American colleges are producing racists and it's a damned expensive process

American colleges are spending millions of dollars a year to fight racism. Virtually every school has a vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and DEI officers don’t come cheap. Ohio State University, for example, spends $20 million a year to promote diversity and employs 189 people to get the job done.

Curiously, the more the colleges obsess about race, the more racist their students become. After Hamas massacred more than a thousand Jews last month, college students all over the United States staged mass protests in support of the butchers. Some protesters have even called for the liquidation of the Jewish state. In other words, they have come out in favor of genocide.

A college education is expensive. It can cost a quarter of a million dollars to get an undergraduate degree from an elite university. Supposedly, college students are learning how to reason. Seemingly, they are gaining a deeper appreciation of diverse cultures, races, and ethnicities. Purportedly, they are acquiring the skills and dispositions they need to participate in a democratic society.

And now we are discovering that a college education is about none of that. Instead, American universities are teaching students to celebrate murder, rape, and infanticide and to hate Israelis.

The pro-Hamas college students think they have heightened moral scruples. In fact, they have the moral sensibilities of Nazis, and they are so stupid that they don’t even realize it. 

Graduation day at Columbia University

The Ivy League's Biggest Scam: Expensive Graduate Degrees That Don't Pay Off

 If you are thinking about enrolling in a pricey Ivy League graduate program, read a recent Wall Street Journal article titled "'Financially Hobbled for Life': The Elite Master's Degrees That Don't Pay Off." 

Reporters Melissa Korn and Andrea Fuller report on a WSJ analysis of student debt owed by people who graduated from prestigious schools like Harvard, NYU, and Columbia. Two years after getting degrees from these toney joints, a high percentage of elite-school graduates were not working in jobs that would allow them to pay off their student loans.

For example, a New Jersey guy got a master's degree in Fine Arts in film at Columbia. Two years after graduating, he owes nearly $300,000 in student loans (including interest) and earns between $30,000 and $60,000 a year. Will this man ever pay off his student loans? Not bloody likely.

And this is not an isolated example. The WSJ reported that the median student-loan debt for Columbia's film program graduates was $171,000 in 2017-2018.  How many of those people are earning $171,000 in their current jobs? How many will ever pay off their student loans?

What attracts bright people to expensive Ivy League graduate programs? As one Columbia film graduate said, "We were told by the establishment our whole lives this was the way to jump social classes."

But we were told wrong. I got an essentially useless doctorate from Harvard, thinking the degree would erase Oklahoma from my vita. But it didn't. I still have range dust in my diction, and I still see the world much like my hard-scrabble ancestors saw it--the ones who lived through the Dust Bowl.

The WSJ analysis focuses mainly on Columbia University's film program and its graduate program in theatre arts. But there are other unindicted co-conspirators.  

Harvard's master of education degree, for example, is a scam.   You can get a master's degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education in only nine months, but the total cost of that experience is $85,000 (including room and board). 

I picked up a Harvard master's degree as I went through Harvard's doctoral program. I was proud of it at the time. I went to the graduation ceremony (very posh) and even framed the diploma.

But I no longer put that degree on my vita, and I lost the diploma somewhere along the way.  Thinking back on that experience, I wonder at my naivete.  I sat in packed classrooms containing as many as 200 students, and most of my teachers were nontenured instructors.  

One of my Harvard professors enjoyed rock-star status while I was there. She gave one two-hour lecture a week for a four-hour course. Her graduate students taught the other two hours.  Office hours? If you wanted to see this professor, you had to submit a written petition to one of her graduate students explaining why your appointment was worth this professor's precious time.

I say again. If you are thinking about taking out loans to get an Ivy League master's degree, read the WSJ article first.  If you still want to pursue that path, consult a good therapist--because you are delusional.

If you are from Oklahoma, a Harvard degree won't take the range dust out of your diction.

Will an Ivy League degree make you LESS employable?

 In a recent Wall Street Journal essay, R. R. Reno, Editor of First Things, wrote that he had stopped hiring graduates from elite colleges.  He noted that he had watched a Zoom meeting of students at Haverford College (Reno's alma mater), where students displayed "a stunning combination of thin-skinned narcissism and naked aggression." 

