Want to be a College Professor? Some Things to Consider

So you want to be a college professor. 

You enjoy writing, research, and teaching. You want to live in a world of ideas. Why not academia?

It may seem like a nice life. Most professors have almost complete control of their time. They are required to teach their classes and hold office hours, but you may be able to do that work remotely.

Colleges have no dress codes, so you can show up on campus dressed in "business casual," a jogging outfit, or even your pajamas.  The pay is not great, but the benefits may be pretty good: health insurance and a decent retirement plan.

But before you pursue an academic career, ask yourself these questions:

What are the opportunity costs?

Almost all professors have advanced degrees, and it can take a long time to get your doctorate. When I was at Harvard, Professor John Willett told my cohort that the median time for completion of our doctoral program was seven years.

Seven years! Seven years of being out of the workforce! Seven years living off of student loans! Seven years hanging out in the squalid town of Cambridge, Massachusetts!

I will be forever grateful to Professor Willett for his warning. I managed to get my doctorate in four years and be back in the workforce after three and a half years. 

But my starting salary as a professor was one-third what I made practicing law. My opportunity costs were high.

What will you teach?

It is a tight job market for academics, especially in social sciences, education, and the liberal arts. You may write your doctoral dissertation on Balkan nationalism during the Habsburg era and discover that you can't get a job.

On the other hand, the job market is better in business schools and the hard sciences.  And the colleges need more and more administrators--especially in the fields of student services and diversity.

Don't pursue an advanced degree in a field with dismal job prospects. You will end up taking out student loans that you can't pay back.

Where will you teach?

When you are out on the job market, consider where you want to live. Do you want to work at a major research university in a big city--somewhere like the University of Texas or the University of Chicago? Do you have the chops for that?

Or does a small liberal arts college in rural New England look more appealing? 

When making that decision, be aware that the small, liberal arts colleges are under severe stress due to declining enrollments and dwindling revenues. Many will close in the next few years. Don't start your career at an institution that is on the verge of shutting down.  That misstep will be difficult to recover from.

Also, look closely into an institution's benefits plan before taking a job. My first job was at Louisiana State University, which has one of the worst retirement programs in the United States. And Louisiana public employees do not participate in Social Security.

If you make your career in Louisiana, you will be a lot poorer when you retire than if you retire from a Texas or a California university. That may not mean much to you when you are young, but it will mean a lot to you when you are 70.

Conclusion

After reading this, you might conclude that I regret my decision to become a university professor. Actually, I don't. Practicing law--my former profession--was a lot more challenging than teaching, but it was stressful. Being a professor is not stressful--especially if you don't take your job too seriously.

I met a wonderful woman in Louisiana, married into a terrific family, and emersed myself in the riches of South Louisiana culture--its music, its cuisine, and even its 100-proof Catholicism. I've had a good life.

But if you decide to be a college professor, go forward with your eyes open.  It can be a more difficult life choice than you anticipated.

So you want a job like this guy has?

You can now follow my blog on follow.it: Thanks to my faithful readers

Many of my readers follow my blog on FeedBurner, but that service is being eliminated this month.  I am now signed up with follow.it, an alternative to Feedburner.  If you would like to know more about this service, here is the link: https://follow.it 

I generally post about once or twice a week, and if you are a FeedBurner subscriber, you've already been switched to follow.it.  My new format also has an easy-to-see and easy-to-access button at the top of my blog page, which you can use to become a subscriber.

I have been writing on the student-loan crisis for more than 20 years. I have been blogging about it on condemnedtodebt.org for about 10 years. Over the years, I've posted more than 850 essays, and so far, only one person has threatened to kill me. (That turned out to be a misunderstanding).

Unfortunately, the federal student loan program has not been reformed in any substantive way since it was created in 1965.  As I have tirelessly argued, Bankruptcy relief is the only straightforward remedy for the abuse; and that reform is not on the political horizon.

I have recently begun shifting my focus to giving practical advice about how to avoid falling into the student-loan trap. Once students have crossed the line into excessive student debt, they become like saber-toothed tigers who stumble into the La Brea tar pits.  They can never get out. 

U.S. Army abandons Bagram Airfield at night--doesn't tell local commander: Good luck, guys! Don't forget to write!

 Afghanistan soldiers guarding Bagram Airfield woke up Tuesday morning to discover that the U.S. Army had sneaked out in the night without telling its ally.  

But the Army left some going-away gifts to soften the blow: several hundred armored vehicles, small arms, and tons of ammunition.

Good luck, guys! Don't forget to write!

Retired General Jack King, a television news analyst, said the Americans made a mistake. We should have left enough troops to support the Afghan army--particularly air support. Otherwise, the Taliban--America's sworn enemy--will retake the county in a matter of weeks or months.

And the Taliban will retaliate against the local people who worked for the United States as translators, security guards, and informants.  Those people will have to leave their native country or be killed.

King is being proven right. Aljazeera News reports that the Taliban now controls about a third of the country, and Afghan soldiers are fleeing across the border into the old Soviet-era Asian republics.

 Remember those hapless Vietnamese people scrambling onto retreating American helicopters? Yes, we've seen this movie before.

On the other hand, America's twenty-year war in Afghanistan--like a bad marriage--had to end sometime.  The British were in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century and got their clock cleaned. If you want to read a fictional account of that disaster, check out George McDonald Fraser's humorous novel Flashman and the Great Game. 

