Overview
Almost all (with a few noteworthy exceptions) of the Universities in the United States are bastions of leftist if not Marxist political thought. They have a mission to indoctrinate students who are prompted to spit out the “correct” answer, which is always a leftist answer.
I recall my daughter, in university, taking some sort of social studies class, was given an assignment along with the rest of the class on the death penalty. Assisting her with research and so forth, she presented a well-defended paper and it received a “C”. You’d need to know my daughter, but she was furious and saw the professor about it. He conceded that the paper was well research and her concepts were well-defended, but that they were “wrong”, because the death penalty was wrong. So the C stood.
A Matter of Merit
There is a large body of exceptional young people (above 4.0 GPA) who will tell you that merit does not guarantee your admission to one of the liberal bastions of higher eduction. Race, gender and pleasing liberal admissions staff is far more important than good grades and good character. And sometimes even being a dogmatic liberal puke is insufficient. The system is rigged and you need to have a really large dishonest streak running down your back (possibly yellow in color) to take a different view. Which is why the Hollywood liberal elite paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to get their moronic-yet-liberal offspring into those hallowed halls of higher learning.
The connected liberal kids might have had the gray matter to assemble hot dogs at Pinks (a popular hot dog joint where the great and near great in Hollywood send their assistants to pick up lunch), or possibly read lines to be in a low grade (straight to video) movie or two, but they’d need more – maybe an MBA, to land something more significant. Whether or not they would keep the job that required an MBA would likely have something to do with more stroke applied by influential parents.
So to keep their idiot children in Stanford, USC, or Harvard, and off the bread line, they paid.
Then there is the matter of poor, inner city youth that make it into the University system, many of whom can barely spell or add/subtrac(t) make it in simply because they are there to play sports.
And then there are the body of students, who make it because they did earn it and they outnumber the liberal elite Hollywood youth who made it through the sifting process. Maybe they did a tour with the Peace Corps (if there still is one) in Africa, or built schools in Bolivia for the poor. There are a number of generally good things that people can do that is looked with favor by liberals.
And Student Loans
One of the biggest scams foisted on the American public has been the availability of limitless student loans which in many cases, will never be repaid. I have a niece attending a very respected university. I had lunch with her a few weeks ago. He major is “conflict resolution studies”. I asked her what sort of job she might expect to land with such a degree. She looked at me like a deer in the headlights and cited a bunch of ‘potential jobs’, which are going to turn out to be vapor. I know, I live in the real world. Nobody would hire her based on her credentials to do anything but possibly teach dance classes – her minor.
Never-the-less, she has racked up an impressive debt.
There is fellow blogger who has a brother (we’ll call him Bob, because that’s his name). Bob was a bright and promising student in high school who had a motorcycle accident and suffered organic brain damage. Bob currently has $500,000.00+ in student loans. He works as a salesman, earning about $50K per year. He can’t keep ahead of the interest, and never will.
Some liberals, courting people like Bob and my niece, are suggesting that the nation pony up and pay off their loans. It’s not a bad strategy to court desperate people to vote for the donkeys.
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In America with a couple of exceptions, the largest employers are either healthcare, Walmart, or university systems. Universities are in the top three because of the availability of unlimited student loans.
Is there a Solution?
Have universities co-sign loans for students. Then we’ll see how many loans are handed out to grievance studies majors. Have congress enact legislation to fix the run-away problem.
But it will never happen. The universities and the loans they feed from (largely a scam) have battalions of lobbyists in the DC Beltway to crush any move like that which would slow the gravy train.
It’s much easier for liberals to convince the indebted masses to have their indenture paid by other people’s money.
I have a liberal acquaintance who graduated with a Master of Arts degree , and her master's thesis was sculpting a giant high heel shoe and a giant lipstick scene who now resides in her native state, Minnesota (go figure). She got a job delivering newspapers. Her dad financed this ridiculous endeaver, so no debt to speak of was incurred.
Now Women's Studies, that's a field in hot demand: if you want a walking talking sexual harrassment lawsuit, ready made and able to hit the ground running, employers will line up to interview these folks.
But of course, American universities will never sign onto this 'skin in the game' foolishness. Things are working out just fine for them right now as they stand, thank you very much.
What a total, utter, thieving scam. When the loan bubble bursts a lot of Marxist profs will blame their unemployment on capitalism as they sift their way through the garbage heaps of abandoned supermarkets.
With 2 sons facing this iniquity I have to say I'm sorry for the kids.
