Thursday, January 11, 2018

Higher Education Is Drowning in BS

There's a good piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education by someone who says he's independent and unaffiliated but who seems to me to lean somewhat left.  He blames what he calls the BS in higher education for the deterioration of American politics. 
A good example of the deterioration is Trump's recent claim that Africa and Haiti are "shit holes" and that America needs immigrants from Norway. Trump misses that Norway is richer than the US (Norway GDP per capita, $71,000; US GDP per capita, $56,000) and that most Americans would be better off immigrating to Norway rather than the other way around. 
After 47 years of Fed-led wealth redistribution to the wealthy and stagnant real wages, Americans are falling behind economically, and Trump is not the cure. Although he's better than redistributionists like Obama and Clinton, he is part of the problem; he is not part of the solution.

The author, Notre Dame professor Christian Smith's, assault on academic commercialization, the culture of offense, and publish or perish is a well-taken step in the right direction for the usually educationist Chronicle. 

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