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The Diversity Circus Continues Merrily Onward … and Downward
Although we’re considered to be part of America’s rust belt, the state of Ohio can still be justifiably proud of its system of colleges and universities; both public and private. Of course, the top dog is THE Ohio State University with a student enrollment of over 60,000 (both undergraduate and graduate).
However, there are a large number of lesser-known schools with academic programs that rival those in any section of the country. Included are schools such as Otterbein, Case Western Reserve, Wittenberg, and Denison (where one of Ricochet’s most prolific writers matriculated). If you Google “Ohio Colleges and Universities”, you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about.
One of those universities is Miami of Ohio, located in Oxford, about 40 miles northwest of Cincinnati. Frequently, the university is referred to as the “Cradle of Coaches” since a number of well-known football coaches such as Woody Hayes, Ara Parseghian, Paul Brown, Weeb Ewbank, and Sid Gillman started out there. (Oh, there was also a guy by the name of Schembechler who coached there, but, in Ohio, we don’t mention him all that much.) However, there’s much more to Miami than football; the university also has a solid academic curriculum; or used to.
Last Saturday, I noticed a headline in the local newspaper, “Miami U. won’t require ACT, SAT scores for fall 2022 admissions”. And, amazingly enough, there was also an opinion piece in the same issue of the newspaper entitled, “Removing college testing barriers will increase student diversity”.
The writer of the opinion piece is the Dean of the Ohio University College of Education. In the piece, readers were advised that “For too long, standardized testing has been overused and misused in ways that either knowingly or inadvertently set up structures akin to institutional and structural inequities. Structural inequities consist of laws, rules or official policies in a society that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people – deep patterns of socioeconomic inequalities and disadvantage due to socioeconomic class or (wait for it!) racism“.
And what will be the new criteria for those who wish to enter the hallowed halls of academia? Well, it is to be composed of high school GPA (which, in this age of grade inflation, means very little), application essays (which can be written by someone else), personal statements and letters of recommendation (which can be written by God-knows-who), “talent” (???), and “personal background” (now I’m starting to get a clearer picture).
In other words, the new admissions process will become a subjective mishmash in which some of the less qualified candidates will be granted admission and some of the more qualified will be headed to the Acme School of Truck Driving. Merit and scholarship? Ah, just more dog whistles for White Supremacy.
Now, we’ve all known people who aced their SATs and couldn’t find their butts with both hands in a room full of mirrors. Conversely, we’ve known some folks who didn’t do so well on their tests yet went on to highly successful college and professional careers. However, that does not mean that the tests should be discarded as one of the prime indicators of a would-be student’s chance of success.
So what’s at work here? Is this rejection of testing a tacit admission that our high schools are nothing more than dullard factories?
Perhaps. However, it appears to me that this is something we already know; this concept known as diversity is little more than a giant crock. And, it is time to discard, forever, the useless trope that “our strength lies in our diversity”. It is now time to realize that our true strength will lie in a diverse population that possesses competence.
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Lately there seems to be some concern that college applications are going to crater – and may already be doing so – due to quarantine etc. So this may be a chance for some people who previously may not have been accepted to any college at all, to get in on the credentialism gray train. But only if the schools lower their standards. The schools seem eager to play along, because they have to have SOME students paying them, even if they’re not GOOD students. (Normally I would expect graduation rates to also crater but I’m confident the schools will also lower their graduation requirements, if they haven’t already.)
And I’m not surprised if Colleges of Education are leading this, since they seem to have had the lowest standards of academics to start with.
True. As I was reading the “Dean’s” opinion piece, I couldn’t help but think that this will lead to more “dullards teaching dullards”.
Frankly I am not sure it matters. My wife has recently gone back to school and retooled. College is now a clown show. Liberal politics everywhere with “studies” activist classes being the course of the day. Everything is triggering. Once class had a student that had to their emotional support lama to class (and was allowed). One of her classes was basically stopped for two weeks while the whole class went to DC to protest Trump and wear P-hats. The conservatives were in hiding. Rules were suspended for any of the transgender students as they were fawned upon as the princesses they are. In one case my wife was in the restroom when a student came in and had a melt down because the professor asked her a question. That required the students mother (who worked on campus) and a consoler to talk her out of a PTSD session and the teacher promising not to call on her again. I am not sure what our educational system does anymore but it seems to do very little with education.