Then the Russians invaded Afghanistan and got their Slavic butts kicked.  Wanna see a movie about that? Watch Charlie Wilson's War, starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Amy Adams.

Would America have been better off spending trillions of dollars on infrastructure rather than blowing it in Asia? What if we had built a high-speed train system like the Europeans or stabilized our eroding coastline instead of hauling gasoline into Afghanistan over the Khyber Pass?

But I do not claim to be a foreign-policy expert. Maybe our government did the right thing by invading Afghanistan after 9/11. I simply don't know.

When I face a philosophical quandary, I often consult the archives of country music, which ponders the cosmic issues. The Afghan army may be listening to Willy Nelson this morning as it tours the abandoned American military bases:

[T]he last thing I needed

The first thing this morning

Was to have you walk out on me

But Willie knew the end was coming when his girlfriend stayed out all night and came home drunk. And the Afghanis surely knew the U.S. would be feckless in the end.

But America better not pull out on Israel the way it pulled out on Afghanistan.  Because if we do, the consequences will be dire not just for the Israelis but for our children and grandchildren.

Is that a Glock in your pocket or are you just glad to be in Massachusetts? Armed "Moorish Americans" run out of gas on I-95

 Massachusetts police arrested eleven armed men on Interstate 95 over the Fourth of July weekend. A spokesperson for the arrestees said group members are "Moorish Americans,"  who were peaceably headed for Maine to do some training. 

And why not? 

Unfortunately, these Moorish Americans had the extreme bad luck of running out of gas in Massachusetts, which has stringent gun laws.

So--who are these guys? 

Associated Press tells us someone posted a video on 1-95, which identified the group as Rise of the Moors (ROM). ROM is headquartered in nearby Rhode Island and has a website explaining itself as a group that celebrates Moorish contributions to human progress:

Because of Moorish innovation and science came algebra, arithmetic, compasses and tools of navigation, astronomy, cosmology; our mastery of pens and printing; advances in medicine and the understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed through plants and other medicinal herbs.

But they also seem to be associated with what the Anti-Defamation League [ADL]calls the "Moorish Movement," which ADL identifies as "[a]n Afro-centric offshoot of the sovereign citizen movement that emerged in the mid-1990s. . . " 

According to the ADL:

Moorish sovereign citizens often claim to have special rights because of their “Moorish” status or because they are “indigenous inhabitants” of North America. In recent years, the Moorish movement has grown considerably, making the African-American community a surprising growth area for a movement with extreme right-wing origins. 

I checked out the ROM website, and it all seems benign to me. 

I feel sorry for the ROM guys, and I hope the Massholes turn them loose so they can celebrate the Fourth of July weekend in Maine--perhaps munching on hotdogs and shooting off some fireworks. 

And if ROM is, in fact, a "sovereign nation" group, I further hope the Commonwealth of Massachusetts treats all such groups alike, regardless of race. Although the ROM members happen to be Black, other sovereign nation groups are Native American or White. 

In my opinion, all these organizations are mostly made up of people who hold idealistic political views, but they are not dangerous. Thus, the Massachusetts police should not have confronted them with armored vehicles, as AP reported.

Incidentally, Wikidictionary identifies Masshole as "a contemptible or obnoxious person from Massachusetts. 

Rise of the Moors folks look like friendly people. (Photo credit: ROM website)

 

 

40-year home mortgages, 9-year car notes, and 25-year student-loan programs: This will end badly

Interest rates, as the tv hucksters constantly remind us, are near historic lows. So now is an excellent time to refinance your mortgage--maybe take out some equity to upgrade the bathrooms, take a little vacation, or purchase a home entertainment center.

Or maybe it's time to buy a new vehicle--perhaps a premium class crew-cab pickup, an Audi, or a BMW.  At today's interest rates, the monthly car note won't be that high--especially if you finance your new set of wheels over six, seven, eight, or even nine years!

How about those student loans? You don't make enough money to pay off your college debt under a standard 10-year repayment plan because you have other bills to pay.  But that's no problem. You can sign up for an income-based repayment plan that will stretch out your monthly payments over 25 years.

Twenty-five years is a long time, but maybe the federal government will forgive all that student debt--including yours. After all, what's $2 trillion among friends?

So is everybody happy with their new homes, fancy cars, and impressive college credentials? If so, enjoy the feeling because it won't last much longer.

Inflation is on the move, and who believes it is transitory as our Treasury Secretary tries to reassure us. Wages will probably rise to cover inflation for some employees but not for others. And if you a retired person on a fixed income, inflation will soon erode your standard of living.

That vacation cruise to Greece that you've always dreamed of? Maybe you'll just go to Oklahoma's Boiling Springs State Park this year--a lot cheaper.

Of course, you can't fly to Boiling Spings because airfares are way up, and car rental rates are just short of obscene.  So you will have to drive.  But you should do it soon because gas prices are on the rise. Oil is already back up to $75 a barrel.

So maybe you'll skip a vacation this year and enjoy your backyard--grill a few steaks or hamburgers. But that's becoming more expensive too. A premium steak at the grocery store can cost you $25 a pound.  But hot dogs are cheaper--especially the ones that aren't all beef.

There's nothing the people living in flyover country or modest urban neighborhoods can do about the scary shifts in the national economy.  We will have to tighten our belts, pay off our debts, and cut back on our lifestyles.  

It won't be fun, but we will probably all be OK if we don't do something stupid like refinance our home over 40 years, buy a car on a 9-year note, or borrow $100,000 to go to college.  But most of us are too smart to do something reckless like that.   Right?

