I started university studies in 1963, although due to the Vietnam War protests, I did not graduate with a BA (Chinese) until 1971. Over that time I attended Stanford as a "scholarship boy" and Berkeley where my school fees were minimal. Then, I went back to California State University San Jose for an MA degree in teaching English as a foreign/second language (in the course we had a required "Cross Cultural Education" course which taught me that English was an imperial language but should not be taught as such).
The return experience was remarkable as I could compare how bloated and expensive the administration personnel had become. When I read David Graeber's BULLSHIIT JOBS, I recognized the academic environment he described (although I know bullshit jobs penetrate the American office space). To get my degree, I had to take student loans, but in my case, a relatively high paying job resulting from my degree allowed me to pay them off.
Still, the freshmen I taught, who were mostly family-first-time-college, had to take those loans without knowing what kind of jobs they would get. Compared with my student experience, I saw that these students were just cattle harnessed to the economic system to be worked for years. I was not. I had been free to study anything and spend years protesting that awful war. These students were not free to explore and could never deviate from their track.
What we see over in over in education, medicine (COVID), industry, finance, and militarism is a social and economic philosophy that fails human beings. Neoliberalism has produced so many inhuman policies that do not 'work' for anyone but a tiny group of wealthy people. It is an idea long past due for discarding.
Soooooooo much irony. I want to laugh but cry at the same time.
In perusing Kevin's channel from Inside China Business don't you find it interesting that his platform is supported by the other half of the tech leviathan, Google. Amazon will deliver the goods and Google will deliver the information....or does. Interesting times, understanding the paradoxes will be paramount IMO. Kevin the guy that imports hot dog carts and small EV's from china would know, I wonder how much money he makes form 42K subscribers? I like him.
There is nothing like actual knowledge on the ground gained from directly interacting with the politics and economics to provide great insights. Much better in many cases than the so-called "experts".
Its hard for anyone such as Kevin to exist outside the information and business monopoly of Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple, leading to many such ironies.
Students being made to take a single course on "Structural Racism and Health Equity" is not the cause for their failure to pass a shelf exam. Rags like "Free Beacon" are not to be trusted, they are conservative/reactionary outlets that deny the existence of racism in our society at all, and want to blame the social position of Black people on their own personal failings rather than on systemic and institutional injustices which really have kept Black people (among others) stuck in the mire. "The average person certainly does not need their physician to be a social activist", sure, but the point of these classes is not to make them into social activists so much as to clue them in to how medical practices in the past and present have been informed by racism and racial prejudice. For example, it's not uncommon for doctors even today to believe that Black patients have a higher tolerance for pain than white patients. Unconscious prejudices or stereotyped beliefs absolutely inform the practice of a physician and classes are needed to root that out.
Free Beacon is also relying on a weasely narrative. For example, "a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average" - well, what were the scores and what's the average? Are they "well below" the average of, say, a Cuban medical school? Cuba's medical schools take virtually all-comers. They practically spam doctors so that every Cuban can see a doctor when they need to. Since UCLA is a top-tier medical school, it's likely that the "below average" scores of the Black med student are above average nationally and almost certainly internationally. In any case, the US is dealing with a persistent shortage of doctors, in part due to the medical guild's insistence on high test scores (and we all know that being able to pass a test on something only means you've got the work ethic to study the test and the test-taking skills to pass it).
There is absolutely an issue with "administrative bloat" in US universities. Rationalizing university administration would probably mean giving faculty and students more responsibility in that domain, and axing six figure earning administrators who can't tell you exactly what their job duties are. But the issue isn't that the administrators are too liberal or want to do too much good for society via social justice activism. Not only are the social justicey types only really prominent in prestigious universities, it's just a conservative canard meant to distract everyone from what's really wrong with the US university system. And note that the anti-Asian discrimination experienced by Chinese students is not only something that Free Beacon is disingenuous about, but outlets like Free Beacon and other conservative/reactionary rags actively encourage anti-Chinese discrimination through Yellow Peril/Red Scare reporting.
You sound like so many of my colleagues, who are happy to attack the extensive administrative bloat but unable to look in the mirror and see their own failings while shooting any of the messengers who report on inconvenient facts.
Cuban medical schools believe in teaching people to be doctors in an environment that focuses on competence and excellence, and they have an entrance exam. Competition for international places is also very competitive. A Cuban medical school takes 6 years vs. the 4 in the US. They are renowned for their focus on excellence and high standards. Your comments here are bordering on outright propaganda.