I’m trying to find an article that I read a short time after the University of Missouri riots of 2017 (but, thus far, I’ve been unsuccessful). The article discussed the makeup of the students who were the most heavily involved (which was a very large number).
Many of those students had come to the university fully intending to major in engineering, architecture and the like. However, their high schools had done such a poor job of preparing them (not to mention grade inflation) that they had the option of either flunking out or changing their majors to fields such as race studies, gender studies and the like.
So, college is preparing them for careers in “activism” and little else. Unless, that is, college standards are dropped in the manner that they have in our high schools.
The destruction of America’s educational system goes on…
I particularly like the “typo” of “counselor.”
I know a kid applying for Fall 2021 admission from a suburban northeastern public high school. Due to COVID, colleges/universities are apparently not requiring SAT as many students were unable to take the SAT.
This is giving the schools an excuse to go crazy. They now are free from being put in the position of having to defend the equivalent of a 300 point difference in SAT between admitted and non-admitted applicants.
The kids in her class who do not qualify as “diverse” are getting slaughtered. Second tier state schools are as difficult to get admitted to as top tier and Ivy League schools were for Fall 2020 entrants. She’s likely to go to a third tier private school. Private schools without big endowments still need some paying customers (state schools and the top privates, not really).
When I went back to school to retool, I went to a local Community College, and got the best education I’d ever had. I highly recommend that any student wanting to go to college start there, and transfer after two years if they still want to go to a four-year (which is actually now 5-6 year) college. CC had small classes, committed instructors, and excellent teaching. And low tuition-at a CC you receive more than you pay for.
I forgot to mention, I did my retooling in my forties. It was a wonderful experience, since all the professors loved me-I followed directions, submitted all my papers typed (for some reason, the kids can’t follow directions, and submit hand-written papers), got homework in on time, etc.
Believe it or not, I was fifth generation at Denison. My parents met there, and I met my wife there. I had lots and lots of family members graduate from Denison, over several generations. I had an ancestor attend school there when it was still called Doane Academy, in the late 1800’s.
And you’re right about the academics there. Absolutely top notch. We used to say that Harvard called itself “The Denison of the East.” I’m not saying that Harvard really was that good. But I can’t blame them for trying.
At least, I presume that Harvard used to say that…
Below is a picture of my sister and I with my Mom on Denison’s chapel walk. Dad took the picture. We are all Denison graduates.
Love their chili. Wish I could still get the Tamalitos.
I’m not sure when you were there. But in the 80’s, we did not attend Denison for the food.
The food service was called SAGA. I’m not sure what the acronym stood for, but in the 80’s we called it, “Soviet Attempt to Gag America.”
Although honestly, I thought the food was okay. It wasn’t all that bad.
You shouldn’t leave Kenyon off that list. It’s absolutely top shelf.
John Carroll is great, too.
Fixed it for you.
I have come up with yet another wondrous Sterritt Solution of Ultimate Wisdom.
The student in question who was so easily triggered must obtain an emotional support llama. That animal must then attend all her classes with her.
In order for professors to be able to have important questions asked and answered in classrooms, each support llama must be fully certified as far as
It goes without saying that once all college students have such capable support llamas, we can institute a “Two legs are good, four legs are better” law (assuming of course, that by then all laws have not been replaced by apps.)
A nation of intelligent, college educated llamas might be the key to saving our society. Clearly our relying on the latest generation is not working out the way The Founding Fathers intended.
I went to Miami (class of ’99), and it was a wonderful place. I loved every second of my time there. One of the most beautiful campuses in the country. Top notch education.
A lack of diversity has always been a knock against it. It’s been seen as a school for midwestern suburban, and small-town, white kids, and, honestly, that’s more or less what it was when I was there. Since I was a rural Southern white kid, I felt I added to the diversity, which is saying something.
While I don’t think they should change their academic standards, I do think there is something to be said for attempting to diversify the student body a little more. It’s good to get people out of their bubbles. That’s a different type of education than you find in the classroom, but it is education none the less. Important education.
It was good for me, anyway. I met life long friends who grew up differently than I did, mostly relatively wealthy suburban kids from Chicago and Cleveland. And I had a great time regaling them with stories from the Kentucky hills, which they found hilarious. We all learned from each other.
But I agree that sort of learning is not the main purpose of a college education. I wouldn’t ignore it, if I were a college administrator, but I wouldn’t make it the focus of the school’s effort either.
