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"Conservatism is the new 'counter-culture'" is the slogan, except to be "counter-culture" you have to be both cool and marginalized, and conservatism is neither.
The more extreme social-justice colleges (Oberlin, Evergreen, like that) are seeing enrollment drop off. The places are uncool. And college grads want jobs!
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John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
lunatic fringe electronics
Evidence? Your impression may be that those particular colleges may be "extreme" on social justice - whatever that might mean - but your impressions do tend to be bizarre, and you also need to document the claim that their enrollments are declining.
I don't think it has anything to do with the politics or "coolness" of a particular school, it's just that a college degree has more-or-less become a fungible commodity and the new high school diploma. Outside of the Ivys and a few other top-tier schools (MIT, Stanford) 99% of white-collar jobs don't give a toss where you did your undergrad.
The little arts/film school I went to in the 1990s attracted a fair number of New York/Hollywood trust fund hipsters, but at a base price of ~$25,000 with loans and a bit of achievement-based financial aid (I wasn't the valedictorian and didn't have MIT-level SAT scores or anything but somewhat above average) it was still a good value for students with good grades from working-class families. It's 60k now.
"In September 2014, on Rosh Hashanah, Oberlin Students for Free Palestine placed 2,133 black flags in the main square of the Campus as a "call to action" in honor of Palestinians who died in the 2014 Israel?Gaza conflict.[39] In January 2016, hundreds of Oberlin alumni signed a letter to the Oberlin administration stating that this protest was one example of anti-Semitism on the campus."
The colleges have a cash-flow problem. It's the same with the alumni I know from my school who while still left-wing have distanced themselves from what the schools are now. Even back then at 25k/yr there was a huge disconnect between the working-class left-wing who got there on merit, and the Hollyweird left-wing who got there on their parent's cash.
i.e. the schools are admitting garbage-tier extremists with money.
My point is though that's by design - cut government funding to education so schools have to select much more on ability to pay than merit, the smaller schools end up admitting many more wealthy-yet-garbage-tier students who have the free time to run around engaging in extremist behavior, oh look the schools are hotbeds of radicalism now, justifying further cuts to federal education funding.
Most of the art school kids I went to school with who were passionate about their field are perfectly well gainfully employed in their 30s in careers they enjoy. Why wouldn't they be? They work on products there's high demand for, i.e. music, movies, TV programs, novels, and comic books.
Seems like way more of a "sure thing" wrt to satisfying employment than learning how to design widgets of obscure purpose or spending a decade in medical or law school. Like the entertainment business doesn't have money to throw around or something.
Not your strongpoint this subject, clearly. Young people just like to kick back at authority; it's what they've always done. With everyone from their teachers to the MSM to the politicians insisting they buy into Globalism and Cultural Marxism it's hardly surprising they're running to Conservatism in droves. It's become the anti-establishment thing to do. Nothing cool about doing what everyone tells you!
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Universities nowadays are featherbedded to an almost unbelievable degree. When I was a student, there were profs, secretaries, janitors, and a small office staff. Now there are redundant programs for everything.
In addition, universities have been spending huge amounts of money tearing down perfectly good buildings and putting up fancier ones.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
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Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
When one degree in underwater basket-weaving from School X is pretty much fungible with the same degree from School Y (doesn't matter anyway as with 90% probability the student is going to work in an office for Company Z which doesn't even do underwater basket-weaving) I guess schools figure the only thing they have to attract prospective students on is luxury dorms and free spa treatments
Basically because the only thing most white-collar jobs require is the ability to answer phone calls, string together a few emails, and poke buttons on a computer, not any particular talent. My girlfriend is an English teacher but she did her undergrad in anthropology; at what point did she ever use her anthropology degree in the field of anthropology? Pretty much never, that's when. She considered going for her PhD but academia in the humanities is a miserable dog-eat-dog world where "thieves and pimps run free, and good men [and women] die like dogs."
Basically most schools aren't selling any particularly distinguishable product, they're selling what most people believe in as a meal ticket. Like most markets where multiple functionally-indistinguishable products are sold they're sold on the sizzle, not the steak.
There was plenty of boys meeting girls and sex going on in the late
1990s and there still is, they've just cracked down on the frat bros and "boys will be boys" behavior.
The number of young men falsely accused of sexual assault where both parties were sober when the sexing occurred is likely asymptotically close to zero. Don't want it to happen then don't go to parties and get hammered and try to pull hammered girls home, jeez kids use your brain.
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