Haverford, like most elite private colleges, is a "progressive hothouse." If students are traumatized by racial insensitivity in that liberal bastion, Reno observed, "they're unlikely to function as effective team members in an organization that has to deal with everyday realities."

Reno acknowledged that not all college students are radical activists. Nevertheless, most have allowed themselves to be intimidated by allegations of racism or some other transgression of the unwoke. "I don't want to hire a person well-practiced in remaining silent when it costs something to speak up."

Reno went so far as to say that some politically conservative students at elite colleges suffer from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. "Others have developed a habit of aggressive counterpunching that is no more appealing in a young employee than the ruthless accusations of the woke."

America's elite colleges charge students more than $25,000 a semester. Do they add value? Reno thinks not. "Dysfunctional kids are coddled and encouraged to nurture grievances, while normal kids are attacked and educationally abused." He doesn't think these snooty schools are teaching students to be courageous adults or good leaders.

I am totally on board with Mr. Reno.  I attended Harvard almost thirty years ago, and it was clear to me even then that I should keep my views and opinions to myself.  I can't say Harvard traumatized me. I had worked as a practicing lawyer in the rough-and-tumble world of rural Alaska.  I knew within a few months that most of my Harvard professors were slinging bullshit--very expensive bullshit.

But I pitied my Harvard classmates who had taken on mountains of student debt and got very little in return.  I have no doubt that some of them are still paying off their college loans.

So if you have an opportunity to attend an Ivy League school or some elite joint like Bowdoin, Amherst, or Swarthmore, you should read R.R. Reno's essay. You don't want to wind up with a diploma from a fancy college that costs you $200,000 and find that you picked up habits and world views that make you unemployable. 

A gathering of the woke

All Sales Final! No Refunds! Students lose lawsuit for tuition reimbursement against four Rhode Island universities that closed their campuses during COVID pandemic

Almost exactly one year ago, American higher education shut down in response to the COVID pandemic.  All across the United States, universities closed their campuses and switched from face-to-face instruction to online teaching.

Over the past several months, students brought dozens of lawsuits against their colleges, seeking partial tuition refunds for the 2020 spring semester. They argued that the quality of teaching suffered when teaching shifted to computerized learning.

Some student plaintiffs found sympathetic courts, but a federal judge in Rhode Island dismissed students' lawsuits against four Rhode Island schools: Brown Univesity, Johnson & Wales University, Roger Williams University, and the University of Rhode Island.

 Judge John McConnell ruled that the four universities had no contractual obligation to deliver in-person instruction during the spring of 2020.  In Judge McConnell's view, the universities' recruitment materials, which touted lovely campuses and stimulating classroom environments, were mere "puffery" and did not amount to a contractual obligation to teach classes face-to-face.

I think Judge McConnell ruled correctly. Confronted with the coronavirus pandemic, American colleges and universities had no choice but to switch instruction from the classroom settings to an online format.

I sympathize with the students who brought these lawsuits, particularly the one brought against Brown University, an elite Ivy League school. Brown's tuition and fees total $58,000 per year. Students did not shell out that kind of money to take classes by sitting in front of a commuter in their parents' basements. 

Nevertheless, America's college leaders were justified in closing their campuses last spring. It was the only responsible thing to do. Surely they realize, however, that they cannot teach students via computers over the long term, even if the coronavirus pandemic stretches out for many months or years to come.

The total cost of attending America's most prestigious colleges now amounts to about $70,000 a year or even more. Most students will have to take out student loans to cover the bill.

If Brown's academic leaders think their students will take out student loans indefinitely for computerized instruction, they are in for a rude awakening.  No one will go into six-figure debt to get an online diploma, even if the credential is from Brown University.

Thus if the COVID pandemic isn't quickly brought under control, it will be the end of expensive private-college education.  After all, a young person smart enough to be admitted to Brown is smart enough not to pay $58,000 a year for an online college degree.

References

Burt v. Board of Trustees of the University of Rhode Island, __ F.3d ___, C.A. No. 20-465-JJM-LDA (D.R.I. March 4, 2021).