The issue in US/NA universities is that academic excellence has lost its place as grade inflation runs rampant and other objectives take priority, with UCLA just being a poster child. As both a hiring executive and a teaching professor I have repeatedly seen the large differences between graduates from other countries (China, ex Soviet bloc, ex British Caribbean, Senegal, Zambia etc.) and North American graduates.
For that to be fixed, the administrative overhead needs to be radically reduced and reoriented, the students reminded that they are students to be judged not customers, and the professors take back the courage to give realistic grades. Then the same needs to be done for the schools, the US Maths and Sciences scores are appalling vs. other nations.
I largely agree with what you have to say, what I disagree with is the notion that the "social justice" activists have much if anything to do with the present rot. They are just an easy target for conservatives who want to redirect anger toward a messed up university system against left-wing targets while keeping the structure of the system intact (if not more exclusively white and wealthy).
The Cuban political system is replete with social justice activists, feminists, LGBT activists, and, of course, communists, and they do not keep universities and politics separate (nor should they). If university administrations here talk social justice, they do so out the side of their mouths, so to speak, trying to placate a student body which might otherwise bear its teeth. And of course these problems are also evident in university systems under right-wing control, which are rapidly dropping diversity and inclusion initiatives for their opposites, while ratcheting up tuition and placing reactionary cronies in charge of admin. Just look at what Jeff Landry has been up to in Louisiana universities. At my alma mater, a professor was recently let go for speaking up about the dangers of fracking and the absurd amounts of money the university system receives from fossil fuel businesses, which colors any and all research on energy policy in state institutions. And that's to say nothing about the state's prioritization of the football program over academics (a tradition going back to Huey Long), or the general anti-intellectual attitude that animates conservative complaints against "woke" (i.e. socially aware) thinking.
Cuba is communist, the US is a capitalist oligarchy where "social activism" is only allowed to be performative. Any real activism that would bring real change is very swiftly dealt with. Unfortunately that breeds a very dysfunctional type of social "activism" focused on the safe area of culture as focusing on political economy is career ending.
I'd point out that it began well before the 1960s, in the post war years the USA centralized (and it is very, very centralized, despite appearances) the higher ed system while effectively granting it hard powers and great soft power, then in the 1970s big leaps towards even further centralization began to the point where it eventually became effectively as centralized as the Soviet Union's higher ed system was.
The GI Bill and other measures of the 1950s tended to lead to a greater democratization of the academy, and of political awareness. Since the 1970s the actions of university boards and the state have been designed to create quite the opposite.
Hmmm, good point. But I would say that it was a two way street. For example, as a kid, I read the consensus historians' books and later discovered that they were based on demonstrably false assertions. For instance, Kolko's "Triumph of Conservatism" falsely claimed that disagreements between small and medium banks and non bank SMEs versus large banks and large caps regarding the central bank were only technical, and that railways always got their way, when they actually fought hard against the Expeditions Act and lost. Kolko also wrongly stated that large caps always got what they wanted, failing to mention their defeat in pushing for German-style Cartel Laws. Similarly, Hofstadter mischaracterized the Populist Party, describing their ideas as stupid and ignorant, particularly their advocacy for bimetallism. In my view, during a multidecadal deflationary period with unprecedented productivity gains, advocating for an increased money supply made sense, proving the Populists were neither dumb nor ignorant. Hofstadter also failed to acknowledge the diversity of unrelated populist groups during the Populist Era and Progressive Era, both highly populist periods marked by decentralized democratic governance. These movements independently crafted successful public policies in business regulation, scientific research reform, labor rights, public health, and education, demonstrating the potential for populism to thrive within democratic frameworks and yield positive outcomes.
There's much more I could list, from both them and others, all false, and I suspect all designed as anti-democratic propaganda (what's the better explanation?) and began to be disseminated on a mass scale via the centralization of education, particularly higher education, that began just as all that B.S. was coming out in the post-war years.
And that's before we mention the centralization of scientific research. And possibly most of all, the centralization and cross-pollination of “management education” to management tracks in private industries.
And this list goes on and on. So I’d say that intense de-democratization did begin in that time. But I do agree that there were good things too; if the centralization and de-democratization hadn't occurred, those good things would have been many times better over the long run. And the later stuff you referred to likely couldn't have happened without all the centralization, of both the universities and the public sector and the private sector and each of those three existing in a semi-coherently centralized symbiotic relationship with each other as a de facto corporatist state.
