Using States to Transform Higher Learning

In the wake of what might appear to be a disastrous presidential election, it must be remembered that Republicans now control half of the fifty state governments outright. So while Republicans can do nothing at the federal level except obstruct radical leftist plans, Republicans at the state level can do a great deal to transform America. There are lots of areas in which this political muscle could be used to defeat leftism.

Why not start with the macabre obscenity of taxpayer-supported higher education? We do not need public universities -- or, for that matter, any universities -- to produce genius. Some of the brightest minds in our nation's history never attended college at all (indeed, many never attended school at all, like the great polymath Benjamin Franklin). Ray Bradbury, for example, the mind behind some of modern America's most hauntingly beautiful literature, went to the children's section of the public library and read every single book. That was his equivalent of a college degree.

The real purposes of college are grimy and mean: to subsidize with tax dollars a well-heeled army of pompous, lazy oafs, to create the illusion of learning for hapless young minds who seek the credentialing of wisdom and knowledge, and -- most crucially -- to trick American taxpayers into funding the indoctrination of millions of brainwashed cadres who provide indispensable shock troops for the toxin of leftism.

Why in the world do state governments not reform academia by making self-guided, cheap, validated, and politically neutral education the goal? As a start, except for specialized courses of study in a few areas, there is no longer any need for colleges at all.

Believe it or not, there are many professors who are hardworking, who grade exam essays for over one hundred students several times a semester, who spend hours preparing for class, and who do succeed in teaching them what we need to.
However, the state of K-12 education is a major problem. The skills of most public university students are sadly lacking in math, writing, and reading.
We need to overhaul our education system at all levels, but it will be almost impossible with unions in control.

Your statements are concise and accurate! I would add that it isn’t unions alone that are a potential barrier to improvements but also, at the college level, publishing cultures that are left-biased in orientation and that require citation and recognition of prior works plus deference to the powerful leftist professors if a new professor is to get and keep a job. The same problem explains the leftist domination of the journalism profession.

Its true that “kids” are learning (or not) in college what they should have learned years earlier. This is not only a waste of time for the college level teaching staff, but it makes college less worthwhile for those students who really are prepared and interested and ready to do some serious learning.

Here in Florida, our governor is proposing the $10,000 degree (a 4 yr BA or BS). This would be done almost entirely on-line, although there would be some attendance required in certain classes and the possibility of activities on the existing state campus network. The degree could also be obtained in under 4 years, of course. It’s not as radical as Walker’s suggestion, but it’s a step in the right direction and is being opposed by the usual suspects.

Having gotten one external degree, I can testify to the fact that it’s very demanding. In addition, I had more and better interaction with the professors than I did when I attended actual college classes.

Online education has great potential but needs to be carefully studied. It is as easy, if not easier, to have gut courses online as in the classroom. I have taught some online courses and come to the conclusion than an online, summer course of 5 weeks just cannot to justice to the material I teach, especially if students work full time as well.
But online education can be an option, especially for motivated kids and adults of all ages.
We really need to have open minds in all areas of education to study all these new ideas, to brainstorm more and really begin solving our educational weaknesses.
There is a cynical part of me that believes that the Democrats don’t really want to teach even K-12 students to think for themselves; it behooves them to have ignorant students who believe their indoctrination and continue to vote for Democrats. They may preach critical thinking, but it is never Democratic tracts that are used for criticizing.
I do what I can by posting all kinds of FR articles on my Facebook page to nudge my liberal friends into more open-minded thinking. I’m afraid now they just look, see that it’s their crazy Republican friend posting these articles, and then they ignore my posts....:(

There is an often repeated Meme that since Bill Gates & Steve Jobs never finished college, what is the point. Well - are you aware the Steve Wozniak, who had already invented the Apple 1 & 2 went BACK to school.(Yeah - it was Berkeley but he DID go back!)

I happen to have the same degree from another State Uni here in California. Note that I graduated from there before 1980 - so comparing that experience to today isn’t relevant, other than the fact that I have an engineering degree.

The requirements for that degree haven’t changed a whole lot though in 30+ years. I can say for a fact that I am NOT as gifted as Woz, i.e. I learned what I know in school and from experience. I needed the foundation I received in college as a platform for the experience I received later. It would work without both.

I’ve also got a kid going to a state school - but not in California! He is pursuing a degree that he should be able to make a career out of. He is going to school to polish what he already knows. He is a lot closer to Woz in that before he ever went to school he had a good working knowledge of the field. I’m also not worried about him because he has common sense behind him.

He shared some of his experiences with me concerning the few “on-line” courses he has taken at the university. Basically - they sucked. From what I’ve heard so far, this isn’t something that we’ve figured out yet. So dumping something that has been working for one thousand years, i.e. Universities without careful testing and thought seems short sighted.