You will own it outright in only 9 years!

 

40-year home mortgages: Is that a good idea?

 The chickens have come home to roost.  The federal government allowed millions of homeowners to suspend payments on their mortgages during the COVID crisis. Now that moratorium is ending, and all those missed payments are now due.

Many American homeowners--maybe most of them--cannot pay a dozen mortgage payments at once. I know I could not.

So what will the feds do? According to a Houston Chronicle story, the government is thinking about allowing mortgagees to refinance their home loans over 40 years. Interest rates are low right now, and monthly payments on a 40-year mortgage would be less than payments on a 30-year or 20-year mortgage.

Is that a good idea?

No, it is not. Most people who refinance their homes over 40 years will never own their residences. Essentially, they will become renters. 

Of course, many people will sell their houses long before they pay off their mortgages. If they are lucky, the value of their home will have gone up, and they can pay off their mortgage and have enough remaining equity to buy another home.

But here is the problem.  Home prices are going up right now because of low interest rates--only about 3 percent. Also, some Americans are worried about inflation, and they are scrambling to put their money into hard assets--a second home perhaps.

But interest rates won't stay low forever, and the housing market will eventually cool. Everybody knows that.

Thus, a couple who finance their home for 40 years at 3 percent may be forced to sell it someday when mortgage rates are higher--say 6 percent. Buyers who take out mortgages at the higher rate will be making bigger monthly payments on their home purchase--even if the cost of the house does not go up.

So what's going to happen? Many people who finance their homes over 40 years at 3 percent interest will not be able to sell their homes for enough money to pay off their mortgages. 

In the years to come, hundreds of thousands of homeowners who can't sell their homes after interest rates spike upward will simply walk away from them.

But hey, what do I know? I'm just a retired professor who lives in the very heart of flyover country.

But I have seen this movie. I bought my first home in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1981.  Conventional mortgage rates were 11 percent at that time, but the State of Alaska subsidized home loans to get the interest rates down to 9 percent.  

In a further act of generosity, Alaska subsidized low-priced homes--homes selling for $80,000 or less--at 6 percent. The required down payment was low--only 5 percent. Such a deal! Developers put condos and even mobile homes on the market that cost--guess what? $79,900.

Unfortunately, the Alaska economy went south when oil prices slid to $13 a barrel.  People were thrown out of work, and home values plummeted.

Many Alaska homeowners could not sell their property for enough to pay off their mortgages.  So what did they do?

They mailed their house keys back to the bank and simply walked away.  

That, dear readers, is what will happen all over the United States if people start financing their homes at artificially low-interest rates over 40 years.

Bentley University launches a bachelor's degree in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Is this program for you?

 Bentley University, a private university in the Boston area, offers a new major this fall: Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Gary David, a sociology professor, was part of the design team for the new program. 

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, David said that he:

wanted a major that moved DEI away from compliance--where institutions, companies, and nonprofits feel they need to or are required to meet certain diversity standards--and toward opportunity, with graduates working on ideas and programs to improve society with diversity, equity and inclusion at top of mind.

So--is Bentley's DEI program a good major for you? Before you decide, ask yourself these questions:

First, are there entry-level jobs for people who get a DEI degree from Bentley? 

The answer to that question is yes. Diversity is on the mind of every college president, whether that person leads an Ivy League institution or a small liberal arts school.  Nearly all major universities have a DEI officer at the senior executive level (vice president or associate provost). Schools are also hiring DEI-trained people to work in student services, student housing, and Title IX offices.  

UC Berkely, for example, spends $25 million a year on equity and inclusion and has 400 employees running programs to enhance diversity across the university.  

Second, how much will it cost to get a DUI degree from Bentley?  

Tuition, books, fees, room, and board at Bentley total approximately $76,000 per academic year--or about $300,000 for a four-year degree.  That's pretty damn expensive. Of course, you may qualify for a scholarship or tuition reduction of some sort, which will reduce your costs. 

Still, every student who does not come from a wealthy family will probably have to take out student loans to get a DUI degree from Bentley. That means Bentley graduates will enter the job market with a lot of debt.

Third, is DEI the career for you?

Finally, students should consider whether DEI is the right career choice. On the one hand, there are jobs in this field--from entry-level to executive positions.

On the other hand, once a person begins a career in DEI, it may be hard to switch to another field. Someone who wants to become a professor, for example, will need more than a DUI degree from Bentley to get a faculty job. 

Also, everyone surely understands that People of Color (POC) are more attractive candidates for DEI jobs than--for example--a white male who hails from rural West Texas.  I feel sure that a survey of the senior DEI executives at major U.S. universities will find many more POCs than non-POCs.

In my view, a person wishing to make a career in DEI would probably be better off skipping Bentley's DEI program (with its $300,000 price tag), getting an undergraduate degree in a mainstream major, and then going to law school.  

Christopher Manning, USC's first Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer

A young college student who works in a Texas kolache bakery: Why I know she will succeed in life

 My wife and I recently traveled to Waco, Texas, to attend a dear friend's funeral. Our drive home to Baton Rouge took us through College Station, the home of Texas A & M University.

We had left Waco early in the morning without eating breakfast, and we were hungry. I pulled into a gas station near Texas A &M, which happened to house a kolache bakery.

If you've never eaten a kolache, you should search out a bakery that makes them. Kolaches are a yeast-roll pastry topped with fruit or stuffed with sausage. They originated in Czechoslavakia and came to Texas with the Czech immigrants who settled in central Texas in the nineteenth century. Texans are crazy about the Kolache, which is sometimes called a Texas donut. 