I started university studies in 1963, although due to the Vietnam War protests, I did not graduate with a BA (Chinese) until 1971. Over that time I attended Stanford as a "scholarship boy" and Berkeley where my school fees were minimal. Then, I went back to California State University San Jose for an MA degree in teaching English as a foreign/second language (in the course we had a required "Cross Cultural Education" course which taught me that English was an imperial language but should not be taught as such).
The return experience was remarkable as I could compare how bloated and expensive the administration personnel had become. When I read David Graeber's BULLSHIIT JOBS, I recognized the academic environment he described (although I know bullshit jobs penetrate the American office space). To get my degree, I had to take student loans, but in my case, a relatively high paying job resulting from my degree allowed me to pay them off.
Still, the freshmen I taught, who were mostly family-first-time-college, had to take those loans without knowing what kind of jobs they would get. Compared with my student experience, I saw that these students were just cattle harnessed to the economic system to be worked for years. I was not. I had been free to study anything and spend years protesting that awful war. These students were not free to explore and could never deviate from their track.
What we see over in over in education, medicine (COVID), industry, finance, and militarism is a social and economic philosophy that fails human beings. Neoliberalism has produced so many inhuman policies that do not 'work' for anyone but a tiny group of wealthy people. It is an idea long past due for discarding.
Soooooooo much irony. I want to laugh but cry at the same time.
In perusing Kevin's channel from Inside China Business don't you find it interesting that his platform is supported by the other half of the tech leviathan, Google. Amazon will deliver the goods and Google will deliver the information....or does. Interesting times, understanding the paradoxes will be paramount IMO. Kevin the guy that imports hot dog carts and small EV's from china would know, I wonder how much money he makes form 42K subscribers? I like him.
There is nothing like actual knowledge on the ground gained from directly interacting with the politics and economics to provide great insights. Much better in many cases than the so-called "experts".
Its hard for anyone such as Kevin to exist outside the information and business monopoly of Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple, leading to many such ironies.
Students being made to take a single course on "Structural Racism and Health Equity" is not the cause for their failure to pass a shelf exam. Rags like "Free Beacon" are not to be trusted, they are conservative/reactionary outlets that deny the existence of racism in our society at all, and want to blame the social position of Black people on their own personal failings rather than on systemic and institutional injustices which really have kept Black people (among others) stuck in the mire. "The average person certainly does not need their physician to be a social activist", sure, but the point of these classes is not to make them into social activists so much as to clue them in to how medical practices in the past and present have been informed by racism and racial prejudice. For example, it's not uncommon for doctors even today to believe that Black patients have a higher tolerance for pain than white patients. Unconscious prejudices or stereotyped beliefs absolutely inform the practice of a physician and classes are needed to root that out.
Free Beacon is also relying on a weasely narrative. For example, "a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average" - well, what were the scores and what's the average? Are they "well below" the average of, say, a Cuban medical school? Cuba's medical schools take virtually all-comers. They practically spam doctors so that every Cuban can see a doctor when they need to. Since UCLA is a top-tier medical school, it's likely that the "below average" scores of the Black med student are above average nationally and almost certainly internationally. In any case, the US is dealing with a persistent shortage of doctors, in part due to the medical guild's insistence on high test scores (and we all know that being able to pass a test on something only means you've got the work ethic to study the test and the test-taking skills to pass it).
There is absolutely an issue with "administrative bloat" in US universities. Rationalizing university administration would probably mean giving faculty and students more responsibility in that domain, and axing six figure earning administrators who can't tell you exactly what their job duties are. But the issue isn't that the administrators are too liberal or want to do too much good for society via social justice activism. Not only are the social justicey types only really prominent in prestigious universities, it's just a conservative canard meant to distract everyone from what's really wrong with the US university system. And note that the anti-Asian discrimination experienced by Chinese students is not only something that Free Beacon is disingenuous about, but outlets like Free Beacon and other conservative/reactionary rags actively encourage anti-Chinese discrimination through Yellow Peril/Red Scare reporting.
You sound like so many of my colleagues, who are happy to attack the extensive administrative bloat but unable to look in the mirror and see their own failings while shooting any of the messengers who report on inconvenient facts.
Cuban medical schools believe in teaching people to be doctors in an environment that focuses on competence and excellence, and they have an entrance exam. Competition for international places is also very competitive. A Cuban medical school takes 6 years vs. the 4 in the US. They are renowned for their focus on excellence and high standards. Your comments here are bordering on outright propaganda.
