Our superficial scholars

[elleng]

For most of the past 20 years I have served on selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship. In general, the experience is an annual reminder of the tremendous promise of America's next generation. We interview the best graduates of U.S. universities for one of the most prestigious honors that can be bestowed on young scholars.

I have, however, become increasingly concerned in recent years - not about the talent of the applicants but about the education American universities are providing. . .

I detect no lack of seriousness or ambition in these students. They believe they are exceptionally well-educated. They have jumped expertly through every hoop put in front of them to be the top of their classes in our country's best universities, and they have been lavishly praised for doing so. They seem so surprised when asked simple direct questions that they have never considered.

We are blessed to live in a country that values education. Many of our young people spend four years getting very expensive college degrees. But our universities fail them and the nation if they continue to graduate students with expertise in biochemistry, mathematics or history without teaching them to think about what problems are important and why.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104554.html

[notesdev]

1. they don't need to think

those decisions are made by their betters

the smartest farm animal is still a farm animal.

[Hissyspit]

2. This is reflective of the wider society.

Has everyone forgotten that the universities were the next target of the Bush/Cheney administration and Rove's permanent majority?

[spooky3]

3. You are aware that Heather Wilson, the author of that piece, is a Republican, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Wilson

She's upset because applicants haven't thought about what soldiers should be willing to die for?

These and other questions she feels are critical remind me of certain right wing "think tank" talking points.

Here are a few of her notable achievements as a Congresswoman (at the wiki site linked above):

"In 2003, Wilson voted against allowing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. The Secretary would have the authority to use the purchasing power of the federal government to negotiate contracts with manufacturers in order to ensure that enrollees in the new Medicare prescription drug benefit paid the lowest possible price. Drug manufacturers lobbied heavily against drug re-importation and price negotiations in part because of the lower consumer costs it would bring."

"The League of Conservation Voters named her to its “Dirty Dozen” list of environmentally irresponsible federal officeholders, citing her support for uranium industry practices that contaminate groundwater, for policies that would allow “unlimited mining waste dumping on public lands,” and for reduced accountability for mining companies implicated in pollution."

[immoderate]

5. As a Republican she was not the worst. This article did have a good point.

You misrepresent her when you say "She's upset because applicants haven't thought about what soldiers should be willing to die for." shhe acknowledged that a service academy student thought about that, but she wondered why he hadn't thought about "what was worth killing for."

she is decrying that universities don't teach students to think broadly. I think she makes a good point.

--imm

[spooky3]

11. She did NOT have a good point--she presented anecdotes, not controlled,

empirical data about what students learn in universities today. Her anecdotes were filtered through her own biased lens, using a very limited subsample of students.

She doesn't simply want to raise questions; she wants students to answer the questions in the way that she believes they should be answered.

There are well-funded right wing organizations who operate with the mistaken belief that conservative views are being "driven out" of the academy, and are bribing or pressuring some universities to offer more programs that foster their views or require students to take courses that reflect their views.

If you do not have substantial direct experience at a top tier university, or haven't reviewed research that is controlled, I think you should question whether you have any evidence whatsoever that "universities don't teach students to think broadly."

[immoderate]

13. She presented her opinion.

I think liberals should be asking the same questions.

I'm certainly aware of the assault on the universities by Horowitz and other NeoLibs. And I'm happy to piss into any conservative think tank. She's a Republican. Hawk, anti-environment, the whole deal. Got it. (BTW, the whole government is rife with corruption and corporatists.:))

Maybe it's something that always seems to come up, like kids aren't as polite as they were "in the good old days." And there may even be some research, but the question strikes a note with me. (Are college graduates more shallow than they were in my day? It's a toughie.)

From where she was going, it's not far to ask "Can you have too much money?" and "How does the state react?"

If somebody from the left had written a similar article, would you attribute it to all these ulterior motives?

--imm

[elleng]

8. 'For most of the past 20 years

I have served on selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship...'

[spooky3]

12. so what? That is not controlled empirical evidence. She was not appointed

because of her own brilliance, her vast experience at universities, or her own controlled empirical research--published in top tier refereed journals-- on what universities do, or what students learn. She is a biased observer, and she presents anecdotes. Anecdotes are not evidence, and the irony is that if she were truly a scholar herself, she would be well aware of that.

[xocet]

4. This article is a fluff piece and a hit piece all in one....

It was written by a former Republican congressperson who has limited expertise at best. From the article:

...
Our great universities seem to have redefined what it means to be an exceptional student. They are producing top students who have given very little thought to matters beyond their impressive grasp of an intense area of study.
...
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104554.html)

To bring out the subtext: "Damn those liberals and what they have done to our formerly fine universities!!1!! I'm series!1"

Her higher degrees are apparently in international relations - see http://web.archive.org/web/20080109225150/wilson.house.gov/About.aspx .

[immoderate]

7. Nevertheless, she is espousing classical liberal educational philosophy.

She is describing what a liberal arts student should be doing -- asking the important questions. She has her bias, but I think she is making a legitimate point.

Unlike many graduate fellowships, the Rhodes seeks leaders who will "fight the world's fight." They must be more than mere bookworms. We are looking for students who wonder, students who are reading widely, students of passion who are driven to make a difference in the lives of those around them and in the broader world through enlightened and effective leadership. The undergraduate education they are receiving seems less and less suited to that purpose.

This is the essence of liberal education, isn't it?

--imm

[elleng]

10. ...

:thumbsup:

[elleng]

9. 'For most of the past 20 years

I have served on selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship...'

[snot]

6. "A modern economic system demands . . .

. . . mass production of students who are not educated and have been rendered incapable of thinking."
– U.N.E.F. Strasbourg, On the Poverty of Student Life (1966).

The following also gives some insight into what's been happening (note, it's from 2009, and things have gotten much worse since then): http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/the-u-c-strike/

Excerpt: "What we are witnessing with the current economic crisis and the collapse of state budgets is the culmination of the neoliberal program, i.e. the end of the welfare state that was instituted in the 1930s and strengthened again in the 1960s, and consequently, the beginning of the full-scale precarization of the former middle classes in the US and in Northwestern Europe, as it has already occured in countless countries of Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, after their subjection to bankers’ techniques for the extraction of value from public institutions and infrastructures. To destroy any democratic critique of this process — and to open up another lucrative private market in the same blow — it is necessary for capitalist logic to destroy the public university. . . . "