 I walked into the kolache bakery and ordered two cups of coffee and three kolaches stuffed with sausage, cheese, and jalapenos. I was served by an attractive young woman who welcomed me with a smile and a friendly greeting. 

The kolaches were delicious.  They were each topped with a thin slice of jalapeno that had been baked into the yeast roll. That little jalapeno slice was something extra--both a garnish and a message that these particular kolaches were stuffed with hot peppers. 

While we were eating, the young woman began conversing in Spanish with another employee who was diligently mopping the bakery floor.  I imagine they were brother and sister. How quintessentially Texan: a family-owned Hispanic bakery that specializes in Bohemian pastries. 

I noticed then that the woman who served me was wearing a t-shirt bearing the name of Texas A & M's Mays Business School. Undoubtedly, she was a business major at the university or an MBA student.

That woman will make a success of her life. How do I know?

First, she has basic work skills. Although selling pastries is a menial job, she did it cheerfully and professionally. She has the workplace skills that will serve her well, whether she spends her whole life selling kolaches or working for Goldman & Sachs.

Second, she is bilingual.  Texas is now a bilingual state--not at the level of Canadian Quebec, but the Lone Star State is rapidly heading in that direction. This woman's language skills will serve her well throughout her life.

Third, she chose to major in business--a major that will probably lead to a good job. Not for her those vacuous programs in the social sciences, liberal arts, or ethnic studies.  

Finally, this young woman is working while in college and probably has minimal student loans or perhaps no student debt at all.

I wish more college students were like the woman who sold me three kolaches. We would be a stronger nation if young people graduated from college with this woman's work skills, language proficiency, and an academic major that will prepare them for a good job.  

PS: Purists call a sausage-filled Czech pastry a klobasniky, but most Texans refer to both fruit-filled and sausage-filled pastries as kolaches.

Is this a klobasniky or a kolache?

Will a degree from a fancy, private college improve the quality of your life? Maybe, but maybe not.

 I occasionally see television and print advertisements for weight-loss programs. Invariably, these ads show a slim, young, attractive woman with perfect teeth or a handsome young man with great hair and six-pack abs. We are encouraged to believe that these beautiful people were once fat.

But we know better. We know that no matter what diet plan we go on, we will never be as beautiful as the people in the weight-loss ads.  We'll buy the product and still have crooked teeth and a little flab around our bellies.

America's private colleges are like the weight-loss companies. Enroll at our prestigious institution, study on our cool campus, interact with our brilliant but kindly professors, and you'll be on the road to a fabulously better life.

For example, here is some puffery from Quinnipiac University's website:

From your first day, Quinnipiac’s expansive resources and passionate professors will help you flourish and build a foundation for success. You’ll create your first memories as a Bobcat on this campus, and find supportive resources throughout your journey.

How much will this journey cost you? Only about $70,000 a year in room, board, fees, and tuition.   That's more than a quarter of a million dollars for a bachelor's degree.

But, hey, you'll probably get a scholarship of some kind, and you can take out student loans. And if you need more cash to finance your studies, your parents can take out a Parent Plus loan.

Just remember, no matter where you go to college, you will still be you. And there are probably many people willing to help you reach your dreams who will charge you a lot less than a quarter of a million dollars.

Were these people ever fat?

 

"Don't just retire. Retire well." What does that mean to millions of Americans drowning in student-loan debt?

 Almost every day, I see a television ad for an investment firm that targets retirees. "Don't just retire," the tv spokesperson says. "Retire well."

Of course, everyone wants to retire well. For most of us, that means retiring with our debts paid and enough income to cover our bills and travel occasionally.

But many Americans aren't going to retire well because they are shackled to crushing student-loan debt. People who took out student loans late in life are especially burdened, along with parents who signed up for Parent PLUS loans to finance their children's college education.

But young people also see their retirement years threatened by oppressive student-loan obligations. According to a CNBC news story, two-thirds of older millennials (ages 33 to 40) are still paying on their student loans, and more than half say their loans "weren't worth it." 

College borrowers in mid-life are reporting that student loans have forced them to put off buying a house, marrying, having children, and saving for retirement.

And the cost of higher education is going up, not down. I had hoped that the COVID pandemic would force colleges to trim their costs, become more efficient, and perhaps lower their tuition rates.

But that didn't happen. Instead, although student enrollments dropped during the pandemic, the federal government sent colleges massive amounts of money that allowed them to continue operating inefficiently.  Indeed, federal COVID money probably shored up some struggling colleges that otherwise would have closed.

And while tuition rates continue to rise, the quality of a college degree goes down at many universities. Hundreds of schools have dropped standardized test scores as an admission requirement--opting for "holistic" admission standards.

The colleges say they have taken this step to attract more minority students and students from low-income families. But in reality, the schools need warm bodies to fill their classrooms--whether those warm bodies are college-ready or not. Inevitably, holistic admission policies will lead to lower teaching standards and grade inflation. 

In short, going to college has become a risky proposition--much like gambling at a Las Vegas casino. Some people will be winners; they will play the slots and hit the jackpot. For these folks, their student loans will give them an education that improves the quality of their lives and allows them "to retire well."

But for millions of Americans, going to college is more like most people's experience when they feed the slots. If they borrow too much to get a college education, they are going to be losers.

