The Future of Colleges & Universities… And the Present
This article looks at the future of colleges and universities:
There are over 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States, but Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen says that half are bound for bankruptcy in the next few decades.
Christensen is known for coining the theory of disruptive innovation in his 1997 book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” Since then, he has applied his theory of disruption to a wide range of industries, including education.
In his recent book, “The Innovative University,” Christensen and co-author Henry Eyring analyze the future of traditional universities, and conclude that online education will become a more cost-effective way for students to receive an education, effectively undermining the business models of traditional institutions and running them out of business.
I think a bigger problem – and it isn’t limited just to the US – is that a lot of schools are putting out a large number of students with unmarketable degrees and useless “skills.” For instance, Newsweek had an article entitled Men with muscles and money are more attractve to straight women and gay men – showing gender roles aren’t progressing. It links to this study published in Feminist Media Studies by a couple of, ahem, researchers at two British universities: Coventry and Aberystwyth. Here’s the abstract:
In this paper, we analyze the website TubeCrush, where people post and share unsolicited photographs of “guy candy” seen on the London Underground. We use TubeCrush as a case study to develop Berlant’s intimate publics as a lens for examining post-feminist sensibility and masculinity in the liminal space between home/work. The paper responds to notions of reverse sexism and post-sexism used to make sense of women’s apparent objectification of men in the digital space, by asking instead where the value of such images lies. We suggest that in TubeCrush, value is directed onto the bodies of particular men, creating a visual economy of post-feminist masculinity of whiteness, physical strength, and economic wealth. This celebration of masculine capital is achieved through humor and the knowing wink, but the outcome is a reaffirmation of urban hegemonic masculinity.
Given the direction of the paper, I’d guess that the field collectively has close to a one in five chance of stumbling onto the theory of evolution over the next few decades. The probability would be higher but for some strong biases that are likely to get in the way. Regardless, though, what with On the Origin of Species being published 158 years ago, even were they to succeed at the (cough) feat of recreating Darwin’s work, it would be neither neither impressive nor useful.
But the professors who do this sort of, er, work, teach. They also have graduate students. This is a fair number of people putting in serious time and money with an expectation that what they are doing will somehow translate into improved job opportunities. All of which brings us to Stein’s Law, which is to say, if something can’t go on forever, it won’t.
So are you making a point, expressing an opinion, or just posting random news you find interesting? And if you find it interesting then perhaps (I would surmise) you have an opinion about it that makes it interesting to you. Otherwise what is our incentive to post random information?
He is just updating the meme that colleges and universities are bastions of liberal thought and horror-diversity- leading people to get degrees in things like black, lesbian studies. This is the typical Fox News tripe nevermind that apparently we are seeing at least a temporary cultural shift in women as chattel, perhaps fostered in part by those liberal and diverse hotbeds of sedition. Personally, I am not holding my breath. We elected a self confessed sexual predator albeit with a minority of votes and I suspect Alabama will elect a pedophile religious fanatic next month and neither will be good for the country. All of those university and college grads who were taught to think and question authority are a threat to insecure white men of limited intellect and education so of course they have to demonize the universities and colleges. And before Kimel asserts that I am questioning his intellect or sense of security, I am not. I am only pointing out that he is again carrying water for the anti intellectual, racist, misogynistic crowd which has been emboldened in this country and in Europe, apparently due in no small part to Russian propaganda. Somehow with all of the great issues facing this country and the world, Kimel is interested in taking on bastions of higher learning. I guess it is better than his attacks on people of color as generally murderous thugs thereby justifying genocide against them by police.
One by one, progressive bastions are crumbling: newspapers, television, Hollywood, climate scientists, now universities….. all brought about by the internet. Interesting.
Kimel,
For once I am agreeing with Longtooth mostly. This is a bizarre collection of barely connected and largely incoherent drivel.
You accuse the feminist researchers (whose study looks like it is probably accurate, btw) of not knowing about the theory of evolution (the relevance of that to what you quoted being a big fat zero as near as I can tell). But earlier you brag about this Christensen and his predictions and are all excited that he has coined the term “innovative disruption.” Guess maybe if he keeps at it he will learn about Schumpeter’s “creative destruction,” or are you also ignorant about that one.
As it is you miss the problem with current higher US ed, which is not pc ness or weird studies, but way too high tuition and fees, which will become more of a problem if Congress passes a tax bill that takes away deductions for student loan interest and grad student waivers. As it is, last year for the first time in decades, tuitions rose at about the rate of inflation. They need to stop rising period.
