One of the most remarkable things about the Left is the shallow thinking you see amongst them.
The label "intellectual rigor" should never be applied to them. They are one step thinkers who have no understanding of how complex the world is and zero understanding of the unintended consequences of central planning.
The COVID-19 panic is a perfect example of how this all plays out in life.
As anyone who knows how to separate emotion from logical thinking understands, COVID-19 is not a serious threat to 99.9% plus of the population. It is a serious threat to the very elderly, especially those who have comorbidities.
But the Left saw the opportunity to blow the threat up and blame President Trump for failure in controlling the virus. This resulted in lockdowns around the country which included, bizarrely, the closing of colleges and universities where students face almost zero serious threat from the virus.
Professors around the nation, almost all lefties, went along with these lockdowns. After all, the virus spreading was Trump's fault according to the Lefty propaganda version of things, and this was another way to "prove" it.
Of course, locking down the colleges and universities has resulted in falling enrollments and a dramatic drop in revenues. Who the hell wants to pay to listen to a boring professor over YouTube?
This occurred at a time when college and university revenues had been declining anyway, it just accelerated things.
And so with the accelerated declining revenues, college professors are being introduced to a new member of the faculty, Prof. Unintended Consequences.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
[P]residents of struggling colleges around the country are reacting to the pandemic by unilaterally cutting programs, firing professors and gutting tenure, all once-unthinkable changes. Schools employed about 150,000 fewer workers in September than they did a year earlier, before the pandemic, according to the Labor Department. That is a decline of nearly 10%. Along the way, they are changing the centuries-old higher education power structure.
The changes upset the “shared governance” model for running universities that has roots in Medieval Europe. It holds that a board of trustees has final say on how a school is run but largely delegates academic issues to administrators and faculty who share power.
This setup, and the job protection of tenure, promote a need for consensus and deliberation that is one reason why universities often endure for centuries. But this power structure can also hamper an institution’s ability to make tough personnel decisions or react quickly to changes in the labor market or economy.
In recent months, the American Association of University Professors, which advocates for faculty and helped establish the modern concept of tenure in 1940, has received about 100 complaints from professors around the country alleging power grabs by college presidents. The organization has labeled the changes at colleges a “national crisis”...
This year, the pandemic accelerated financial problems as well as tensions between administrators and faculty. Fall enrollment for freshman and international students fell 16% and 43%, respectively, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center and a survey of 700 schools conducted by 10 higher education associations...
Even wealthy and highly selective schools such as Harvard and Johns Hopkins tightened their belts with offers for early retirement and pay freezes. Some professors at Yale were upset that a faculty retirement plan was created without their input.
At less-well-to-do schools, the cost-cutting goes much further...
Today, about 30% of faculty nationwide are tenured or tenure-track, compared with greater than 70% in the 1970s.
Tenured professors have been replaced with contingent faculty who often work part-time, cost the university far less, can be easily fired and typically have little or no say in how the school is governed...
In a generation, tenure and tenure-track professors will be reduced to about 10%...predicts Adrianna Kezar, a professor of higher education at the University of Southern California.
In other words, Prof. Unintended Consequences has arrived on the scene:
-RW
Great post. Disappointed that the reduction in educational staff is only 10%. Unfortunately the worst of the fear mongers will probably escape the U.C. due to their skills as power mongers.
ReplyDeleteThe way I am reading the article is that "In a generation, tenure and tenure-track professors will be reduced TO [emphasis added] about 10%..." To me that reads like a 90% decline.
DeleteThe Gods of the Copybook Headings
ReplyDeleteAS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm
This describes perfectly my experience with my old college acquaintance, and what is happening to him. He's an adjunct professor at a major university in the south-west. A more perfect example of a narrow-minded, selectively-obtuse, hubristic, government-worshiping progressive hardly exists on the planet. Smart guy, but he's been all-in on the government's tyrannical response to Covid-19; He dismisses any source of information that isn't from the NYT, CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, and a few others. It's always "But Dave, you're not quoting 'top, government experts' or 'top, university scientists' or 'top, reputable media-sources.'"
ReplyDeleteNow he's freaking-out because he's about to lose his cushy teaching position.
Karma is a bitch, it's true...and schadenfreude is like a first-love's sweet kiss.
As some of us that have commented here, the diminishment of education may be the shiniest silver lining that comes out of the C-19 disaster.
ReplyDeleteFive of my family members are teachers/professors. All but one are far left politically. The one exception works primarily in the non-academic world but teaches in relation to their profession on a limited basis. All but the exception are shallow thinkers.
The teacher/professors only tend to have a difficult time when subjected to critical thinking and I often catch them in cognitive dissonance when logic and reason are brought into a discussion. This is also true even when data that contradicts their beliefs is presented.
Cognitive dissonance is something we all experience but, in my experience academics are much more prone to it. I see almost the exact same phenomena in those in late high school, college/university and recent graduates. These people have difficulty with anything they have not learned from a book or lecture.
One of my siblings is a professor of history. He holds a lot of knowledge in his brain and can be a very interesting person to talk with. But during this C-19 crisis, the financial crisis of the roaring 2000’s and for such issues as ACC he cannot go beyond the main stream talking points. I have been able to easily contradict him and point out where he is not using critical thinking to see through the lack of facts and logic. An interesting difference between he and I is I have investigated some of his claims and thanked him for information new to me, he on the other hand has only fell silent or changed the subject when he cannot back up his arguments or contradict my arguments.
Falling silent or changing the subject is true for most of the academics I have contradicted.
I am close friends with some university professors, but it must be said that the "higher education" system has been THE greatest cause of harm (inflicting socialist ideas on young people) for the last 3 generations.
ReplyDeleteIt's meant to be -- it was weaponized that way by the Frankfurt School and the infiltrated in Communists....
Delete