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A century ago the field of history was significantly influenced by actual Marxists such as Charles Beard. If you want to bring that back I'm all for it, but you'd have to be original and not just copy the Marxist school.
The reason for the specialization problem is because college is so much larger of an industry than it was then. Back then maybe 10% of the population even attempted college. Today it's 5 times that many and the population is bigger. What today are large state branch universities serving tens of thousands of students were then normal schools or teachers colleges who served a few hundred or couple thousand students & were similar in scope to today's community colleges, but smaller in size than even those.
Where in the world did you get the idea that I would oppose Marxist ideas in the classroom? I think it's great to expose students to Marxism. SJW ideology is the equivalent of Young Earth Creationism. No, that's probably an insult to Young Earth Creationists. Where is the evidence that "safe spaces" help allegedly aggrieved groups? There isn't any. In fact, the evidence is the opposite. Where is the evidence that "implicit bias" translates into behavior? Where is the evidence that we can change "implicit biases?" Where is the evidence for this massive conspiracy called the, wait for it, patriarchy? If economic and educational disparities by race and gender are best explained due to "systemic" discrimination by racists and misogynists, there must be a veritable ton of discriminatory employers. Where are they? Who are they? Let's name names. Amusingly, SJW activists will even claim that universities are rife with these things. Let's name names there.
Of course, naming names and identifying specific policies works against what these cultists do and want. There's a reason they regurgitate these mindless mantras like "systemic" this or that. When you need a boogeyman, best to use nebulous terms and references rather than specific ones that point us towards guilty individuals. "School-to-prison pipeline!" Okay, who precisely are these public school teachers targeting black children for discipline, but not white children. You can't play the "implicit bias" game with this one. This topic has been center stage in schools for awhile now and black kids continue to be suspended and expelled at higher rates. So, if you argue that black kids are targeted, they are intentionally targeted by teachers. Which specific teachers are targeting black kids unjustly for discipline? Start naming names with the schools nearest you.
A fair comparison would be to compare the number of diversicrats to another group within the administrative realm of the university, like the financial aid department or academic advising or student life or admissions. My state, which is undoubtedly like many others facing constrained budgets, cuts things like financial aid personnel, yet the number of diversicrats goes up.
Wow today I had an extended lunch break and decided to go back and answer this question. I went to go find the original piece (once I noticed the link had been removed) so I could get a scope of these jobs in order to find a suitable comparsion group. I just have to thank you because I was really illuminating as to how these smear articles work.
It is very difficult to identify a comparison group because the definition of "diversicrats" used is so broad as to be almost meaningless. It's just a hodgepodge of things that seem to have something to do with women and/or communities of color (Which women and/or POCs you say? staff? faculty? students? K-12 students? whole communities? take your pick LOL). Also, a lot of these people are paid for with grant money, so we don't even know how many of them are fully on the school payroll.
Once again, the entire Title IX office (the sexual assault invesitagtors) are included. Why are they on this list? How are they serving a "special group". Is it presumed to be impacting women's interests the most so it counts? Men report assault cases as well. But I mean... so no one is supposed to investigate college assault/rape cases? Don't schools have to in order to stay compliant with the law AND protect against lawsuits? So how is it a waste when the need is mandated by law? In any case let's carry this to it's logical conclusion: so you'd call the police and start criminal cases on any accused colllege student instead? Wouldn't that work out WORSE for the accused male students, given that most campus rape cases don't even end with anyone criminally charged under this system? This way no one goes to jail/raises bail during the investiagtion and everyone gets to keep attending classes AND get access to mental health care while the staff look into it. The parties are ordered to stay away from each other in the meantime, and that's a less disruptive option than jail.
Moving on... the Center of Engineering Diversity and Outreach is also here muliple times, even though a good chunk of their programs are run with federal and/or corproate grant money. So... how much of their staff does the school actually pay for? Does anyone know?
This list also includes administration staff of all these offices. So the person asnswering the phone, booking appointments and filing documents counts as a "diversicrat"? How is that not padding the numbers for effect?
These people are not even in the same schools. The Office of Health Equity & Inclusion is a department of The School of Medicine and includes faculty, staff and hospital personel. They are a research center too so they certainly have faculty/staff covered by grants. But given their inclusion I undershot the amount of UM staff because I only counted the undergraduate school. There are 45,000 faculty and staff on the total campus, so the 93 people on this padded diversicrat list represent LESS THAN A TENTH OF A PERCENT of the total worksforce at UM.
Given that reality, do you think that perhaps this whole line of questioning is ridiculously petty?
