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?