College degrees DO have a place - and it isn’t just a few select degrees that don’t have problems! Now maybe a Liberal Arts school versus a Polytechnic approach is a good discussion to have?

I have a BA from a liberal arts college and then two masters degrees in my areas of interest.
But I have my eldest son is currently studying aerospace engineering and another is interested in music. My daughter wants to be a nurse. So I am now favoring professional schools or programs to train for jobs; but I also think that a strong liberal arts aspect to the degree is important. That is true of our state college: we have a few strong professional programs, but over 1/3 of the courses are liberal arts, and I do think that those courses are the ones that have the most potential for teaching critical thinking and writing.
I am always yelling at my students for their poor writing skills; they will have to write well for their future jobs, for then they will be writing proposals, etc., and thus earn the promotions they seek. A few listen to me and care.

The state uni that I went to had similar requirements. They were called “Breadth” requirements at the time, i.e. for the same reasons you state. I ran into a Liberal prof while taking Government I think. There was no way I was getting anything above a “C” with him. He is the example of what the majority of the system has become since then. I wound up sending my kid to a school in the mid-west which I’m real happy about.

The President of the school is a Conservative Democrat who has held several political offices. I don’t agree with all of his views, but most make sense. He does a good job of running the place and has kept the quality up while having his budget cut from the State. The cost is moderate for a state school. My kid has a scholarship that essentially gives him room & board + in-state tuition. So my main goal is to get him through 4 years without owing money to any one. Seems like we’ll succeed at this point with him in his Sophomore year.

He’ll graduate with a BA degree - but in a practical field that he can make a living. He’s getting a lot of hands-on training that is helping him shape his choices for career. I have nothing to complain about.

When I see articles like this - it comes up to throwing the baby out with the bath water. There are some people who should be plumbers and there are other people who should be MDs. We don’t all have equal gifts or interests. College isn’t for everyone. It never was intended to serve a general populace. THAT is the problem with attitudes towards college right now. If my kid didn’t want to go to college I wouldn’t have wasted the money!

Republican legislatures could build a more solid future for the country by mandating K-12 instruction in the U.S. Constitution. By the time they reach college, most of these kids are already lost.

I try to talk about the Constitution to some of my younger relatives (seems they’re all younger, these days) and I get blank looks in response. Getting a kid to put down her iPod long enough to have the Fourth Amendment explained is close to impossible. There is a lot to learn about the Constitution and it is best served over a period of years in a classroom.

Public schools should be REQUIRED to teach kids about the Constitution. Teachers’ unions be damned. Make it mandatory, at the state level.

Online identity is an issue for those courses. They are talking about picture IDs or fingerprinting, and these are not distant possibilities in our day and age of computers. Sometimes they require a monitored exam and ID at a location close to you.
I have online quizzes in all my classes, whether face to face or online. I figure the quizzes are open book/notes and are a means to examine the material again, not a test of memorization.
I hope that in the essay exams and in class (or in online discussion boards) I can hear the student’s voice developing. It is not hard to catch plagiarism nowadays.
But there is always a way to get around whatever rules and mechanisms are set up, even in online teaching. So this is not an issue to scoff at.

I’d think it important and quite doable to require some local, on-site testing for courses in the hard sciences, especially. I’d think that’d also go a long way toward establishing credibility for the courses and credits.

The community college model is, of course, more cost effective than the standard, overgrown colleges and universities. But there’s no reason why the taxpayers should need to shell out more than Rick Scott’s $10K degree for students who supposedly couldn’t afford it otherwise; and, really, any student ought to be able to swing a couple grand a year toward his/her education.

Yes, a lot of the current, bloated, higher ed apparatus would collapse without government funding; but if that’s the case IMO it really should collapse anyway. Those great campus facilities we’ve been paying for through taxpayer subsidies could well be repurposed or multi-purposed for elderly housing and the like.

I think we need a different way to assess teachers. I’ve talked with one of my sons about this; he is not a scholar and finds school boring (and he is in private school). We need more competent teachers, and I think that classroom visits (vs. standardized testing) is one direction that could be explored. We all know who is a good and who is a bad teacher. Visitors from the outside could offer suggestions for improvement as well as evaluations.

Re bloated administrations...Much of the money goes not only for fancy buildings (to be competitive with other colleges) and also to sports, whereas much could be used for instruction or to reduce (!) tuition.

In Europe, buildings are not old until they are 500 years old, and then they are valued for their historical style. We have to stop building new campuses after only 40 years or so; we need to learn how to build to last and then to refurbish and reuse our architecture, and not only in schools but across the commercial spectrum.

Yes, I agree on building to last—for all purposes!

I think even more basic than more competent teachers, at the grade school level, is to go back to the fundamental curricula that work. Pretty much anything developed by education grad schools should be chucked, and both phonics-based reading and traditional math teaching restored immediately.

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