Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Our For-Profit Future

A small private college goes for-profit and, one year later, eliminates all liberal-arts programs.

Jon Jay De Temple, president of Post for the last five years, said that he believes the institution needs focus. “We’re not big enough to do everything for everybody,” he said.

De Temple said that based on that view, administrators and board members believe that majors that don’t “lead to a job” should be eliminated. He stressed that there would still be history and English instruction at the university, but said that there would not be any upper-level courses. “We’re probably not the best institution to turn out an English major,” he said.

The college hopes to shift resources to expand offerings in high-growth fields such as criminal justice, health services, and sports and entertainment. Post also wants to improve its well regarded equestrian program.

Ooh, equestrians! Maybe this will be the training ground of the next Michael Brown.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051128/us_nm/life_music_schools_dc

BOSTON (Reuters) - Jennifer Myung owes $55,000 to the U.S. government, and for the first time, she isn't worried about paying it back. That's because she has swapped a budding career as a concert violinist for an investment banking job.

Heh. Indeed.

Anonymous said...

Anya, English majors, comp lit majors, women's studies majors, journalism majors and a host of other liberal studies majors are unable to support themselves or live without government handouts.

To be blunt, no one wants what they have to offer. They cannot even pay back their loans. They cannot get a job in their fields except as stoop academic labor.

Hell, they are so poor and so useless due to their overeducation that they cannot even cook for themselves, clean up after themselves, make babies or even raise a child.

That is why they are going extinct and being replaced by Mexicans and other more robust races. Natural selection in a nutshell.

But don't ask me why no one wants to go into those majors, look at theworld around you. What are foreigners studying? "Shakespeare in the Discourse of Hip-Hop"? "Advanced Exotic Dancing and the Discourse of Female Oppression" at Bennington"? Don't think so. That's for over-educated American white girls and boys.

The rest of the world is only willing to pay for that which truly benefits mankind: medicine, business,law, engineering, and science. Face it. Foreigners wouldn't be caught dead wasting time and money on Liberal studies.

America has gotten poorer since the Left abandoned working people for the ethereal realms of gender studies. Since about 1970 we have been losing jobs, technology and status worldwide. We jus don't have the money anymore. We have abandoned our industrial base.

As a result, we just can't afford the luxury of pointless Liberal Studies programs anymore. We cannot afford to subsidize college professor make-work programs, paying them to crank out even more hungry PhD mouths that we must then feed with even more academic make work.

There has to be some social payoff for the money we invest in liberal studies majors and it just ain't there.

The good old days are gone, Anya, and they are never going to return. Pity you arrived on this planet in 1980, just as the bartender made the last bar call.

redante said...

Hi Anya

Just wanted to send a quick note -- this guy "the dude" is not the same person as me, the Liberal Arts Dude. I didn't want anyone to mix us up because of the similarities in our names and subject interests. Unlike him I don't think Liberal Arts skills are useless in today's world. What I advocate is for Liberal Arts majors to develop marketable skills as well as be careful about making financial decisions regarding student loans. Anyway, just some thoughts as I scan your archives. Keep up the good work!

http://www.liberalartsgrad.blogspot.com/