How Conservative States Should Handle Academia

By Bruce Walker

Conservatives need to use the political power already in their hands to begin a grassroots transformation of academia. The totalitarian exclusion of Ann Coulter from a state university in California is one reminder of the need for reform. The grotesque of politically correct "science" recently paraded around Earth Day is another.

In fact, the Orwellian control of academia by the left virtually guarantees that tens of millions of young Americans will not only lack knowledge – that can be remedied by study and reflection – but have instead noxious stews of pseudo-knowledge percolating out of their ears and guiding (or rather misguiding) their whole lives.

There is precious little conservatives can do in places like the People's Republic of California. The so-called "Berkeley Free Speech Movement" of the early 1960s was a fraud from beginning to end. Nearly all the faculty and university administration comprised people who were radically leftist, and it was only the method of protest (screaming obscenities) that bothered anyone......To Read More....

My Take - Good thoughts but wrong tools.  There is one way and only one way to change the way academia functions.....end funding entirely. 

First - education is way over rated.  It turns out these kids are coming out of college incapable of doing the jobs available.  So what did they go into all that debt for?  What were they teaching them for all those years, and if they're incapable of doing the jobs available that must mean they graduated them fraudulently. 

Secondly - there are a bunch of kids coming out of college - with massive debt - and holding degrees that won't give them jobs that pay enough to pay off that college debt.  Some of these loonie social degrees like gender studies are virtually worthless - unless you plan on a job at a university to teach this leftist nonsense. Just how many of those jobs can possibly be available. 

Third - About 25% of people holding large debt for college loans don't even graduate ;

Fourth - Funding just made college more expensive.  The more money provided by Congress and others just allowed to them to raise tuition even higher.

Fifth - All this funding isn't going toward teaching, or even research. It's going to administration personnel with oversized salaries and benefits.

Sixth - If all funding is ended then these universities will have to compete for societies money and that will mean getting results.  Those that don't get those dollars will go out of business, and good riddance.  Tuition will drop dramatically, administrative overhead will drop massively, and those overpaid, pampered, obnoxious professors will have to actually start teaching their classes rather than dumping their work on underpaid Teaching Assistants.   And although they're underpaid - they're an unnecessary expense that will be eliminated.  Or even better - end tenure and hire the TA's permanently and get rid of the professors.  They're over rated also. 

Finally - Get government out of education entirely - End funding - Make them all for profit institutions - and watch the world of academia change dramatically because competition brings the best to the fore and the worst are cast aside.  And make no mistake about this - a bunch will go out of business because if they practice the leftist dogma they teach these poor misinformed kids - they're too incompetent to be capable of running anything.

Goodbye Berkley!