Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
As one of the two conservatives in academia, I've very much enjoyed Peter's interview with Andrew Ferguson this past week. The topic: Ferguson's new book, Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course at Getting His Kids into College.
Ferguson chronicles the plight of the modern academy: declining standards, declining curriculum, increasing (drastically increasing) tuition rates. More or less, the modern academy is one giant sex-filled booze cruise that even serves rum cannonballs.
However, when Mr. Robinson confronts Ferguson on his genial disposition regarding the multitudes of parents and students getting ripped off on a grand scale in the ponzi scheme known as academia, Ferguson smiles and calmly responds, "we need the eggs." This is a reference to a joke where a man hesitates when getting his brother psychiatric help - a brother who thinks he's a chicken. We know that 1. higher education costs too much and 2. not much learning goes on there.
So if we need the eggs.... what in the hell are the eggs!?! Education? no. Training of some sort? no. Virtue? no. Self control? (laughing) no.
If higher education costs too much and not much learning goes on there? What is the point?
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Mar '11
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
A good resumé?:P
It's just more hoops to jump so you can get a real education later on.
Edited on Apr 21, 2011 at 6:18pmNov '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
This is a rather difficult question to answer, that is unless we go whole hog and consider university education to be exclusively what it was never traditionally considered to be: vocational training. As Charles Murray and others have written, the worth of a college education has been stupendously cheapened by the movement to get as many high school students as possible to attend college. Rampant grade inflation is the most salient effect.
Peter Thiel, billionaire founder of PayPal, has created a program whereby he pays some large sum of money to promising, entrepreneurial college students to drop out of college and start a business. Thiel, himself a philosophy BA from Stanford (and, as I have on authority from some friends in-the-know: Thiel regularly flies a famous Straussian political philosopher on his private jet to visit and lecture him on political philosophy), knows that outside either a serious encounter with certain great books and/or immersion in things like accounting/business/hard sciences, a university education today is worthless. It does nothing to sharpen the mind and provides no monetizeable skills.
Caveat: But then great books is hardly a "panacea" for clear thinking. Thiel after all supports gay marriage.
Jun '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
I just ordered his book yesterday after seeing your interview. (Loved Land of Lincoln.) I went through this process with my daughter who is now a sophomore. For various reasons, she resisted "the eggs" and made an unconventional college choice that astounded her high school adminsitration. They were all about "the eggs." My daughter was not.
How can I define what the eggs are......that's tough. It's perhaps a combination of a credential that acts as shorthand for the world to know you've completed a complicated (and hopefully challenging) four year project and a figurative branding, marking you forever with the imprimatur of a particular school & its image.
The eggs are cracking, though. When Mr. Ferguson admitted that he was tempted to turn the car around and take his son home after learning of the sheer foolishness of his son's writing class choices, that's significant.
Perhaps the eggs have been rotton for a long time. I see more and more families not worrying about the eggs quite so much. (I wish I were as witty as Ferguson so I could come up with some egg puns, but I'm all tapped out.)
May '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
1.) There's learning going on. Academia can still be trusted to offer a solid education in the hard sciences e.g., physics, math, etc. Its the humanities and liberal arts that are becoming more and more useless.
2.) A diploma is better than a non-diploma.
Jun '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
Both David Horowitz and Ann Coulter have made statements to the effect that the Ivy League schools and many other universities are places where you can learn -- and not just in the hard sciences. Horowitz includes a caveat that you simply have to stay away from the "Studies" departments: black studies, women studies, latino studies, etc. These are new departments and, as such, they are heavily influenced by the most retrograde and closed minds in the universities. Schools of education are highly suspect in my book, too.
May '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
Credentials. Universities are selling credentials, not education. Nobody cares if you know when Shakespeare was born.
Aug '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
It's a joke from Annie Hall.
..:After that it got pretty late, and, we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her, and I thought of that old joke. You know, this guy goes to his psychiatrist and says, "Doc, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." And the doctor says, "Well why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships– you know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but, I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs."
Apr '11
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
An education can still be had, just less of it and of a lesser quality than in prior generations, but everyone still wants the credentials.
Almost everyone knows this and works the system to minimize cost and enhance benefits. (i.e selecting colleges that are cost effective and choosing majors/degrees with the most bang for the buck).
Community colleges and online schools are booming. Traditional college is losing some of its prestige. Times are and will change. There may come a time when we don't need the eggs, or, at least, those particular eggs.
