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By Professor Doom      When it comes to math, I�ve already shown that most of what�s offered in college, especially at community college, is just repetition of the material students saw in the 9 th grade or lower , for about 90% of the coursework.      In times of yore, the way how a college course was created was faculty, in a department, would get together in a committee and decide what a course would have in it. As the entire point of college is preparation, each course would be filled with the material which would prepare the student for ever more advanced material. You couldn�t just come with a course, make up your own curriculum, and have it offered without other scholars looking it over and verifying that the course would be worthwhile for students to take.       This process has changed at many campuses. Instead of a committee, all you need now is just one faculty saying he has an idea which will sell. He then goe...

By Professor Doom      A recent posting about official government predictions of growth in our higher ed system by 2025 , despite the fact that the vast bulk of our high school graduates already go to college today and we�ll have fewer people in that age group in 8 years, got me to thinking about the future of higher ed in the US.      Around 70% of high school graduates go to college right after graduation , and over 80% go eventually. The gentle reader really should consider the implications of this: if you�re in the 20 th  percentile of intelligence (roughly an IQ of 87, low enough to qualify for mentally disabled), you�re still college material�how much lower can we go? College graduate IQ is already below average , so I suspect we�re pretty close to the bottom as it is.      Growth in the student base at this point would be preposterous.      While I�ve often mentioned a possible collapse in highe...

So that was my first interview in a long time, and I was a bit nervous. I mis-quoted a statistic. It's actually 30% of college males are leaving college in the first year (and not 70% like I mistakenly said). Granted, that's from just one state, but my own eyeballs (combined with far more than half of college students being female) tell me it holds for other states, and likely the country. Apologies for the error.

     I�m looking over an open letter from a faculty who has retired from West Point, detailing how the school is corrupt on every level now.       One thing he�s pointed out is how the Honor Code at the school is, well, no longer being honored. Why? To make matters worse, the senior leadership at West Point actively discourages staff and faculty from reporting honor violations. l was unfortunate enough to experience this first hand during my first tour on the faculty, when the Commandant of Cadets called my office phone and proceeded to berate me in the most vulgar and obscene language for over ten minutes because I had reported a cadet who lied to me�      When your bosses punish you for having integrity, for trying to follow the rules you are told you need to follow, it�s pretty demoralizing. In higher ed, you can lose your job or get a pay cut for daring to catch a cheating student. Faculty figure out early on that tryi...

By Professor Doom      When I rant about the corruption of higher ed, I�m pretty careful to put some weasel-ly qualifiers: �most� institutions are corrupt, �most� degrees are worthless, �many� administrators are there to plunder the schools, and so on.      When I consider those schools which don�t fit the general rule, usually the schools which come to mind are those with fairly restricted admissions. I�m not talking about price restrictions, since the scammy student loans (note: no qualifier there) mean money is no object. The restrictions that matter are generally academic: the students must demonstrate they actually care about learning by performing well on admissions exams, or otherwise showing that they really, really, want to be in school (as opposed to really, really, just wanting a check).       I�ve fundamentally blamed the student loan scam for much of the corruption of higher ed, and I generally believe that th...

By Professor Doom       I know, referencing Orwell�s 1984 is tiresome and clich� but�every day it seems I see something in the real world that mirrors the supposedly purely fictional world: ��Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building��      My apologies for patronizing anyone, but part of the lead character�s job in 1984 was to throw any evidence of anything that was contradictory to the government�s narrative down the �memory hole.� Orwell was typica...