Oh, and it is not faculty salaries or numbers that are responsible for those rising costs but increasing numbers of administrators and their salaries. Some of that (numbers) may be due to externally driven pc initiatives, but most of it is just admin bloat that needs to be gotten under control. At my uni when I started there was no such thing as an Associate Dean, now their hordes of them with lots of their own assistants, all paid more than faculty, with lots of them doing nothing worthwhile whatsoever.
As for online courses taking over, maybe, but we have had these kinds of predictions for decades going back to mail order courses, and guess what, none of them have panned out. But if they do this time, it will be due to out of control tuitions, not excessive pc ness.
Barkley:
Since I align myself with the heretic Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice Org, I have written on the topic several times on AB. I know the many have a tendency to ignore my babbling on the topic; but, there are other factors coming into play here besides administration. Interest rates are just plain stupid at anything greater than 3% regardless of what Delisle, Akers, Chingos, and Winegard claim for BA or advanced degrees. State funding has decreased tremendously also. In Michigan it has been a 60% decrease. State institutions have been setting aside more money than ever before. Yeah, there are admin which could be eliminated; but, there are other factors to be considered. “Pulling Up the Higher-Ed Ladder: Myth and Reality in the Crisis of College Affordability, The UW Slush Fund, and Reputation versus Tuition
Much of my education was funded by the military, state grants, and the VA. The Illinois state grant paid for much of my BA. My Masters costs were reasonable. Barkley, I would have loved to sit in one of your classes back in the early eighties.
Getting an education cost of inflation is said to have surpassed the cost of healthcare.
Run,
I agree that cuts in state aid and high interest rates have been problems, although on the former I would note that tuition and fees in private unis and also exceeded the rate of inflation for decades, if not rising quite as fast recently as at state institutions. But, hey, when your total costs are pushing $70,000 per year as is the case at the top privates, you do not need to be going up all that fast to be completely and ridiculously unreasonable.
Of course, since the privates are already beyond being through the roof, the sharp increase in public costs is what is immediately reducing availability to poor people of higher ed without piling up large amounts of debt, the interest on which may about to become non-tax deductible.
Barkley:
I can not disagree. My sons and daughter went to private schools such as Ohio Wesleyan ($125,000), Lake Forest ($100,000+), etc. Loyola University Chicago was not cheap either for an advanced degree for me. I corrected your initial post and deleted your second post on the correction. I liked smaller schools. Thank goodness for scholarships and grants.
Hey, in Denmark they pay people to go to college, and Bernie did propose having no tuition for at least public schools. Latter may not be possible in US now, but we should be moving to reduce these costs (or increase the aid), not make it even more expensive as seems to be the thrust of current new policy proposals.
Barkley,
I don’t brag on the prof who says unis are in financial trouble. In fact, I point out I think he is missing the bigger reason for the woes he observed:
(Note – Run’s point is also a good one)
I then provided an example, of which there are many. And yes, from what I managed to read of the study, it seems to be written in a world where the theory of evolution is unknown.It is missing an understanding that individuals select mates based on the potential mate’s ability to have offspring which will, themselves, be successful at reproduction. Visual cues of health and prosperity in a male are, on average, attractive to a female.
But the question is… what is the usefulness of generating a study on how women look at men, blaming the results on patriarchy, and concluding that women will only be truly liberated from the clutches of the white cis heteronormative patriarchy when, collectively, they are able to find a poor and unhealthy man to be just physically attractive as Brad Pitt? Leave aside questions of biological reality if you’d like. Is writing stuff like this a relevant skill? Is the an undergrad being well advised to spend four years worth of time and tuition learning about this? What about grad students? What will most of them do with these skills?
My wife apparently is a traitor to the cause. Her undergrad degree is in fine arts, which she regrets to this day. (She went on to get an MBA after a few years in the real world.) I caught her telling the seven year old the other day that we won’t be paying for his college tuition if he doesn’t a) apply himself and b) study something which will help him get and keep a job. (Not that either of those things appears to be a problem at this point. He is eager and loves math, though a lot can change in ten years.). The kid is too young to get it, but I think any parent who doesn’t tell their children something along these lines when time is right is irresponsible.
Btw… I do agree that there are probably too many administrators. But like online, I think that’s a secondary issue. To spitball some numbers, you can add two million in salaries and spread it among twenty thousand students and it adds a hundred bucks onto tuition a year. If tuition is already at 25k a year, that’s a drop in the bucket. The bigger problem is that too many people spend that 25k plus four years and walk away with a degree that adds nothing to the positive side of their personal ledger.
