Bob Zimmerman says that the former “hovers over [the latter] like a vulture.”
While there are no doubt many in Congress with that attitude, I was actually encouraged by Chairman Palazzo’s remarks this morning at the Space Transportation Conference, in which he expressed support for an extension of the “moratorium” because it will “stifle innovation” to overregulate at this point. (Note: At the hearing yesterday, he used the phrase “learning period,” as industry does. It’s possible he used the “m” word because he was reading from notes put together by staffer that hadn’t gotten the memo.)
Mark the day that Glenn Reynolds agrees with the president. I don’t think he goes far enough here, though:
Right now, too many people go to college by default, even if they don’t usually major in art history. College is a status symbol that many regard as essential to membership in the middle class, but now it’s a status symbol that requires a six-figure investment, often supported by student loans.
There’s nothing wrong with going to college, and there’s nothing wrong with liberal-arts majors, so long as they’re rigorous: The world does not enjoy a surplus of people who can think critically and write clearly, and America is certainly not overloaded with experts in foreign languages. The real problem is with non-rigorous majors, which are common. Those cost just as much, but leave their graduates no better off than when they entered, and often in debt to boot.
If they were only no better off, it wouldn’t be as bad, but many of them come out of the experience notably less educated and malinformed, in the sense that they have been indoctrinated into the nonsense that the faculty provides.
The phrase Tikkun olam – to repair the world — is often used in the Jewish tradition, sometimes by people Barry did not think the best of, and for good reason. But Barry himself embodied that tradition more than anyone I can think of. He indeed was a “repairer of the world,” the conscience of the White City. To say that he will be missed is a cliché not worthy of him.