You gamble with your future when you take out student loasns

Student-loan payment relief during COVID crisis ends soon: Will student debtors start making payments again?

 About 40 million student borrowers got some relief last year when the Department of Education allowed student debtors to temporarily skip their loan payments due to the COVID crisis.

Even better, DOE did not charge interest on student loans during the forbearance period. 

But DOE's relief program ends on September 30, and the feds expect all borrowers to resume their loan payments in October. Will borrowers begin writing those monthly checks?

Maybe not. Navient reported in April of last year that 40 percent of federal student-loan borrowers requesting COVID repayment relief held loans that previously had been delinquent or in forbearance.  In other words, millions of student debtors were not making payments on their loans even before the COVID crisis.

Student loans are kind of like overdue library books. They are easy to forget about.

The Department of Education's website lists a host of options for borrowers as the COVID-forbearance plan winds down. If you are a distressed student debtor, you should take a look at that site.

But here's my advice. If you are financially unable to repay your student loans under DOE's standard 10-year repayment program, sign up for the most generous income-based repayment plan  (IBRP) you can find. IBRPs are a terrible option because your loan payments will not be large enough to cover accruing interest. Thus, your loan balance will keep growing in the years to come, even if you make regular monthly payments.  

But your monthly loan payments will be lower under an IBRP and allow you to tread water until some sort of comprehensive relief program is put in place.

As I have said a thousand times, Congress needs to revise the Bankruptcy Code to allow overburdened college borrowers to discharge their student loans in a bankruptcy court. But that may never happen.

Some politicians are calling for wholesale student-loan relief. Just wipe out $1.7 trillion in student debt, they say. But that may never happen either. 

The student-loan catastrophe is enormous and getting bigger with each passing day. If you haven't taken out federal student loans yet, choose a college program that will lead to a job and do everything you can to avoid taking on onerous levels of student debt.  

If you already have a mountain of student-loan debt, get into an IBRP and wait for Congress to clean up the mess. But don't hold your breath.

And one more piece of advice. Don't ask your parents to take out a Parent PLUS loan, and don't take out loans from a private lender.  

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

Road Rage can kill you: Fear, not anger, should guide your actions when you encounter a discourteous driver

Violence is on the rise in Baton Rouge.  Last year's homicide rate--114 killings--set a new record, and we will probably break that record this year. 

Some of these killings occur near my neighborhood--the venerable College Town subdivision, where LSU professors and retired professors live. 

Two days ago, Joseph Tatney, age 40, was shot and killed at Benny's Carwash, where I often go to get my Subaru cleaned.  Jamal Jackson, 19 years old, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

According to one version of events, Jackson was driving on Interstate 10, and Tatney tailgated him in a fit of road rage.  

Jackson pulled into a carwash parking lot, but Tatney followed him.  Words were exchanged, and Tatney punched Jackson twice. Jackson allegedly retrieved a handgun from his car and killed Tatney. 

We live in scary times, probably as dangerous as the mythical Old West. Our highways are especially perilous, with drivers distracted by their cell phones and young people weaving through traffic at 90 miles an hour. Road rage is increasingly common.

I admit that I am occasionally enraged by rude drivers. I get particularly ticked off when I am tailgated by some neanderthal driving a Dodge Ram pickup truck who can see that I can't go faster because I am behind another neanderthal driving 40 miles an hour in the fast lane.

But anger on the highways is the wrong emotion, whether you are an enraged driver or the target of a driver's road rage.

 Poor Mr. Jackson was understandably upset when he got tailgated and assaulted by a stranger. But now Jackson has been charged with murder. The gun he reportedly had in his car did not keep him safe.

As for Mr. Tatney, we don't know what triggered his purported road rage. But whatever it was, it was not worth his life.

Don't say "I quit" unless you really mean it: Munker v. Louisiana State University System

 In 2015, Dr. Reinhold Munker was a tenured professor of medicine at the Louisiana State University Medical Center in Shreveport (LSU), where he conducted research in hematology and oncology.

Apparently, Dr. Munker's work environment was not ideal. After a staff meeting of faculty in the Hematology and Oncology Department, Dr. Munker approached Dr. Glen Mills and Dr. Gary Burton and allegedly accused Burton of not wanting him to do research. 

During this encounter, Dr. Munker said, "Well then, I'll resign, and I'll go to Minnesota or Washington where they appreciate me, and I can do research. I was brought here to do research."

Dr. Mills responded by saying, "I accept your resignation. I'd like a letter at the end of the day giving me your resignation date."

After that, a series of email messages suggested that Dr. Munker's colleagues did not consider Munker's remark to be an official notice of resignation.  

In one message, Dr. Mills said, "I prefer you to stay, but if you wish to leave then we will work out your departure date."

Dr. Jay Marion, Dr. Munker's department chair, also wrote an email message stating that "I wanted to clarify that I have not 'initiated' [Dr. Munker's] job termination or 'removal from tenure' as he suggests."

Nevertheless, three days after the verbal exchange between Dr. Munker and Dr. Mills, Dr. Munker received a hand-delivered letter from the director of human resources notifying him that he was being terminated "effective at the close of business today."

Dr. Munker sued, but a Louisiana trial judge dismissed his case. The judge ruled that Dr. Munker's statement that he intended to resign constituted a resignation:

I do deem his statement, oral statement that he will resign being sufficient and that the University did take him at his word and issued . . . a written acceptance via email that his resignation was accepted and effective on a particular date.

Dr. Munker appealed the trial judge's decision, and a Louisiana appellate court reversed.