Well, see, that’s the problem with what is currently happening. Academic standards are taking a place far behind “diversity” as a goal.
They are flat-out becoming diversity centers, not education centers.
And when *I* was an undergraduate at CWRU, our administration called us “the Harvard of the Midwest”. Whether or not that was true, we learned how to correctly use “me” and “I”.
Shots fired!
It is insanity to talk about how un-PC your school was any more than about 5 years ago with any expectation it is at all similar now. This includes places like MIT and schools with religious affiliations.
True. There a lot of absolutely top notch schools in Ohio; too many to include in one sentence. I’m not sure how many of these top notch private schools will hold the line when it comes to ACT/SAT scores.
I don’t have an elitist bone in my body, but a policy of “open enrollment” (which is what they seem to be advocating) can’t help but drive down the level of education; especially for the students who are “hungry” to learn.
What I see happen with this open enrollment is you end up with a bunch of people not qualified for advance education, milking the system for grants and loans, expecting degrees without knowing the subjects, unless they get upper level grievance studies degrees, being taught to leverage the system via activism. We are effectively turning college into high school.
Well, since “Mathematics operates as Whiteness”, maybe some of these students will be able to bluff their way through Freshman Algebra.
Worse. At least high school students used to take American history, English lit., shop class, and home ec.
This weekend I received the fantastic news that one of our “junior” family members (sophomore in H.S.) has decided to go to vocational school and become an electrician.
Now, at least, he has a chance at becoming a productive citizen. A lot better chance than if he had gone to college…
You are identifying a serious problem among many colleges and universities.
That problem expressed as a question would read: What is real diversity?
When my son attended Northwestern in the Nineties, in terms of skin color it was diverse. But if a parent talked to the offspring’s friends, they were a rather homogenous group, even if complexions were varied.
I can’t tell you how many of my son’s AA friends had a story like this: “Dad a prominent brain surgeon, mom a prominent therapist.” Or “Dad an Ivy league college professor, mom an internationally known reconstructive surgeon.” And so on.
BTW people with a Southern accent were rare.
To be more inclusive, higher education institutes would also need more outreach programs for students from impoverished backgrounds. A young person who is the first in his family to attend college often doesn’t have the study habits needed to succeed. (Even such simple things as going to one’s professor and asking for help if a certain set of material is going over their head.)
A while ago, one of the sports channels featured the story of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. The white guy came from an impoverished household, w/ his dad being a heavy drinker. While Magic aced being at college, as his family had two parents who instilled strong work/study habits starting at an early age.
One young man knew how to handle the academic life. The other didn’t and did not get his degree.
CA, I think it is a positioning by the colleges to survive what is going to be a birth dearth. Lower your standards, keep the cash flow up, and survive till the crunch and the supply again meets demand for really qualified students.
The children of the boomers are past their demographic baby producing bulge, the Gen X was not as prolific, and Gen Y/Millennials are still have issues determining what exactly is sex. We already have a glut of colleges, most of whom offer degrees of no significance. Kids for the most part are eschewing the difficult but remunerative degrees because “Math is hard” “Science is tough” “Business is boring”. Physic is not the only relentless and harsh mistress.
I have read elsewhere that when a society produces too many mediocre thinkers from the elites parts of the community, the kids don’t get the goodies that were promised, they get angry and bored, and start revolutions to tilt the apple cart since the society has only so many slots for the “intellectual” indolent.
Perhaps I am wrong, but this playbook seems eerily on the nut. The Titanic has already ripped a gash in the forward compartments, we are just waiting to see who understand what happened and gets to the life boats.
Kenyon can boast of these alumni: Paul Newman, Jonathan Winters, Rutherfor B. Hayes, William Rehnquist, and poet Robert Lowell.
In the 1990’s I painted the portrait of Kenyon’s Dean, Philip Jordan. The background is a stained glass window in one of their 19th Century buildings. Tried to get the job of painting outgoing President of Case Western Reserve last year but they passed me up. Ya win some and ya lose some.
“Kids for the most part are eschewing the difficult but remunerative degrees because “Math is hard” “Science is tough” “Business is boring”.
How true. I’m reminded of the time when Heather MacDonald was giving a speech on a college campus (when she was still allowed on campus). At the end of her speech one would-be feminist stood up and complained loudly about the salary differences between men and women. MacDonald told her that if she was concerned about salary, perhaps she should change her major from Art History to Electrical Engineering. Needless to say, that didn’t go over so well.