5 ms·

It’s more aggressive than that. It’s an intentional dismantling of higher education overall.

gjsman-1000 1y ago
Higher education pissed off half of customers in their quest for moral purity, at the same time as birth rate decline post-2008 began hitting, while raising prices +93% on average since 2008. That's not a great way to survive.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  > That's not a great way to survive. Wait until you see how well setting it all on fire works.
  - gjsman-1000 1y ago
    At this point, we might be just fine. The academics won't be, but they were the ones telling everyone to wait on having kids in the first place. Demographic trickle down, biting the hand that feeds academia, is a big part of this story. At my college, birth control was as free as water. Teaching people to postpone marriage, children, for the sake of career, combined with record-high school debt... might be partly why academia finds themselves in this demographic decline. They told the next generation not to have kids, made it financially impossible to have kids, and lo and behold, there's less kids entering college now.
    - smallmancontrov 1y ago
      Academia didn't make it financially impossible to have kids. Just what control do you think academia has over the market? Over the government? "Raise house prices now or I'll send you to the principal's office!" The gays didn't send house prices to the moon. Mexicans didn't send the jobs to China. No, it's the people with assets who pursued asset-pumping policy to great effect. You're right to be angry, but you're a fool to believe them when they point at universities as the source of the problem.
    - rightbyte 1y ago
      You seem to argue that academia of all places made having children being a chore. Not like, dunno, job security, housing and child care costs? Whatever beef you got is what 'media' fed you selected smug academics to piss you off.
    - bonsai_spool 1y ago
      > At this point, we might be just fine. The academics won't be, but they were the ones telling everyone to wait on having kids in the first place. Demographic trickle down, biting the hand that feeds academia, is a big part of this story. > At my college, birth control was as free as water. Teaching people to postpone marriage, children, for the sake of career, combined with record-high school debt... might be partly why academia finds themselves in this demographic decline. They told the next generation not to have kids, made it financially impossible to have kids, and lo and behold, there's less kids entering college now. Hard to tell if this is just parody. I will say that if feel that providing something equates to mandating it... I don't know how we're going to be able to have logical exchanges
    - someothherguyy 1y ago
      I feel bad for the toxic world building you are committing yourself to. You should try not monolithizing groups of people.
- bonsai_spool 1y ago
  > pissed off half of customers in their quest for moral purity I'm not sure what 'half' means here. It's neither true that men make up half of applicants (which are really what we should be focusing on), nor that so-called 'conservatives' make up half of this population.
  - gjsman-1000 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - bonsai_spool 1y ago
      > There it is; the quest for moral purity continues. I am neither a university nor 'academia'. I am, however, still unclear about what your point is.
    - hluska 1y ago
      It’s funny that instead of making points or adding data, you just repeat the same slogan and act like a victim. Many of us have tried to listen for a long time but we have never found any intellectual meat on the slogans. It’s boring.
      - kelipso 1y ago
        What’s there to discuss any more? There is data that some ridiculous percentage of academics are on the left, and drastically so for liberal arts departments. “Everyone knows” that they filter against conservatives (maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven). Liberals deny this, so what’s the point of discussing it. Let the dismantling continue until corrections happen I guess.
        yongjik 1y ago
        Members of an ideological group that sees educational institutions as their enemies less likely to find jobs in educational institutions, news at eleven.
- smallmancontrov 1y ago
