. Funny, these smart asses are killing themselves with their own ideology and they don’t even know it…kind of like how the west is killing itself by placating Islam.

       1. Got any links to share?
          I have some hours in the week I could dedicate to something like that. Sounds like a good option.

          1. http://www.cloudera.com/content/cloudera/en/training/certification.html
             http://bigdatauniversity.com/
             https://www.udacity.com/
             https://www.mooc-list.com/

          2. Appreciate it 🙂

11. Gents I can speak to the truth of the second to last paragraph in this article. Its a very well kept secret right now that academia is in big financial trouble. Without football and basketball nearly all colleges and universities run in the red. The inside info that I have told me the industry is scared shitless of online education. The infighting this post is picking-up on is, indeed, an indication of this issue. I know, its hard to see given how dark it is right now. But, I had a conversation with an executive at a major academic institution pioneering online learning and that’s were I learned about this. But we shouldn’t be surprised, since intuitively these capabilities exist and its only a matter of time until this old odious institution faces a massive disruption. The education of the future will be quick and streamlined. What do you want to do and be…and an application will provide the most expeditious solution, which means focused on content and, importantly, without useless brainwashing electives.

    1. “The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated.”
       http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/11/21/992978-132192774510054-David-Nelson.jpg

       1. Don’t. Get. Eliminated!

    2. “Without football and basketball nearly all colleges and universities run in the red”
       These colleges should reflect this truth in their brochures.
       I think “come for the games, stay for the education” would make a nice slogan.

       1. And they fuck college athletes over in the process.
          But they do get a free education in African American studies. There’s that.

    3. I hope you’re right. Can’t happen soon enough academia going under. What’s college for ? You learn useless shit. You are told to worry about useless stuff LGBT , trannies etc. Oh, then there’s the nonstop rapes…

12. …

13. “Professing themselves wise, they became fools.”
    Romans 1:22

    1. Professing yourself wise is foolishness

14. The central thing that a college sells is its academics. It is these people who are the ones equipped to say “this person is learned, we recognise this person as being a master of the arts” or whatever.
    Imagine, say, a company that makes its money by giving safety inspections of bridges making life impossible for the actual safety inspectors.
    These academics are protesting that the collecge has been given over to shady moneymen who are running a diploma mill based on handing out fake degrees to students who encumber themselves with loans.
    What they *should* do is resign and spend their time trashing the graduates of these dipoloma mills in debate, showing them up for the academic frauds they are.
    But the world just doesn’t work that way anymore. Maybe it never did.

    1. Respectful correction: the central thing that a college sells, in the modern era, is pieces of paper. Very expensive pieces of paper.
       This is pretty much why the academics are shit-scared. If you’re running a diploma mill, why should you need to pay serious cash to a learned man who’s spent a lifetime in his discipline when a couple of mad marxist women will do the same for the fraction of the price?

15. Liberals always want to provide the same or lesser service for more money, and then are shocked that this kind of mindset leads to corruption and mismanagement. Prices go up, there is no incentive for improvement or increasing efficiency and thus all of society has to be shifted and leveraged so they can keep the ride going, even when the country is running at a loss.

16. Vandy is private college, with minimal tax payer support and they can spend their money as they please. But basically the teachers are crying for a salary raise. Tuition is running about $50k per year now, so the teachers can’t look to a tuition increase to give themselves a raise. So they start looking for “structural” inefficiencies in the business model. Back in the 80s, colleges like Vandy charged $25k tuition. What changed? Mostly teacher cost of living pay raises. Same classes, same textbooks, same food at the cafeteria.

17. I just so happen to be a Vanderbilt alumnus, out of the engineering school, circa some ten years ago. I can believe that the leftist academia of the main undergrad colleges would put out an unsigned piece of tripe like this. Vandy has the the College of Arts and Crafts (apologies for the engineering humor), Education, Music, and Engineering. Everything else is grad, like nursing, legal, medical, and something called The Graduate School (with every bit as much self-righteousness as The OSU). Engineering probably had nothing to so with this, and Music and A&S are pretty leftist. Education’s main degree is something called Human and Organization Development (pronounced H and O D) and it is basically an HR degree, so I need say nothing more about their demographics or politics.
    They are crying because someone is trying to fix the books, and their ivory tower falsehood existence is threatened. I dabbled in a theater design minor, and one of the profs was and is a fucking socialist. It was a good use of the 16 hours of humanities the engineering school requires; rest of the time was serious stuff. I used to rail weekly for my last years there with a weekly column in the school paper, anything from academic bullshit to feminism to stupid students was fair game. Lost some of them in a hard drive crash, but each and every one is on microfiche at the library, hah.

18. Never let the inmates run the asylum. Academics aren’t competent to wipe their own asses. They should have ZERO say in University policy or administration.

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