When Draft Doggers Become Tenured.
When I went to college I had a number of friends who were committed to staying in college as long as they could to maintain their educational deferment. I am pretty sure my little college was not unique in its role as a shelter for those who felt the war in Southeast Asia was wrong, or who wished to avoid the draft and not have to flee to Canada. I suspect there were a significant number of people who found in this path a career option in education, where their belief that capitalism and US Imperialism could be supported, and young minds correctly educated to address the problems they saw with our views of exceptionalism.
When you look at how much the university system has expanded from the 1950’s and look at the cost increases associated with that growth it takes little effort to understand how lucrative the college industry really is. The government has pushed college as the way to a comfortable life -- probably in response to all the lobbying, the college industry has done to convince everyone they will make great students.
Today, Harvard University with its 22,000 students has an endowment of over $37 billion[i] which provides roughly 35% of its operating budget. Public release of salaries like Elizabeth Warren's suggests it is more than willing to pay roughly $500,000 a year for professors teaching a single course.
With that type of funding, there is an inevitable isolation that removes the professional staff from the economic realities faced by the average middle-class American. This is, I believe, also a sense of entitlement that encourages those same isolated individuals to believe they know better than others what is right, and what is wrong.
Over the past forty years the elders who had actually seen the evil of Communism, Fascism, and Japanese aggression first hand slowly aged into retirement. The college communities began to look at themselves as the bastions for progressive thought, but only if those thoughts originated from like-minded organizations. We see in today’s universities the products of group-think and closed political dogma where under the banner or diversity the only agendas allowed are in support of groups they view as oppressed.
Into this thought-limiting mill we send the impressionable high school graduates fresh from the four years of indoctrination by those who would convince them to follow in their path and go to college to “expand their mind.” From these same institutions, we receive back the young teachers who believe it is their mission to educate our young with the right way of thinking. To aid them in this mission we have introduced the latest technology.
(to be continued)
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