"Contrary to [LSU's] argument," the appellate court ruled, "the correspondence indicates that neither [Dr. Munker], Dr. Mills, nor Dr. Marion considered [Dr. Munker's] statement 'I'll just resign[,]' to be an official resignation of employment."

The appellate court sent the case back to the trial judge and assessed costs against LSU.

Apparently, this dispute had a happy ending because Dr. Munker is now a is Professor of Medicine at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where he treats patients and conducts cancer research.

I will say right now that my sympathies are entirely with Dr. Munker. The Louisiana Court of Appeals was correct to rule that the correspondence among the parties shows that neither LSU's employees nor Dr. Munker considered Munker's informal comment to be an official notice of resignation. 

In my view, LSU was wrong to seize on one casual remark as an excuse to terminate a tenured faculty member.  That decision led to three years of unnecessary litigation.

Still, Munker v. Louisiana v. Louisiana State University System is a cautionary tale for anyone who works at an exasperating job--and that is a lot of people. Usually, the best approach is to keep one's frustrations to oneself while quietly looking for a new job.  

In other words, don't say you are resigning unless you really mean it.

References

Munker v. Board of Supervisors of Louisiana State University System, 255 So.3d 718 (La. Ct. App. 2019).

 

Is Monday is the new Friday? Let's get back to work

When I was fifteen, I "hoed peanuts" one summer, weeding the peanut fields of Caddo County for one dollar an hour.  Oklahoma summers are brutal, and temperatures were above 100 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks at a time.

Hoeing peanuts is hot, tedious work. If a government agent had offered me $1.25 an hour not to hoe peanuts, I would have accepted that offer.

Thus, I sympathize with American workers who prefer enhanced unemployment benefits to frying burgers for $8 an hour. Who would willingly take a pay cut for the privilege of working a menial job?

Nevertheless, I think it is time for Americans to go back to work. Why?

First, it is well known that the likelihood of getting a good job goes down the longer someone is out of the workforce.  And that is true whether you are a fast-food restaurant employee or a lawyer. 

People lose work skills if they are unemployed for an extended time, and long periods of joblessness are hard to explain to a prospective employer.  A "gap year" is easily explained; a "gap decade," not so much 

Second, the longer you stay away from the workplace, the more likely your employer will discover that it doesn't need you. In fact, I think a lot of employers realized during the pandemic that they were overstaffed.

Finally, unemployed people miss out on the nonmonetary benefits of going to work.  Employed people learn all kinds of skills that are transferable to other jobs. They learn time-management skills, people skills, and various mechanical skills as well. 

Besides, you are more likely to meet Mr. or Ms. Right if you have a job--another nonmonetary benefit of working. Who wants to form a long-term relationship with someone who watches television all day?

You may be saying to yourself that it is easy for me to urge people to get back to work because I am retired.  And that's a good point. 

But I have made my living as a writer, and I still write every day, and I still work as a volunteer editor for a couple of research journals.  I think I am healthier--both physically and mentally--due to having daily work tasks.

Besides, I never took up golf.

Do you want to tell your mom that you are in a serious relationship with Jeff Lebowski?

"Spanish is a loving tongue": So white people shouldn't be teaching Spanish?

 "Spanish is a loving tongue," so the song tells us,  "soft as music, light as spray." 

Indeed, Spanish is a lovely language, and I keenly regret not learning to speak it when I was young. I told myself I had no facility for languages, but I realize now that I was merely slothful.  

I was surprised to learn, then, that Jessica Bridges, a doctoral candidate at Oklahoma State University and a woman who taught Spanish for nine years in Kentucky, stated publicly that she stopped teaching Spanish because she is white.

As reported in Post Millenial:

[Bridges] decried the horror that children she taught had to "learn Spanish from a white woman. I wish I could go back and tell my students not to learn power or correctness from this white woman. I would tell them to stand in their own power. "White isn't right," she said.

I am confused. Does Ms. Bridges believe only people of color should teach Spanish? 

If so, I disagree. 

First of all, the people who inhabit the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) are Europeans, and although many Spanish people have a multiracial heritage, they are basically white people.

So how does it promote racism to have white people teaching Spanish?

Secondly, in my opinion, the transmission of knowledge should not be segregated by race, which is what Bridge's decision not to teach Spanish implies.

After all, the English language developed in Great Britain, chiefly inhabited by white folks. Should only white people teach English?

I think we would be a better country--a more inclusive country--if all Americans were bilingual--facile in both English and Spanish. I also believe our universities would advance diversity and equity more effectively if they would require their students to learn Spanish instead of obsessing on critical race theory.

Further, in my view, our universities should teach American history so that all students learn to appreciate the Hispanic contributions to our American heritage.

For example, educated Americans should know that the nation's oldest continuously inhabited town--St. Augustine--was founded by the Spanish.

They should know that the Spanish settled the upper Rio Grande Valley twenty years before the English set foot on Plymouth Rock.

And they should appreciate the fact that many of California's major cities have Spanish names--names given to them in the eighteenth century by Father Junipero Serra, born in Spain.

But to argue that white people shouldn't teach Spanish is--in my opinion--kinda silly.

Hey, buddy, are you teaching Spanish?

With less than 100 students, Judson College will file for bankruptcy and close

 Judson College, a Baptist school for women, announced that it will close its doors in July and file for bankruptcy.  