  Academia didn't choose trickle-down policy. Quite the opposite -- that was you guys, after you purged all the leftist economists in the McCarthy era. In fact, the think-tank driven economics departments of recent years are so notoriously to the right of most academic faculty that this is a point of frequent conflict.
  - the_sleaze_ 1y ago
    This wasn't a response to any of his arguments. I am interested in what people have to say about them though. 1. DEI and identity politics prioritization 2. cost
    - catlover76 1y ago
      [dead]
  - corimaith 1y ago
    This is just partisan conspirational nonsense. Modern Economics took the useful things from Marx and left the rest in the dustbin of history like it should. Nor do Economists advocate for "trickle-down" theory, the answer has more to do with where one is on the laffer curve. Economists clash frequently with other fields like social sciences because such fields continue to use unfalsifiable and highly flawed epistemic tools like dialectics to advocate for debunked theories like World Systems Theory.
    - array_key_first 1y ago
      Economic theory in western nations is so hilariously skewed towards free market capitalist think that obvious models are just straight up missed, or sometimes obviously wrong conclusions are drawn. Most economics start with the understanding that the answer or cause is something about free market forces, and then work backwards. For example, when talking about the economics of healthcare (or anything else, but lets start with healthcare), the conversation is approached from the get-go under the assumption that: 1. Healthcare is already a free market. 2. It is possible for healthcare to be a free market. 1. is just not true. Healthcare, in the US and and all developed nations, is not a free market. But, economists will just assume it is, because they assume everything is a free market, and then apply free market dynamics. Basically, they skip step 1, and go to step 1000. And, for number 2, it's very debatable. IMO no, healthcare cannot be a free market, just by virtue of what healthcare is as a service. But that's debatable, I won't get into it. Point is, we immediately start our economic understanding based off assumptions on top of assumptions that come from free market thinking, thinking around IP, thinking about consumer knowledge, thinking about access, etc. We make absolutely wild and unsubstantiated claims for free, and nobody checks them.
- Arainach 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - jmugan 1y ago
    Which side are you talking about?
- yongjik 1y ago
  America's greatest conservative government pressured a private business to fire a comedian for a remark on the death of someone who was basically a celebrity troll. ...and they turn around and complain about liberals' "moral purity."
  - reactordev 1y ago
    To them, he was a master of manipulation, exactly what they’re looking for. Someone who can spout racism and bigotry and drive listenership based on what crazy thing he’ll say next. Where does this sound familiar? It’s playbook man. That’s their business. I don’t condone any of what happened but he’s not someone we should be building statues of.
- typicalhnbs 1y ago
  [dead]
FrustratedMonky 1y ago
Yeah, where do people think Technology Growth comes from. GOP is all Growth, Growth, Growth, will save us, but hey lets poison the well from which it flows. All AI growth today, is actually from Academia from 20 years ago.
- nradov 1y ago
  Growth comes from many sources. The supply-side economics wing of the GOP would claim that lower taxes and smaller, less intrusive government will allow for a higher private sector growth rate. There may be some truth to that, although the effects are probably limited compared to the development of disruptive new technologies.
  - idiotsecant 1y ago
    They would claim that, and they would be wrong. As has been repeatedly and exhaustively demonstrated.
    - teddy-smith 1y ago
      Amen, trickle down economics is the worst meme ever created.
      - rolandog 1y ago
        Just yesterday I was talking with some friends about the disaster that neoliberalism has been. I see billionaires as "water-balloon" (wealth) hoarders, and I see taxes on the rich as thorns on bushes. If the politicians ever wanted to make "trickle down" work, then we need thornier bushes and to make it impossible for rich people to not go through thorny bushes. But the whole deregulation craze has made it so that the billionaires don't even need people to help them protect their "water-balloons"...

