Category Archives: Education

Business, Economics, Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Alexandria O-C

11 Comments

The unserious face of an unserious moment:

Speaking to a friendly Trevor Noah, Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she does not know the difference between a one-year and a ten-year budget; confused the recent increase in defense spending with the entire annual cost of the military; implied that the population of the United States was around 800 million strong; and, having been asked to defend her coveted $15 minimum wage, launched into a rambling and inscrutable diatribe about “private equity” firms that would have been a touch too harsh as a parody on South Park. If anything, she was worse this time than she had been during her appearance on Firing Line a few days earlier, on which newly revamped show she demonstrated her obliviousness to the fact that the United States economy exploded during the 1990s, to the manner in which unemployment numbers are calculated, and to even the most obvious facets of the Israel–Palestine question about which she has assured her supporters she is so passionate.

“It’s really weird!”

It is, yes. Especially given that, before her two interviews aired, Ocasio-Cortez had taken to exhibiting that jealous penchant for credentialism that so stains the world’s wannabe socialists, and to boasting about her intellectual prowess. At the beginning of July, she tweeted with self-satisfaction — and a noticeably premature use of the word “other” — that she was “Wondering how many other House Democrats have a degree in Economics like I do?” Two days later, she upgraded that claim: “If you think the GOP is terrified of my politics now,” she threatened on Twitter, “just wait until they find out about public libraries.” Just wait, indeed! From a BA from BU to the embodiment of all human knowledge in just 48 hours! At this rate it can’t be long before she gives it all up and becomes an honorary Krassenstein Brother: “We are the way, the truth, and the light. Retweet if you love Love and hate Trump!”

And as Stephen Green notes: “Graduated fourth in her class at Boston University, which costs $72,618 annually to attend.”

She’s a poster child for the high-cost worthlessness of a modern college degree.

[Update a while later]

Are people really this stupid? Well, they’re certainly mal-educated.

[Update a few minutes later]

Millennial socialism: Stupid, evil, or both?

[Update a while later]

The media rushes to protect Alexandria O-C from her own cluelessness.

Business, Economics, Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Higher Education

4 Comments

…is in decline. It has been for many years, but only now are more people finally noticing:

The president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has summed up the consensus among faculty: “The sad truth is that US higher education is in decline.” A poll in 2012 showed that 89 percent of American adults and 96 percent of senior academic administrators agree that American higher education is “in crisis.” When a recent dean of Harvard College writes a book subtitled How a Great University Forgot Education and laments “the loss of purpose in America’s great colleges”—meaning Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the other elite universities that follow their lead—the presumption must be that something has gone very wrong. These are the opinions of academics, most of whom are by no means conservative.

Some authorities still insist that colleges, even if they teach no specific knowledge, at least improve “critical thinking.” But this contention is not borne out by a test designed to measure such thinking, the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). Since the 1980s the improvement in students’ CLA scores during their four years of college has dropped by about 50 percent, and such improvement now averages just 7 percent over the first three semesters.

Along with government-recommended nutrition, this is one of the biggest public-policy disasters of our time. And it doesn’t even mention the degree to which the student-loan debt for these worthless degrees blights the lives of young people, while lining the pockets of banks and colleges at no risk to them.

[Update late morning]

I think it says something about the state of higher education, and particularly BU, that economics major Alexandria O-C is so fundamentally ignorant about not just the federal budget, but basic arithmetic.

Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

The Democrats’ (Un)Civil War

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It’s the left against the far left. Of course, I always find this sort of thing amusing/infuriating:

A group of moderate Democratic lawmakers sounded the alarm Thursday over the party’s shift to the left, saying the embrace of ultra-liberal policies could endanger their efforts to capture Congress in the November midterm elections and the White House in 2020.

There is nothing “liberal” about them at all, let alone “ultra-liberal.”

[Update a few minutes later]

This seems related somehow: Hillary says that Brett Kavanaugh will bring back slavery. Gee, that’s not hyperbolic and demagogic at all.