Only 12 new students enrolled at Judson for the 2021 fall semester, and only 80 current students committed to returning in the fall. As a Baptist news story commented, "Operating a college for fewer than 100 students is not financially viable."

Judson will not be the last private college to close this year. Most private colleges are slashing their tuition in a desperate attempt to lure more warm bodies into their classrooms, but that strategy won't save all of them.

During this academic year, private four-year colleges discounted tuition for first-year students by an astonishing 58.4 percent. And the average discount rate for all undergraduates is 48.1 percent.  

In fact, very few students at private colleges are paying the sticker price for tuition. Ninety percent of first-year students got financial aid from their colleges this year, and 83 percent of all undergraduates got a discount.

Basically, private colleges are running a gigantic half-price sale. But discounting tuition won' save a struggling college unless it can entice enough new students to offset their lower tuition.  And that ploy won't work at a time when the supply of higher education significantly exceeds demand.

Want fries with that burger? Don't go to a college that doesn't at least teach you time-management skills

 Looking back over half a century on my college years, I remember absolutely nothing about the courses I took--130 vacuous credit hours. 

I can't say it was my college's fault. I had no clear idea about what I wanted to do for a living. I changed majors twice and took courses almost at random.  I took religion courses--enough for a minor. I took my university's first course in African American studies, and I got an A.  I even took two classes in the college of agriculture: horse production and livestock feeding. I must have had some vague idea about going back to work on my father's farm.

But I understand now that my college years were not a complete waste. Why? Because I learned to manage my time and weave my way through the bureaucratic maze of academia, and those skills are not to be disparaged.

In my first semester in college, I took five courses: mandatory ROTC, biology, history, freshman English, and a class in swimming. And I had a part-time job as a student custodian. 

I had to get up on time in the morning, get to classes held all over a sprawling campus, and study enough to pass the written exams. I had to figure out a way to amass enough of the courses I needed to graduate. I had to get my ROTC shirts pressed, and I had to learn to do my own laundry.

After getting my undergraduate degree, I gradually discovered that the world of work is often dull, colorless, and even meaningless. To make a living, I had to manage my time and learn the bureaucratic rules of the workplace.  I can see now that I learned those skills by spending four mind-numbing years at a university.  

But maybe colleges are not teaching time-management skills anymore.  According to Inside Higher Ed, a recent survey found that about one-fifth of recent graduates say their college education did not prepare them for their first job. Less than one in four graduates said they learned people-management skills while in college, and only a third said they learned time-management skills. 

These findings are scary. A college degree is becoming more and more expensive with each passing year, and most students now take out student loans to pay for their studies--loans many will never be able to pay back.

The very least we should expect from our universities is to teach students how to manage their time.  A young person who graduates from college with burdensome student-loan debt and no time-management skills would have been better off working at McDonald's.  

At least McDonald's teaches its employees to show up for work on time, smile, and not overcook the french fries.   

Do you want fries with that college degree?

Abolishing the Campus Police: Is That a Good Idea?

 Davarian Baldwin, a professor at Trinity College, published an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education this week, arguing that colleges should abolish their campus police forces. This is a terrible idea.

Baldwin began his article by mentioning two examples of alleged police brutality by campus police officers. One of these incidents took place in 2019, and the other in 2015.  There are approximately 4,000 colleges and universities in this country. Are we going to close down campus police forces because of a few atypical events?

If I understand Professor Baldwin's argument aright, he believes campus police officers often target nonwhite community residents and that their primary function is to protect the university's institutional interests. "The campus police function as the most visible form of urban renewal to clear city blocks and signal to investors, students, researchers, and their families that the area is open for business," Baldwin wrote.

But what about campus crime? This is Baldwin's response to a hypothetical skeptic who asks, "What if someone gets raped?"

[D]espite the widespread existence of campus police departments across the country, sexual violence and substance abuse among students remain prevalent. This policing failure could be, as some have argued, a matter not of capacity but priorities. Even with jurisdiction far beyond the main quads, the primary function of campus-police officers is to serve the university's interest. Bringing greater attention to white-on-white student crime would undervalue the institution's brand. In contrast, images of highly armed security forces storming city blocks reassures branding and business interests.

I find that argument difficult to follow. Is Professor Baldwin saying that campus police forces subordinate campus safety to universities' commercial interests? If so, I think he is wrong.

I don't disagree with everything Professor Baldwin wrote. He criticized universities that participate in a Department of Defense program that distributes military equipment to police departments, and I agree. The campus police do not need armored personnel carriers. 

But that is a minor issue. Only about 100 of the nation's 4,000 colleges and universities obtained military equipment from the Department of Defense.

I also agree with Professor Davis that campus police officers sometimes behave abusively.  The UC Davis police famously pepper-sprayed passive students in 2013, and very little was done to punish the offenders.  (If you want to see that incident, you can go to Youtube).

But university campuses have become virtual cities.  Some of them have 50,000 students or more on their campuses plus thousands of employees--professors, administrators, and staff people.  These people deserve on-site police protection.

Campus crime is an ongoing problem--something Congress recognized when it passed the Cleary Act more than 20 years ago.  That law requires colleges and universities to keep records of campus crime events and make those records available to the public.

Colleges and universities also provide campus housing for their students, and they are legally obligated to protect dorm residents from crime. In Mullins v. Pine Manor College, decided in 1983, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld a verdict against a small, private college after a first-year student was abducted from her dorm room and raped.