Certainly anybody borrowing a lot of money to pursue a major with a poor record of providing plenty of good paying jobs after graduation should think carefully about what they are doing. That said, some of the most successful of all students I have ever had majored in supposedly no money no job majors, like German and English and philosophy. So, I think you are overstating things on this matter, Mike.
Bottom line remains we need to get tuition and fees down (or support up), not force everybody to be a STEM major.
Actually, my son majored in Varsity Water Polo without a scholarship and graduated with a near worthless major .. all on my dime After 6 months he realized “whoops” and on his own dime went back and got a comp sci BS, and then after years spent his own dime to get a MS in Comp Sci from a major local private university.rpiamjoSice o0 ye degreei
I look at it this way… kids have to learn to make choices for which they are solely responsible and if their choices don’t work out as they’d “planned” (e.g. often pure fantasy) then they are far more apt to realize that it’s up to them to make the corrections they can and which they deem necessary.
Yes, some / many kids don’t have a lot of good sense by the time they graduate high school — I was like that .. happy-go-lucky “go to college since I’m qualified to enter almost any I can afford ” and figure out what I want to do or pursue — I hadn’t a clue of what that might be in fact, nor did I care — I’d figure it out in due course
But I’ve found that most of kids, most of the time come to realize sooner rather than later to get serious about their own future — so they adapt relatively well and in earnest on their own, without parents coercive incentives and “money”.
I told my kids I’ll pay for a 4 year BS, one time at a public university in CA and if you aren’t on schedule to graduate with that degree in 4 years I’ll stop footing the bill and you’re on your own after that… pump gas, wait tables, be a retail clerk or used car salesman for a living … it’s your life and you have to decide how you want to live it.
Like my uncle told me once upon a time.. do whatever it takes to get your ticket to the better life — “ticket” meant 4 year degree from a legit university. Without that ticket doors don’t open for you. The rest is up to you but without the ticket you’re 1 of 90% of the general adult working population… with the ticket you’re 1 of 10% (at that time)
So I worked my own way through school on part-time jobs (no loans except or a single $300 loan once), no help from parents or relatives, holes in my shoes, hungry a lot, living in crappy little el-cheapo apts. or “shacks” with a bed and single light bulb (no lie).
But I resolved to get my ticket no matter how hard it was. But my resolve was probably helped along by the fact that my Dad had a degree (1st in his family) and my aunt, his younger sister also had a degree (both from CAL). Out of my parents siblings (7 on each side, 14 total)) only 2 ever got a degree (or even applied to a college for that matter), so all I had to do was look around in my own extended family to see the difference it made.. hence my resolve was driven by observation and pure fear that I’d end up living a life my relatives instead of the professional lives of my father and aunt.
Kids aren’t stupid… they just take some time to figure out what’s important to them, and I can attest to how tough it is when your friends are working and buying houses and getting married and having nice cars while not going to college. There were many times I felt like opting out. But by god, if my Dad and Aunt could work their way through school without help and no loans then I sure a shit could do it too.
By the way when I graduated I still had no idea what I wanted to with my life… the rest just happened … my ticket opened doors I had no clue were going to open for me. Pure Luck! Suddenly though the world was my platter. I did finally discover what my passions were and what I was good at.. better than most, and I was paid very handsomely to pursue my passions. .Again, just Pure Luck!
I had two passion’s: Open ocean sailboat racing and innovating / discovering. stuff, forging new paths. I almost decided once to purse just ocean racing as a lifestyle… I could crew on any ocean racer in any weather for any length of time at sea and live my life as a sail-bum and be as happy as a clam. But by then I was married with two kids and decided I’d already decided by “responsibilities” to my children and wife that ocean racing would have to be the life I couldn’t pursue any longer… so dedicated it to my other passion and was happier than a clam while being paid big-bucks .. I never actually considered that I “worked” at all.. it was handed to me as a gift. Pure Luck.
Today a 4 year degree makes you 1 in 33% of the work force which means you’re competing with 3x as many people for jobs as I was. It also means employers have a lot more people to chose from with a degree as a proportion of the workforce, so they can be more picky while paying less of a premium for it..
Of course at my time a State University cost $1500 – $2000 a year including all expenses of living… so working your way through school without debt was a doable thing. It’s no longer the case (to get a degree in 4 years at least), but it took me 6 years to get through school (including interruptions for military duty and working while taking 1/2 loads some semesters.. .