Of course we could redistribute Harvard's endowment to offset part of the cost of scam.
LSP hits an important point. I saw a calculation that said Harvard could provide free tuition for undergraduates for the next hundred years at a reasonable rate of inflation. Their endowment fund is in the "several tens of billions of dollars" range.
Harvard says giving away tuition is a bad thing because it does students good to work for their education rather than have the school pay for it.
Funny how they turn all conservative when it's their money to be handed out.
There are a lot of different sorts of grievance studies options. I think that most of them end up in government jobs if they have the right racial/gender profile.
And you're right. The universities are quite content.
Nobody wants THEIR money to be re-distributed. They're quite content if other people's money is. It's a communist/socialist mindset that won't ever go away.
What would liberal professors do for a living if they didn't have their scam? It would definitely be a crisis point if all those PhD's had to get jobs.
We managed to get all of our kids through college without loans. It was tough, but worth it. The finances are nearly recovered. They all have good jobs and none are a threat to move back in. As a matter of fact, they have to worry about me moving in with them.
Once the colleges realized that there is an infinite (for them) well of federal money that will be used to pay them with no requirement for graduation, gainful employment, or actually learning even one thing, higher education was all over. They can just charge anything they want to have (primarily) useless dilettantes (at best) jerk off on their erstwhile students. The rest of us get to pay, forever.
" 'conflict resolution studies' "
For a minute, I thought your niece was going to follow in your footsteps, or become a mafia assassin, or something. I was going to say I didn't know you could get a degree in that!
-Kle.
She's like a little fawn in the forest, having been coddled and home schooled all of her life, sheltered and nurtured. I have no idea what will happen to her when she steps into the real world. Likely she will be eaten.
Same here. No loans, all sweat and broken bones. And they all have rooms set apart for me to stay in. Which is nice, when I visit. In one case, I paid for all of the furniture, but that's fair, isn't it?
I have a nephew that went the high brow university route several years ago to become a low pay minister, still hasn't finished his thesis for his masters, now has a Brazilian wife & two kids. He owes +60,000 in student loans, which since he has become a socialist he thinks the rest of us should pay off or forgive. On the other side of the coin, my grandson that put in 8 as a Navy corpsman is going to state college on his GI bill and working, to become a PA.
I agree that endless 'free' government money has bloated the university system. Don't forget that a chunk of that money has been recycled into propaganda that every one needs to go to college instead of preparing for the job that suits them best.
You may or may not know that there is a small but growing number of schools that do NOT accept federal aid. Since they have to set up their own loan and grant programs, they are (relatively) reasonable and have a tough academic reputation.
This movement was led by, and is still widely known for, Hillsdale and Grove City.
Of course he's a socialist – other people's money spends a lot easier than your does. And he never had to get shot at like the Corpsman did…
Hillsdale (great example) is a bastion of conservatism and it stands to reason that they'd take the approach that they did.
There are a lot of grass roots tech and trade initiatives in some of the Western states that I'm aware of that promote non-loan programs with very high job placement. They are overshadowed by the billion dollar behemoths. But for people who want to land a good paying job without the anchor of loans, there are avenues.
So thankful the Navy paid for my education. And I DO fear for my grandkids… My grandson is playing basketball on a scholarship and working a part time job to keep from having huge student loans. And he has a promise of a full time job on graduation with a good future in the construction trades. His girlfriend is doing the same with an accounting major.
Have universities co-sign loans for students. I thought that was a good idea when Tucker Carlson said the same thing on his show last night. But as you say, not likely.
Trump had no idea the size and depth of the swamp when he offered to drain it.
I like Mike Rowe. I think Uni's are overbloated, and as you say, nothing more than socialist swamps.
Tech schools are the way to go and I love the Mike Rowe Works Foundation.
Mike Rowe is a class act and he's right on with what he is doing. Rowe is trying to MAGA, and I applaud all that he does.
As with you, I have benefitted from my service. And that education was earned with blood and sweat.
My grandchildren are still young – the oldest just turned ten. And I hope to help them through college, but not all. They need to work and earn to get what they're striving for so that they appreciate it. Loans are not the way I want to see them achieve because they are a lot like being thrown into the ocean with 'cement overshoes'. It's a challenge to swim.
A thought based on one son's experience in college – if the college spent as much time finding potential jobs for grads as they spent offering loans, a lot of the loans could have been paid off.
Absolutely. Thus the concept that universities co-sign loans.
It would reduce junk loans for studies that have almost 0% chance of leading to a productive job.
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