More recently, the California Supreme Court ruled that a university has a duty to protect students in the classroom from other students that the university knows to be dangerous. In that case, a mentally ill student stabbed and nearly killed an undergraduate woman in a chemistry lab.

In my view, these incidents and hundreds of other criminal acts that have taken place on college campuses over the years argue in favor of a campus police force.

If Professor Baldwin's argument is that some police are poorly trained and mistreat community residents, let's talk about that. 

If the argument is that campus police sometimes behave abusively, as they did during the UC Davis pepper spray incident, let's talk about that. 

But to argue that the nation's 4,000 colleges and universities should abolish their campus police forces makes no sense to me at all.  And I bet it makes no sense to Mom and Pop, who send their sons and daughters to college in the expectation that the people in charge are committed to keeping their children safe.

We need better police officers, not fewer.

Bloomsburg University axes all its fraternities and sororities: Do you really want to be a Frat Boy?

A few days ago, Bloomsburg University sent out a campus email message announcing that it will no longer recognize its campus Greek organizations.

The message was short and sweet:

Effective immediately, Bloomsburg University is terminating its fraternity and sorority life and severing ties with all national and local FSL organizations currently affiliated with the University.

Bloomsburg is not the only university to lose patience with its fraternities and sororities. Earlier this year, the University of Miami suspended three fraternities and permanently removed another for allegedly hosting large parties in violation of the University's COVID rules.

But it is fraternity hazing that has frustrated college administrators more than any other issue. Hazing is illegal in all fifty states, but college Greek organizations continue hazing their pledges.  

From time to time, pledges have died from abusive hazing--usually from alcohol poisoning or injuries suffered while inebriated. 

In fact, Justin King, an 18-year-old student at Bloomsburg University, died in 2019 when he fell off a 75-foot embankment after attending a fraternity rush party.  His mother is suing her son's fraternity for recklessly serving him "life-threatening amounts of alcohol." And Bloomsburg University kicked the fraternity off its campus.

So, if you are an undergraduate male at an American university, do you want to join a fraternity? 

Maybe the answer is yes. Perhaps your father and grandfather belonged to a particular fraternity, and you want to carry on the family tradition. Perhaps your friends are joining a fraternity, or you think being a frat boy will help you meet girls.

So go ahead and join a fraternity. But if you do, please heed two pieces of advice:

First, do not participate in hazing, either as a pledge or a fraternity member.  Hazing is a crime in most states, and you could go to jail. And if a pledge dies because you poured grain alcohol down his throat, his family will probably sue you for wrongful death.

Second, don't engage in casual sex at a fraternity party if your sex partner is inebriated.  You may think drunken sex is fun, but universities have been charging male students with sexual misconduct because they had sex with female students who were incapacitated by alcohol.

Of course, not all drunken sex occurs at fraternity parties, but Greek social events often involve excessive drinking followed by casual sexual encounters. You don't want to be kicked out of college because you had sex with an inebriated partner.

I know men who were in fraternities during their college years, and many say they formed valuable lifelong friendships with their fraternity brothers. 

But I also know men who fell into a pattern of alcohol abuse after boozing their way through college with their frat pals. And some of them picked up the nasty habit of using alcohol to prey on vulnerable young women.

If you are thinking of joining a fraternity, I urge you to watch Animal House, that classic 1970s movie about life in a college fraternity.  You may think the film is a lot of laughs, and it is. But in real life, the characters in that movie would go to prison for some of their fraternity antics. And that would not be funny.

Consensual or non-consensual?

Idiocracy: Giving people free hamburgers if they get the COVID vaccine

 I was a kid during the polio epidemic of the 1950s, and the disease terrified me.

I knew two kids who wore steel braces on their legs due to polio, and I saw pictures of children with their heads poking out of iron lungs--very scary!

Then Dr. Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, and grownups sighed with relief. All parents had to do to protect their children from polio was have them vaccinated.

But we kids were as frightened of the vaccine as we were by polio. 

Syringes in the 1950s were enormous. In those days, the needles were used again and again, and eventually, they got dull. The needle on a polio syringe looked as big as a number 2 pencil from my second-grader perspective--an unsharpened number 2 pencil!

In my town, children got their polio vaccines at school. I was in Mrs. Vaughn's second-grade class, and she lined us up for the long march down to the principal's office. 

I heard children ahead of me screaming in terror at the prospect of getting stuck with a big needle. In some cases, kids went postal, and teachers had to call parents to help physically restrain their children.

But, by God, all the kids got vaccinated, and eventually, polio was eradicated in the United States.

Why was America successful in wiping out the polio scourge? Because getting the polio shot was not optional. Mr. Bailey, the school principal, did not ask me if I wanted to be vaccinated.  I would have told him no. And Mr. Bailey didn't give me a little prize as a reward for having a nail-sized needle stuck in my arm.

So I was surprised by the news that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is offering New Yorkers a free hamburger if they get the coronavirus vaccine.  I watched a video of Mayor de Blasio munching on a burger while cajoling his constituents to get their COVID shot.

Conservative commentators are making fun of Mr. de Blasio for his hamburger gambit, but I'm on the Mayor's side. If New Yorkers won't get vaccinated unless you give them a hamburger, I say give them a goddamned hamburger.

And if they hold out for a cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake, I say give them whatever they demand. Hell, give them a Tesla!

But what have we become as a nation when we have to bribe Americans to do the right thing? So far, the coronavirus has killed half a million people in the United States. Why wouldn't everyone do their small part to help stop the COVID pandemic?  Do we really need to give out hamburgers?