I checked on my costs to attend college including living expenses in current dollars. I now costs nearly 100% more current dollars net of inflation than it did when I attended. At the same public university. What’s worse however is that starting salaries where 4-5x my annual costs of attending but today starting Salaries average only 2x – 2.5x the annual costs of attending.so something has gotten way out of whack over time… lower relative pay and higher costs to get that pay.
Since I attended a public (CA) university then the real costs are so much higher now than then only because taxpayers aren’t funding public colleges to the same relative degree now as then. I also checked the ratio of private to public University costs then and now.. there’s been almost no change in the ratio, so private universities haven’t increased their prices relative to public ones to drive public prices higher.
What has changed is that public and private universities are now providing 3x (or more) the number people to get degrees now than they were back in my day Apparently volume in this case doesn’t bring economies of scale. But then to ask taxpayers to pay for 3x the proportion of the population getting a 4 year degree also means the taxpayer has to pay 3x what they were paying back then in real terms. So it stands to reason that taxpayers aren’t likely to fund 3x as much as they used to be wiling to fund in real terms for public university degrees.
The net effect though is that the non-wealthy kids are shit-outta-luck and this simply exacerbates the increasingly economic inequalities in the U.S., while providing employers with yet more people in the workforce to pick from and driving down salaries of university 4 year degreed graduates. This then forces more to seek Master’s and Doctorates with does the same thing in the long run, at yet even higher costs.of obtaining those degrees, which are increasingly only provided /;available to the most wealthy… public or private university degrees.
Elitism on the march. The gilded age returns with a vengeance.
I see only one real solution — trade much of the massive defense spending to publically fund higher education for larger and larger proportions of the population over time. If it took 35 years to go from 12% of the workforce with 4 year degrees or more to 33%, then the rate of growth is approximately 0.6%/year .. 6% more every decade. In 35 more years it will be over half the workforce with 4 year and better college degrees, although I can’t ‘quite see how that can occur when the bulk of the population won’t be able to afford those degrees.
So what will happen in fact is that thre will be an increasing lower proportion of the population with 4 7ear and better college degrees, forcing higher salaries for a declining proportion and increasing economic inequality in an institutionalized form.
If the public doesn’t want to fund it, then the future public will feel all the pain of not having done so. And since this is actually a national issue, not a state-by-state issue (people move to jobs after they get their public degree In their own state) then it needs a national funding solution for our own national health (global competition utilizing human “smarts”).
(btw, Harvard University professors who think the prices for higher degrees will be forced down by on-line education are (imo) feeding the public a propaganda (deceptions and misleading information) which furthers their own elitism (and apparently I’d guess their offspring as well). Heaven forbid they propose more taxpayer funding for an increasingly greater need for a larger and larger proportion of our population to have those degrees. I mean that’s the “masses” .. not the deserved elites! .
Kimel is fos again.
“I think a bigger problem – and it isn’t limited just to the US – is that a lot of schools are putting out a large number of students with unmarketable degrees and useless “skills.” ”
When I got my degree, 1 of 12% of the workforce, only 2% had STEM degrees.. al the rest had business, arts, sociology, history, English, polySci, communications, and every other liberal arts degrees. Graduating classes in he sciences, engineering, and math were the smallest section by far.. maybe 10% of the graduating classes tive or take.
That was in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s So by far more of the graduates then were not STEM and yet I think it’s more than just a little evident that those “worthless” liberal arts degrees were the primary back-bone of the college educated work force in the U.S. and in the vast majority at every corporation and business in the U.S.
As my wise uncle once told me… 85% of college graduates no longer work in anything related to the college degree within 5 years of graduating.. the only exceptions were teachers, nurses, and engineers. Getting the ticket was the primary objective.. what the ticket said on it was of no import. What employers wanted was people who could think on their own, who had shown proven persistence in perusing goals and objectives and needed the least direct supervision and who had a good deal of general knowledge obtained in a university environment — including living with and dealing with a wide variety of competitive people who were not from your own “hometown” protected nesting grounds.
In the high tech industries that’s not the case for sure, but you’d be highly surprised at the employees in Google or Apple or Microsoft if you think those company’s only higher STEM graduates. My son works at Google, my daughter at Apple so I know of what I speak. And I’ve met many of these non-STEM employees at my son’s parties and gatherings.. surprise surprise, one of the stellar performers has a masters in Engish Lit It turns out his skill is that he can actually think beyond and faster than most and relate those thoughts and conclusions in a coherent form quickly and easily to everybody else. and rarely misses anyting..
