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What’s the Point of College?
Too many people are going to college. In response, colleges have trivialized their curricula, introducing vacuous and pointless programs like Gender Studies, Popular Culture, and Journalism. No one needs to major in these things, and the world isn’t made a better place because these majors exist.
The reality is that only a minority of us are really equipped to think deeply about abstract things. The rest of us would be better served, would be better providers and better people if we simply learned to do something of value and to do it well. Then college could do what college was originally intended to do: teach people complex ideas that require a depth of study and commitment beyond what most people are interested in pursuing.
Instead, college has dumbed itself down to provide something for everyone, while growing ever more expensive and ever less useful.
Published in Education
There are certain topics that people don’t have these concepts upfront in their minds and it agitates the hell out of me. lol
This is an excellent thread about college loans.
Trust me, everything is about inflation, not productivity. That priority will never change until there is a collapse.
You can’t question axioms – that’s one of the first axioms.
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It’s not that the government would have to make fewer loans; it’s that there would be disparate impact, which the feds couldn’t stand.
I can probably make the head shots Gordon Liddy advised.
I put that on the wrong thread.
https://ricochet.com/944459/another-example-of-how-the-libertarian-utopia-is-a-fantasy/comment-page-9/#comment-5425382
Oh, really?!
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TAGS: Humor, attempts at.
No, not at all. I mean Yes. I mean… accept everything. That’s the essence and beauty of true tolerance and diversity.
(This may be a humorous remark.)
Meanwhile, apparently Biden has a plan to give illegal immigrants college grants. Since they are ineligible to receive student loans, he wants to give illegal immigrants a tuition-free education where they are expressly forbidden to ever pay the money back.
You can’t make this up.
Well we can’t want the illegals thinking America is a good place now would we?
It might be “genius” if Biden is figuring that once they are taught that America is awful, they’ll go back home, but that would be second-level thinking and there’s no evidence that Biden is capable of even first-level thinking.
That’s a good Babylon Bee article.
Even STEM majors don’t always get a job in their area of study. Even though I have a BS in Physics and an MS in Nuclear Engineering (and a PhD in Submarines), I did a couple of stints as an Environmental Engineer and Mechanical Engineer. I’d advise flexibility no matter what the field . . .
Agree totally.
I got a STEM degree and I work part-time in a hardware store.
Now, there are two aisles for things used by electricians, but helping them find those products is not really in my area of study, Electrical Engineering, not like in in. In fact, I decided to specialize in Plumbing. I got interested when I started to learn about brass compression fittings and Iron Pipe – Tapered specs, but now that I have acquired valuable skills in PVC fittings–did you know that a slip connector end in Drain-Waste-Ventilation grade is called Street or Hub, whereas in Schedule 40, it is Socket or Spigot?–I am totally hooked.
Back when I started in construction plumbers were still using oakum and molten lead.
If you’re ever in Loveland, OH on a Monday evening, you would fit in with the guys from the hardware store after work. First round’s mine.
Thanks. I’m just old, and have been involved in construction for a long time.
If it is illegal discrimination to use aptitude tests as a basis for employment, why is it not illegal to use them as a basis for college admission?
What kind of hater wants opportunities given to those who can make use of those opportunities?
It’s not. The correct interpretation is that the employer had to have a reason for the test and the standard. If the job is digging a ditch, you can’t require a test that measures ability to read and write with the intended or unintended result of excluding blacks who can’t read and write, for instance.
Here is the gist of the ruling: “
Note that this is not a Constitutionality ruling, it’s just an interpretation of a statute. Congress has the power to change this if it wishes.
I want to point out an important point that you didn’t: the statute is clearly unconstitutional, and a violation of basic human rights.
The statute says that a citizen cannot decide not to give his property to another citizen who wants to exchange it for certain labor, if the prospective employer wishes to contract only with a person with certain skills, if in the opinion of the court, the employer ought not to value those skills. That he OUGHT not to wish to make that exchange. In a free society, and under the Constitution, the opinion of a judge about what a person SHOULD want to do with his property, what skills he OUGHT to value, is irrelevant. It is the citizen’s property, not the State’s. The statute makes the citizen’s possessions the property of the State, to the extent of the statute’s demands.
Interesting. Would you change your interpretation if, for example, a landlord wanted a correctly completed reading/math/etc test before renting an apartment, which could even be said to have more validity than such a test for a ditch-digging job since a landlord may want some assurance that a prospective tenant knows how to read the contract and pay the bills?
There’s a difference between what is “right” and what is “constitutional.” As currently understood, the Court decides what is constitutional and what isn’t. You might think it clear as day, and so do I, but we are beholden to a political process that let’s them say whatever they want to say.
It’s like I tell my legal clients: It doesn’t matter what the law says or what you think it says, it only matters what gets enforced.
kedavis (View Comment):
Mark Camp (View Comment):
Interesting. Would you change your interpretation if, for example, a landlord wanted a correctly completed reading/math/etc test before renting an apartment, which could even be said to have more validity than such a test for a ditch-digging job since a landlord may want some assurance that a prospective tenant knows how to read the contract and pay the bills?
No.