The issue in US/NA universities is that academic excellence has lost its place as grade inflation runs rampant and other objectives take priority, with UCLA just being a poster child. As both a hiring executive and a teaching professor I have repeatedly seen the large differences between graduates from other countries (China, ex Soviet bloc, ex British Caribbean, Senegal, Zambia etc.) and North American graduates.
For that to be fixed, the administrative overhead needs to be radically reduced and reoriented, the students reminded that they are students to be judged not customers, and the professors take back the courage to give realistic grades. Then the same needs to be done for the schools, the US Maths and Sciences scores are appalling vs. other nations.
I largely agree with what you have to say, what I disagree with is the notion that the "social justice" activists have much if anything to do with the present rot. They are just an easy target for conservatives who want to redirect anger toward a messed up university system against left-wing targets while keeping the structure of the system intact (if not more exclusively white and wealthy).
The Cuban political system is replete with social justice activists, feminists, LGBT activists, and, of course, communists, and they do not keep universities and politics separate (nor should they). If university administrations here talk social justice, they do so out the side of their mouths, so to speak, trying to placate a student body which might otherwise bear its teeth. And of course these problems are also evident in university systems under right-wing control, which are rapidly dropping diversity and inclusion initiatives for their opposites, while ratcheting up tuition and placing reactionary cronies in charge of admin. Just look at what Jeff Landry has been up to in Louisiana universities. At my alma mater, a professor was recently let go for speaking up about the dangers of fracking and the absurd amounts of money the university system receives from fossil fuel businesses, which colors any and all research on energy policy in state institutions. And that's to say nothing about the state's prioritization of the football program over academics (a tradition going back to Huey Long), or the general anti-intellectual attitude that animates conservative complaints against "woke" (i.e. socially aware) thinking.
Cuba is communist, the US is a capitalist oligarchy where "social activism" is only allowed to be performative. Any real activism that would bring real change is very swiftly dealt with. Unfortunately that breeds a very dysfunctional type of social "activism" focused on the safe area of culture as focusing on political economy is career ending.
Dear Roger, this has to do with accelerated EU US Can integration but few ppl read EU documents. Please contact me for more.
I'd point out that it began well before the 1960s, in the post war years the USA centralized (and it is very, very centralized, despite appearances) the higher ed system while effectively granting it hard powers and great soft power, then in the 1970s big leaps towards even further centralization began to the point where it eventually became effectively as centralized as the Soviet Union's higher ed system was.
The GI Bill and other measures of the 1950s tended to lead to a greater democratization of the academy, and of political awareness. Since the 1970s the actions of university boards and the state have been designed to create quite the opposite.
Hmmm, good point. But I would say that it was a two way street. For example, as a kid, I read the consensus historians' books and later discovered that they were based on demonstrably false assertions. For instance, Kolko's "Triumph of Conservatism" falsely claimed that disagreements between small and medium banks and non bank SMEs versus large banks and large caps regarding the central bank were only technical, and that railways always got their way, when they actually fought hard against the Expeditions Act and lost. Kolko also wrongly stated that large caps always got what they wanted, failing to mention their defeat in pushing for German-style Cartel Laws. Similarly, Hofstadter mischaracterized the Populist Party, describing their ideas as stupid and ignorant, particularly their advocacy for bimetallism. In my view, during a multidecadal deflationary period with unprecedented productivity gains, advocating for an increased money supply made sense, proving the Populists were neither dumb nor ignorant. Hofstadter also failed to acknowledge the diversity of unrelated populist groups during the Populist Era and Progressive Era, both highly populist periods marked by decentralized democratic governance. These movements independently crafted successful public policies in business regulation, scientific research reform, labor rights, public health, and education, demonstrating the potential for populism to thrive within democratic frameworks and yield positive outcomes.
There's much more I could list, from both them and others, all false, and I suspect all designed as anti-democratic propaganda (what's the better explanation?) and began to be disseminated on a mass scale via the centralization of education, particularly higher education, that began just as all that B.S. was coming out in the post-war years.
And that's before we mention the centralization of scientific research. And possibly most of all, the centralization and cross-pollination of “management education” to management tracks in private industries.
And this list goes on and on. So I’d say that intense de-democratization did begin in that time. But I do agree that there were good things too; if the centralization and de-democratization hadn't occurred, those good things would have been many times better over the long run. And the later stuff you referred to likely couldn't have happened without all the centralization, of both the universities and the public sector and the private sector and each of those three existing in a semi-coherently centralized symbiotic relationship with each other as a de facto corporatist state.