3 ms·

College sports undeniably have their benefits, creating university pride and an identity that no philosophy or classics program will ever match. Right there is

by Vivtek 13y ago

College sports undeniably have their benefits, creating university pride and an identity that no philosophy or classics program will ever match. Right there is the failure of the American experiment.

jseliger 13y ago
Colleges have always changed shape and form, and today they've grown into what Clark Kerr calls the "Multiversity" in The Uses of the University (http://www.amazon.com/The-Uses-University-Essentials-Government/dp/0674005325 http://www.amazon.com/The-Uses-University-Essentials-Governm...), which is worth reading if you're interested in such issues. Beyond that, philosophy and classics are interesting citations because the healthy, important parts of philosophy have mostly been shucked into science (http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html, or William James's Pragmatism) and classics are interesting but the corpus is static; it is not easy to come up with new and interesting things to say about The Iliad In 1946, I'm sure someone was writing about the decline of theology and Latin and lamenting the failure of the American experiment. (Despite what I wrote above I am still against the giving of scholarships for sports and think that the pro sports run by big-deal programs should be treated as professions, which they are by any reasonable standard of the word).
- Vivtek 13y ago
  It's not the reference to philosophy and the classics I meant - it's actually the decline of academics in general in favor of Reality College, and it's not new. I regard the specific mention of philosophy and the classics as a sort of fusty stand-in for all the other academics. Add to that the "running the university like a business" - which generally means jacking up CEO pay into the stratosphere while cranking the productivity screws on adjuncts and raising prices for the customers (which in an earlier world were "students") - and you have the recipe for the ruination of the university, just as you have the recipe for the ruination of everything else American corporatism touches. These programs are sold as advertising - which is insane. Seriously. If you want to compete for students, then make sure your students have fulfilling and/or lucrative careers (whichever your students are optimizing for) - don't sell them on which college is fun. You do that, you're not going to get quality students - and that means low-quality end product, a failing reputation in the job market, and you'll end up having to pay even more for a president who says he can fix it all. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

by Vivtek 13y ago

College sports undeniably have their benefits, creating university pride and an identity that no philosophy or classics program will ever match. Right there is the failure of the American experiment.

jseliger 13y ago

Colleges have always changed shape and form, and today they've grown into what Clark Kerr calls the "Multiversity" in The Uses of the University (http://www.amazon.com/The-Uses-University-Essentials-Government/dp/0674005325 http://www.amazon.com/The-Uses-University-Essentials-Governm...), which is worth reading if you're interested in such issues. Beyond that, philosophy and classics are interesting citations because the healthy, important parts of philosophy have mostly been shucked into science (http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html, or William James's Pragmatism) and classics are interesting but the corpus is static; it is not easy to come up with new and interesting things to say about The Iliad In 1946, I'm sure someone was writing about the decline of theology and Latin and lamenting the failure of the American experiment. (Despite what I wrote above I am still against the giving of scholarships for sports and think that the pro sports run by big-deal programs should be treated as professions, which they are by any reasonable standard of the word).

Vivtek 13y ago
It's not the reference to philosophy and the classics I meant - it's actually the decline of academics in general in favor of Reality College, and it's not new. I regard the specific mention of philosophy and the classics as a sort of fusty stand-in for all the other academics. Add to that the "running the university like a business" - which generally means jacking up CEO pay into the stratosphere while cranking the productivity screws on adjuncts and raising prices for the customers (which in an earlier world were "students") - and you have the recipe for the ruination of the university, just as you have the recipe for the ruination of everything else American corporatism touches. These programs are sold as advertising - which is insane. Seriously. If you want to compete for students, then make sure your students have fulfilling and/or lucrative careers (whichever your students are optimizing for) - don't sell them on which college is fun. You do that, you're not going to get quality students - and that means low-quality end product, a failing reputation in the job market, and you'll end up having to pay even more for a president who says he can fix it all. Wash, rinse, and repeat.