Higher education pissed off half of customers in their quest for moral purity, at the same time as birth rate decline post-2008 began hitting, while raising prices +93% on average since 2008. That's not a great way to survive.

ceejayoz 1y ago
> That's not a great way to survive. Wait until you see how well setting it all on fire works.
- gjsman-1000 1y ago
  At this point, we might be just fine. The academics won't be, but they were the ones telling everyone to wait on having kids in the first place. Demographic trickle down, biting the hand that feeds academia, is a big part of this story. At my college, birth control was as free as water. Teaching people to postpone marriage, children, for the sake of career, combined with record-high school debt... might be partly why academia finds themselves in this demographic decline. They told the next generation not to have kids, made it financially impossible to have kids, and lo and behold, there's less kids entering college now.
  - smallmancontrov 1y ago
    Academia didn't make it financially impossible to have kids. Just what control do you think academia has over the market? Over the government? "Raise house prices now or I'll send you to the principal's office!" The gays didn't send house prices to the moon. Mexicans didn't send the jobs to China. No, it's the people with assets who pursued asset-pumping policy to great effect. You're right to be angry, but you're a fool to believe them when they point at universities as the source of the problem.
  - rightbyte 1y ago
    You seem to argue that academia of all places made having children being a chore. Not like, dunno, job security, housing and child care costs? Whatever beef you got is what 'media' fed you selected smug academics to piss you off.
  - bonsai_spool 1y ago
    > At this point, we might be just fine. The academics won't be, but they were the ones telling everyone to wait on having kids in the first place. Demographic trickle down, biting the hand that feeds academia, is a big part of this story. > At my college, birth control was as free as water. Teaching people to postpone marriage, children, for the sake of career, combined with record-high school debt... might be partly why academia finds themselves in this demographic decline. They told the next generation not to have kids, made it financially impossible to have kids, and lo and behold, there's less kids entering college now. Hard to tell if this is just parody. I will say that if feel that providing something equates to mandating it... I don't know how we're going to be able to have logical exchanges
  - someothherguyy 1y ago
    I feel bad for the toxic world building you are committing yourself to. You should try not monolithizing groups of people.
bonsai_spool 1y ago
> pissed off half of customers in their quest for moral purity I'm not sure what 'half' means here. It's neither true that men make up half of applicants (which are really what we should be focusing on), nor that so-called 'conservatives' make up half of this population.
- gjsman-1000 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bonsai_spool 1y ago
    > There it is; the quest for moral purity continues. I am neither a university nor 'academia'. I am, however, still unclear about what your point is.
  - hluska 1y ago
    It’s funny that instead of making points or adding data, you just repeat the same slogan and act like a victim. Many of us have tried to listen for a long time but we have never found any intellectual meat on the slogans. It’s boring.
    - kelipso 1y ago
      What’s there to discuss any more? There is data that some ridiculous percentage of academics are on the left, and drastically so for liberal arts departments. “Everyone knows” that they filter against conservatives (maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven). Liberals deny this, so what’s the point of discussing it. Let the dismantling continue until corrections happen I guess.
      - yongjik 1y ago
        Members of an ideological group that sees educational institutions as their enemies less likely to find jobs in educational institutions, news at eleven.
smallmancontrov 1y ago
Academia didn't choose trickle-down policy. Quite the opposite -- that was you guys, after you purged all the leftist economists in the McCarthy era. In fact, the think-tank driven economics departments of recent years are so notoriously to the right of most academic faculty that this is a point of frequent conflict.
- the_sleaze_ 1y ago
  This wasn't a response to any of his arguments. I am interested in what people have to say about them though. 1. DEI and identity politics prioritization 2. cost
  - catlover76 1y ago
    [dead]
- corimaith 1y ago
  This is just partisan conspirational nonsense. Modern Economics took the useful things from Marx and left the rest in the dustbin of history like it should. Nor do Economists advocate for "trickle-down" theory, the answer has more to do with where one is on the laffer curve. Economists clash frequently with other fields like social sciences because such fields continue to use unfalsifiable and highly flawed epistemic tools like dialectics to advocate for debunked theories like World Systems Theory.
  - array_key_first 1y ago
    Economic theory in western nations is so hilariously skewed towards free market capitalist think that obvious models are just straight up missed, or sometimes obviously wrong conclusions are drawn. Most economics start with the understanding that the answer or cause is something about free market forces, and then work backwards. For example, when talking about the economics of healthcare (or anything else, but lets start with healthcare), the conversation is approached from the get-go under the assumption that: 1. Healthcare is already a free market. 2. It is possible for healthcare to be a free market. 1. is just not true. Healthcare, in the US and and all developed nations, is not a free market. But, economists will just assume it is, because they assume everything is a free market, and then apply free market dynamics. Basically, they skip step 1, and go to step 1000. And, for number 2, it's very debatable. IMO no, healthcare cannot be a free market, just by virtue of what healthcare is as a service. But that's debatable, I won't get into it. Point is, we immediately start our economic understanding based off assumptions on top of assumptions that come from free market thinking, thinking around IP, thinking about consumer knowledge, thinking about access, etc. We make absolutely wild and unsubstantiated claims for free, and nobody checks them.
Arainach 1y ago
[flagged]
- jmugan 1y ago
  Which side are you talking about?
yongjik 1y ago
America's greatest conservative government pressured a private business to fire a comedian for a remark on the death of someone who was basically a celebrity troll. ...and they turn around and complain about liberals' "moral purity."
- reactordev 1y ago
  To them, he was a master of manipulation, exactly what they’re looking for. Someone who can spout racism and bigotry and drive listenership based on what crazy thing he’ll say next. Where does this sound familiar? It’s playbook man. That’s their business. I don’t condone any of what happened but he’s not someone we should be building statues of.
typicalhnbs 1y ago
[dead]

FrustratedMonky 1y ago

Yeah, where do people think Technology Growth comes from. GOP is all Growth, Growth, Growth, will save us, but hey lets poison the well from which it flows. All AI growth today, is actually from Academia from 20 years ago.

nradov 1y ago
Growth comes from many sources. The supply-side economics wing of the GOP would claim that lower taxes and smaller, less intrusive government will allow for a higher private sector growth rate. There may be some truth to that, although the effects are probably limited compared to the development of disruptive new technologies.
- idiotsecant 1y ago
  They would claim that, and they would be wrong. As has been repeatedly and exhaustively demonstrated.
  - teddy-smith 1y ago
    Amen, trickle down economics is the worst meme ever created.
    - rolandog 1y ago
      Just yesterday I was talking with some friends about the disaster that neoliberalism has been. I see billionaires as "water-balloon" (wealth) hoarders, and I see taxes on the rich as thorns on bushes. If the politicians ever wanted to make "trickle down" work, then we need thornier bushes and to make it impossible for rich people to not go through thorny bushes. But the whole deregulation craze has made it so that the billionaires don't even need people to help them protect their "water-balloons"...