Why it will be worse than the housing bubble:
Once again government has created the conditions for wholesale failure, and failure is upon us.
From 1976 to 2010, the prices of all commodities rose 280 percent. The price of homes rose 400 percent. Private education? A whopping 1,000 percent.
In the end, this bubble will be worse than the last. Even when homeowners got hopelessly behind on their mortgages, two options helped. First, they could declare bankruptcy and free themselves of their crippling debt; second, they could sell their houses to pay down most of their loans.
Students don’t have either of these options. It’s illegal to absolve student loan debt through bankruptcy, and you can’t sell back an education.
I hope that it has a disproportionate effect on the academic left. In a sane world, the first thing to go would be diversity programs, with “studies” departments hard on their heels.
Unfortunately, your hope won’t come true. The administrators will protect their own turf above all else. It’s not even so much that the diversity programs are valued, it’s that the people employed in them are part of the administration and bureaucratic empire building. They’ll get rid of anyone and anything before they cut any of their own belly fat. Some “studies” programs will be under threat. I wouldn’t want to be in an Asian-American Studies department, for example. As for other “studies” (you can guess which) they’ll cut mainstream and important courses before any of those will be touched.
At its heart is the fact that university administrations don’t actually understand or care about quality education. To them professors are just a sort of annoying little extra. They’re a part of the payroll that doesn’t conform properly to their bureaucratic standards and measures. They’d love (more than anything else) to get rid of lots of them and replace them with lots of malleable part-timers who can be kept properly under the thumb. There are problems with academia, but putting a financial squeeze on the university administrations isn’t going to improve this situation.
A message from your friendly under-cover politically diverse tenured faculty member!
tl; dr: Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy
“Studies” departments include these:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Department+of+Space+Studies
You know what we’re talking about.
Finally! I’ve been waiting for you to admit that!
Cornell has a “Department of Asian Studies”.
Harvard has a “Department of East Asian History”.
Are you equally against both departments, or does Cornell’s department do something wrong by focusing on the here-and-now as well as on the past?
Stop pretending you don’t know what we’re talking about.
Well, now I see I really don’t know what you’re talking about after all. If the “Department of Asian Studies” isn’t an example of what you’re talking about when you refer to “studies” departments, what are you talking about?
We’re talking about anti-Western grievance studies that prepare one for nothing except instilling the same nonsense in others.
anti-Western grievance studies
Ah. That’s a nicely constructed phrase. People should use it more.
I honestly hadn’t been thinking about grievances – I was thinking about how students can learn basic knowledge to make them well-rounded well-informed citizens. To that end, it isn’t really necessary (or evan a good idea) for students to major in any of these studies, but it might be a good idea for them to take a class or two. A university should be able to host a department which offers a classes on a subject which no one majors in.
For example, a class in Asian American Studies might be the way an undergraduate learns about this case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark
Bob-1, presumably students would learn about Supreme Court cases in detail in a class in Law. A well rounded student would be taking classes in Mathematics, English, a second language, at least one of the physical sciences, macroeconomics, ancient History (possibly archaeology), and courses on the history of Western civilization. In a university that was serious about education, those who could not parse a sentence or do basic math in their heads would never be considered for admission. A university that valued the credibility of the degrees they bestow would never accredit any of the “studies” programs – no, not even Space Studies.
Finally, you really need to give your head a shake, as there are too many cobwebs cluttering up the space between the ears.
Lest you think I’m BSing you, here’s an example the term “‘studies’ departments used in the wild:
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Studies-Departments-Suffer-a-Loss
“[…] one of the “studies” departments—e.g. African American Studies, Chicano Studies, Asian American Studies, Labor and Workplace Studies, American Indian Studies, etc.”
I imagine you believe that “Asian American Studies” is very different from “Asian studies”. I think can think of arguments in favor of that position, and they all have to do with the employment prospects for people who want to get hired by non-Asian businesses which do business in Asia.
Am I still missing something?
Yes. A clue.
The map is not the terrain. The name is not the subject.
Any curricula whose main goal is to assemble a one-sided historical avalanche of data with the intent of highlighting how “Group A” is a perennial victim class is a degree that: (a) only produces crickets, (b) incites anger and misplaced moral superiority, (c) is only useful for cricket jobs, and (d) still causes as much debt as a mechanical engineering degree.
On the other hand, a degree in a foreign culture has at least the possibility of being an “ant” degree. It is useful information to have before starting (or joining) a business interacting with that culture. Even this sort of degree is risky degree unless you have an ‘angle’, IMNSHO.
Both qualify as “a degree” if you are just aiming for a job that requires “a degree”. But, as History and English majors of former generations have recognized, there just aren’t that many jobs that are -specifically- in the field you studied. There are only so many History Professors or English Professors. Or Women’s Studies Professors, or Native American Studies professors. And, for some reason, the job ‘Women’s Studies Professors’ is selected on a sexist basis. And ‘Native American Studies’ is selected on a racist basis. So make sure you lie on the application.
Yep
Yes, you might be missing something. A non-Asian businesses wanting to do business in Asia will hire Asians in Asia, or form a joint venture with Koreans or Japanese, or work with a former Chinese general. To sell in Asia you want to work with Asians who are high-up in the supply chain, either through dedicated work, hard-nosed accumen, mafia ties, communist party ties (depending on the country), or sheer business genius.
Depending on the program’s focus, Asian studies graduates would perhaps be good if the business model was making an Asian soap opera aimed at the Asian market, where understanding “Asians” would let them write better cheating-housewife characters with broader appeal.
Put simply, what would an Asian studies graduate know that 2 billion Asians don’t, and what could justify the salary of one compared to hiring an Indian engineer for $3,000 a year, where you get his intimate knowledge of Asia as a free bonus?