Jun '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
Well, yeah, we know it's an old joke --- one that Woody Allen used to close Annie Hall.
The question is, what are the eggs? What do we expect from a college?
I just caught the last segment of the Uncommon Knowledge interview and Peter says that so many Americans know the huge problems within academia today but continue to send their kids to the biggest offending institutions (the most elite) because they are spineless. It takes guts to send your kid off to a Hillsdale, even knowing that the education received will be outstanding. Hillsdale doesn't provide "the eggs."
Jun '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
Lady Bertrum, I see the tide turning, too. But those eggs are still quite appealing to many.
Apr '11
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
I have a soon to be high school freshman who will be applying to Hillsdale. Our family won't under any circumstances qualify for financial aid. Hillsdale is our best option for a quality education in an environment we can feel good about.
Jun '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
Another plus: Hillsdale is one of the dwindling number of colleges that give merit aid that is not tied to financial need. Your child won't be penalized there for having hard working parents who managed to make and save a few bucks.
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
Samwise, you being one of the two conservatives in academia, I'd sorta like to hear your own answer to this question.
And then I'd like to hear from the second conservative in academia, Dr. Paul Rahe.
Oct '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
A college diploma is just a checkbox requirement for employment. Used to be called a Sheepskin, if anyone can recall that term.
Had seen an applicant succeed over more qualified others as he had a degree.
The company, Chevron Corporate Div, the degree, Animal Husbandry... 40 years ago...
Oct '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
The remarkable thing about this amazing scam is that it was thoroughly exposed almost twenty years ago by Thomas Sowell in “Inside American Education”. The fact that the whole mechanism of extracting as much as possible from parents through bogus “financial aid” and collusion in restraint of trade which would land anybody in the productive sector in the slammer for antitrust has been tolerated for so long indicates that people really, really must like the eggs and/or that academia has powerful protectors among the ruling class which supports them and which they supply with recruits.
Saddling those who seek a credential with debt whose servicing consumes the capital they would otherwise have formed in their peak earning years is, I believe, not accidental.
Edited on Apr 22, 2011 at 3:10pmDec '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
Running an instant combination of Kay Hymowitz's "Manning Up" and Ferguson's "Crazy U", I think one of the "eggs" might be additional time to allow the kids to grow up and mature. They fail at that, too.
Sep '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
Seems to me that eggs in this case are status. Entrée into the higher eschelons of influence and society. Makes sense and probably won't change until there are more Mark Zuckerbergs than Fareed Zakarias.
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
It is probably worth drawing a distinction between training and education. The old A&M schools were founded in the wake of the Morrill Act, passed under the Lincoln administration, for training in the agricultural sciences and in engineering. Prior to that, institutions of higher learning had existed almost solely for education -- for educating Protestant ministers, to start with, then for educating gentlemen.
The training that gets done today at universities in the sciences, in engineering, and in subjects like accounting is valuable. Unfortunately, there is also training in communications, in business, and in education -- and, at least at the undergraduate level, it is worthless. These are the fields where universities stash the illiterates whose money they happily take.
On the liberal education side, at most large places, an enterprising student can sidestep the charlatans and find literature professors who love literature, philosophy professors who know that they do not know, and history professors who are genuinely curious about the past. Unfortunately, the charlatans are numerous almost everywhere, and unenterprising students get taken to the cleaners.Here, Hillsdale really is an exception. Given the rigor of the curriculum, it would be hard to get through Hillsdale without learning something.
Dec '10
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
These are all good guesses as to what the eggs may be. But why do we continue to have a desire, a need, for the eggs?
I suggest that parents are too careful with their real eggs, their children, to make adult waves that may impact upon their kids. I see this in myself, all the time, when I get itchy about something going on at one of the kid's schools. I am very delicate about addressing any issue with a teacher or the principal. Now and then, I get very active, but mostly I just bite my tongue.
In schools and universities, the other side knows this and takes advantage of parent's protective nature. We would like our kids to get the best education possible, but we may settle for them not to be mortified.
Apr '11
Re: Andrew Ferguson on Uncommon Knowledge
I love this post. I dropped out of college because I could not deal with what a waste of time it is, not to mention the blatant liberal slant in everything short of mathematics. Maybe I will return some day but until things change, I'll teach and rely on myself instead of spending another 2+ years to get a little ransom note I can show to some employer.