In any case, you can't really compare this with say, the financial aid office because that has a very specific definition - they aid students and family with paying for school. This is more akin of listing any personel that has anything to do with money... including financial aid, student employment, the budgeting office, the business office, development and anyone who does bookkeeping with a division. I mean they all have something to do with money right? The school runs on mney right? We didn't say whose money or where or how. Just money.
But that would make no sense you say? Those people are doing dramtically different things that are only vaguely connected?
Exactly.
But if you did count all the money people at the college, it would be WAY more than 93.
What you want to do is count all the college student serving personel against the other student affairs offices, community serving programs vs community serving programs, staff vs satff, research vs research. That would make a but more sense. But I'm not doing all of that so have at it. LOL
The OP is talking about SJW, marxist, socialist-studies courses, not general history, literature, and social studies requirements, many of them can be aligned with your concentration. MIT does not force you to take women's study or marxism 101. OP talks about going to grad school, MIT will prepare him for grad school and beyond, unless you feel like your school does better in cranking out mathematicians?
You're all talking about MIT like the OP could get in there... maybe they could, but statistically the chances are slim! Their acceptance rate is currently around 8%, so even a qualified applicant has a 92% chance of being rejected.
For the record, I attended both public and private university/ies (U of Oregon, U of the Pacific, and San Jose State) on the west coast - none of which had any "diversity/SJW" requirements beyond their widely-varying general ed categories. But that was over 20 years ago, at least for my undergraduate studies, so I have no idea what is required now. And I'm probably not the best to ask, anyway, considering I majored in English Literature with a focus on Ethnic Studies. LOL
Or the experience of Laura Kipnis (another liberal) who was sued for an essay she wrote under Title IX laws (total overreach):
Things have changed since we were in college.
Sorry, but posting YouTube videos of personal accounts isn't much of an argument... I could literally walk on to any college campus in the world, and find a few people to give "testimony" on any viewpoint I choose. Literally.
The OP is talking about SJW, marxist, socialist-studies courses, not general history, literature, and social studies requirements, many of them can be aligned with your concentration. MIT does not force you to take women's study or marxism 101. OP talks about going to grad school, MIT will prepare him for grad school and beyond, unless you feel like your school does better in cranking out mathematicians?
There are no such thing, except courses on the history of Marxism, in Russia and E Europe Studies departments, and possibly in a specialized course in Latin American Studies. These are courses for people planning careers in US government service, though--highly specialized, career-track courses, not for general survey course requirements.
The only point of going to college is to get a degree for a job you want to work, because that's why you're spending 1000s per semester.
If I wanted to learn and expand my mind, I would have gone to my local Barnes and Noble at a tiny fraction of a cost.
No, that's a trade school, not a university. A college education does and should involve taking classes outside one's major, since the true point of an education is not job training but really learning and expanding one's horizons.
But it's not so great when you have to spend 1000s per semester on useless classes that won't relate to what job you're going to do after graduation
The requirement of General Education courses isn't the issue at contention in this thread. Rather, it's the silly notion that there are 'SJW' and 'Marxist' classes that are required in order for one to graduate from universities. As I clearly demonstrated in post # 126, even at a small, granola-crunching, very liberal college it is easy to fulfill those requirements without taking any of the classes the OP thinks are mandatory. It will undoubtedly be even easier at state universities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevroqs
The only point of going to college is to get a degree for a job you want to work, because that's why you're spending 1000s per semester.
So you want the degree, yet you don't want to fulfill the requirements for the degree. Aren't you special? The entire concept of a bachelor's degree is a multi-disciplinary course of study with a focus in one particular area.
Tell you what. Go to a university and study whatever field interests you. Let's say it's chemistry. Your major requirements will vary, but they'll include a lot of chemistry courses, some mathematics, and probably some physics. You can simply not take the gen eds. Then take your transcript and apply to wherever you want to be a chemist. Let's say, Koch Industries - because this isn't an issue of left-v-right. Explain on your resume how you were laser-focused on chemistry, and how you didn't waste any of your time study unimportant stuff like composition or sociology or history or literature.
Here's what will happen. Koch Industries will roll its eyes and toss your application into the recycle bin. They'll eventually hire someone with a broad-based education. Someone who has skill beyond the laboratory. Someone who has been exposed to information and viewpoints beyond his own narrow outlook. Someone who will better relate to coworkers from widely varying backgrounds. Someone who has been forced out of his hard-science cocoon and made to demonstrate competency in studies of the arts, of history, of the social sciences. That's what it means to hold a bachelor's degree.
You can take only the courses you want to take. But it's absurd that you think you should be granted a degree without fulfilling the requirements upon which degrees are predicated.
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