My daughter has a finance degree but has worked for most of her career in developing early and innovative forms of on-line sales methods. Her professional co-workers at Apple have masters and doctorates in fields far from STEM… their forte is that they can think! and innovate and deal with a wide variety of others in national and international markets, effectively.
So while increasing the proportion of STEM graduates is absolutely necessary it’s no the be-all, end-all you think it should be by a long shot. I’m STEM, my son is STEM, my daughter’s significant other has a doctorate in physics… so STEM as well. Talk to some STEM professionals and you will find they recognize the skills of non-STEM graduates are as necessary and critical as their own… and btw, there are still a far higher proportion of non-STEM though-out the global college graduate work forces of the advanced nations.
STEM requires analytic thinking processes and you have to love to think in that rational and logical way or you add negative value in a STEM occupation. I’d guess that perhaps only 25% of humans like to think in analytic forms and love it so it’s not like there’s a panacea of creating STEM people ff they don’t have the fundamental analytic thinking style.
Perhaps, and I don’t know this, analytic thinking styles can be taught at an early age so that those people also love thinking in that style, and I’m inclined to think that may be the case, but then they have to be taught it by analytics who can also be great people persons to persuade and stimulate and explain things easily. That combination is rare however.
STEM is a factor in the present and future of global competitiveness. It’s far from the only one though.
I’ll give you a thought experiment:
Put 1000 STEM educated thinkers in a large room and see if they can organize themselves effectively to produce anything.
Put 500 Non-Stem educated thinkers and 500 STEM educated thinks in a large room and see how long it takes them to organize themselves to produce anything. .
If your STEM with experience you know the answer. If your not then you might not figure it out.
BTW, it turns out that among STEM educated people there are a large plurality that aren’t that good at STEM, but are great and even spectacular at other things necessary for productive endeavors..
corrections: you’re not your, among others.
Short but true story about “STEM’ education
I’lll jump to the end first so you wont have to read the rest.
Great STEM people don’t need to be formally “educated” in STEM. There are myriads of STEM potentials out there with no formal education in STEM and who don’t need to be formally educated in STEM. Finding them while they’re in grade and high school is the trick. We fail utterly in this regard because we insist on local popularity contests to run our local fiefdom school boards and state politician glad-handers to run the system any old way they think. I mean some even allow teaching evolution … did you ever hear of such nonsense in your lives. How dare those liberals! .
The story:
I’ve know this lady for 30 or more years? Married a year after graduating high school (while a 1st semester freshman at the only college that would accept her.. .bottom of the heap.. and no it wasn’t because she HAD to get married).
She never worked a day in her life after marriage, and didn’t. Great looking, great bod, very approachable and likeable.
She was a great people person though. knew everybody and everything about everybody — best gossip around by far. She only made a few enemies as a gossip though and I never knew anybody who didn’t think she was great person (and always thought of as a friend).
When she was ~ 45, kids barely out of the nest (maybe one left) she was at a party and as always taking to everybody, and mostly those she didn’t already know (such is the nature of friendly people who are gossips).
One of the people she conversed with was the CEO of a up and coming tech firm in Silicon Valley. The CEO had a doctorate in physics and was between ~35 or 40.
Before I go on, let me interject my own impression of this lady over the years I knew her before this party. Every once in a while she’d ask me about my “advancements” and thrills I had at work .. what kind of stuff I was doing or working on. And as always I would start to describe in layman’s simplicities what I was working on and why it was so much fun (and important of course). But this lady, rather than give the normal blank stare actually grasped what I was talking about and would say things like “so this is like xxxxx yyyy zzzz then, isn’t it?” and I was always amazed at how well she understood stuff she had no prior knowledge of in a scientific and analytic sense. I always thought she had more on the ball than she let on.
Ok back to my story
So the initial conversation with the CEO ends and she and he make the social rounds When he and I start talking he asks me what field this lady works in.. and I say “she’s the town gossip and never worked a day in her life”. And he says “Really? That’s hard to believe because she had incredible insight into the kinds of problems we’re working on at my company.”
So now I’ll cut to the chase. He asked her to come by the business to convince her to work for his company. She’s thinking of a go-fer type job or receptionist or some other low skill job, but she goes to the meeting anyway.
But what he wanted to hire her for was as a technical coordinator between his different engineering and research teams… these are masters and doctorates in STEM. She said she has zero capacity for such a job and what was this guy smoking?. But he convinces her to try it for 3 months 4 hours a day at a huge income, so she say’s for that kind of money I’ll do almost anything.
Long story shorter — she succeeds at this job wildly.. the STEM teams are actually thrilled that they can get more things done faster and with fewer headaches between groups, and less conflict.. and remember this is a lady in a leading coordination role dealing with 98% men! So I’m sure her charm, good looks, and people skills played a huge role. They highly respect her though. She’s obviously and advantage.
But here’s the major kicker. While doing this job she learns from everybody the essence of technical detail and issues from her coordinating activities and agreements and understands it and feeds it back to the teams in clear synopsis with clear understanding of the technical issues with insight… not just parroting what she’s heard.
(I get this info from the CEO whom I know and see from time to time).
Anyway after a year of this and going full time (sort of) she becomes one of the technical team heads and she hires more and her team becomes the critical team .. i.e. the rest of the teams now depend on her team delivering. And she does and with better conditions and terms than anybody had thought possible.
So here’s this lady at 45 years of age, never any college, poor grades in high school, married at 19 and perfectly happy as a housewife and gossip with all her friends and parties and dinners ,etc. who finds though the insight of a physics CEO in a few minutes of conversation with her at a party that he thinks she’s got STEM level skills even though not formally in the pure science sense. His insight turns out to be correct and this lady becomes a critical member of his technical teams, learning the science and engineering, even the some what complex equations and physics on her own by a combination of on the job absorption, and self-study as time permitted.
Who’d a thunk it?
She retired from that job a few years ago now and decided she wanted to work less in a more people oriented environment .. so she’s now an extremely highly successful real estate agent .. matching both her analytic and people skills, though the latter prevails in this job..
My point is only that sitting in plain sight are hundreds and thousands of STEM people we’ve overlooked, whom we have failed to recognize or educate in grade-school and high school and probably bored them with stuff they could have cared less about and failed to stimulate their analytic talent and so they are mediocre, average students who go on to live mediocre average lives.
We fail as a society by our individual state defined systems of education, teacher accreditation and education and localized school funding and homegrown “local election popularity contest school boards” running the system.
If you want quality education for our youth you can’t let local bullshit artists and state politicians run the system any old which-way they think. This is not an educational system… it’s chaos.
BTW her husband always told me she’s far smarter than she looks or lets on. He had insight too.
I wonder how many people that attack universities went to universities?
Course, I know they are all exceptional people that succeeded despite going to universities, and they, unlike most others, made the best of a bad situation mainly due to their genetic makeup.
Barkley,
Yes, there have been people in majors “like German and English and philosophy.” There were even those in the proverbial underwater basketweaving. But what we have now is even less useful. Take the woman in Longtooth’s interminable story. How well do you think things would have worked out for her had she spent four years learning to rail against the white cis-heterosexual orthodox patriarchy for making her find fit, rich males more attractive than unfit, poor ones?
EMichael,
Again, we have the whole issue about your lack of access to or inability to use a search engine. From a Gallup poll a few months ago:
kimel.
the sad part is you think that means something.
Even if I paid any attention to polls in ay way, shape or form, your comment means nothing.
Imagine Tubecrush is popular among a desired commercial demographic. Strip out some of the excess words that the academic journal may need in order to publish it and the advertising industry needs these studies. We should be cautious in predicting any human activity is valueless.
Eric377,
What exactly would the advertising industry do with this conclusion? Everything up to the first comma, sure. It’s just the stuff that gets taught, or used to, in tenth grade biology. But everything after that comma is worthless.
This is about taxes or cost sharing I think. Who cares if someone spends their time writing this and a small number of people go on to read it? I don’t, but I understand if you don’t like taxes funding it or an education system that inflates the costs of studies which will far more predictably lead to careers which end up generating a lot more taxes. Consider that many state systems have seen huge tuition increases over the past 20 years or so at the same time standards for junk like Tubecrush studies seem looser and looser. A system in which departments self-fund to a high degree may be coming.
Eric377,
Taxes and cost sharing are bad enough. Deluding 17 year olds into wasting four years of time and however many tens of thousands is yet another. But frankly, the indoctrination is the worst problem. Yesterday was 158 years since On the Origin of Species was published, and whereas was had creationists disputing reality on the right for a long time, now we have this bad of clowns doing the same thing on the left. And it isn’t possible to suspend thought in one direction while keeping sanity in every other direction. Adopting one incredibly silly set of beliefs leads to adopting others.
Mr. Kimel…
For once I agree with one statement you made:
“Adopting one incredibly silly set of beliefs leads to adopting others::
The first thing that comes to mind is the silly set of beliefs in a “god”.