It was around 3AM one summer day in 1996. I was patrolling the Washington Avenue bridge which connected the east and west campuses of the University of Minnesota. Normally this bridge would have been deserted, with not a soul on it, but there was a local man named "Larry" who by all accounts was mentally ill. Not a threat necessarily, but a delusional man who would hunt down security guards on campus and use them as free late night therapists. Despite his dishonest intentions, most guards didn't mind his company in that it gave us something to do, especially during summer evenings when the campus itself was abandoned and absolutely no action was going on. And though most of his ramblings was about his finances, inability to find a job, and his longing to someday find a girl, he said something to me one time that was actually intelligent and insightful.
"You know this internet thing will make these colleges obsolete."
There was nothing on the internet in 1996 and bar e-mail and porn, I couldn't see what else the internet would have to offer. But I always remembered that fount of insight from Larry because for all his faults, he was 100% correct.
The internet has made colleges obsolete.
Of course, colleges don't know that yet. They and their administrative
I will delve into why colleges need to be eliminated (and the trillions of dollars in benefits that would confer upon the US and the world in general) in a later article. But for now I want to use the obsolescence of American colleges to highlight a hypocrisy which should make even the most leftist leftists call into question their integrity, veracity, and practicality.
Global warming.
I personally do not believe in global warming. My IQ is simply too high, plus I have street smarts and know a scam when I see one. But let's say I did. And not only that I did, but I was a adamant environmentalist. So much so I got my doctorate in "Environmental Studies" and now teach...nay...head up the Environmental Studies Department.
Why then do I insist my students commute, drive, park, and commute back to the physical college campus?
Why then do I insist we spew trillions of tons in carbon emissions into our precious atmosphere when we build unnecessary buildings and roads in our college campuses?
Why do I insist we spend billions in electricity, pumping even MORE greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, to heat and power college classrooms, when every single Environmental Studies major can receive this education for a fraction of the carbon emissions (oh yeah, and cost too) if they attended school online ne'er commuting a mile to the college campus?
The hypocrisy doesn't end there because you damn well know it isn't merely the "Environmental Studies" departments at every college campus that touts their environmental and green credentials, but EVERY department, division, head, professor, employee and student at today's college campuses that virtue signals their environmentalism. Matter of fact behind socialism and feminism, I would argue environmentalism is the #3 virtue espoused by all participants in all colleges, which then behooves the question....
If physical colleges are obsolete, can be replaced with online colleges, and their elimination would (by nearly all measures) eliminate ALL carbon emissions generated by physical college campuses, shouldn't we be doing what's right for the environment and RAPIDLY closing down all physical campuses and replacing them with digital ones?
I'm no environmentalist, but there are roughly 21 million college students in the US today. Some of these college campuses have over 50,000 students and are veritable large cities. If the cost of attending an accredited online college is a fraction of what it costs to attend a physical one, and we could eliminate SIGNIFICANT greenhouse gas emissions by eliminating physical college campuses, why on god's green Earth (pun intended) would any global-warming believing student, AND CERTAINLY ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES DEPARTMENTS, insist on attending a physical college?
Of course, the answer isn't because they haven't thought of it. Professors, college administrators, and students are FULLY aware it would be cheaper and much better for the environment to replace physical colleges with digital ones. It's once again a glaring exposure of the environmentalist and academic left's true ulterior motivation. They don't give a damn about the environment. They only give a damn about their cushy, worthless jobs. They know that one GOOD professor can teach millions of students for pennies on the dollar online compared to the thousands of professors and the tens of thousands of college admin staff that is needed to run these now-pointless, unnecessary physical institutions. And if online colleges were ever to establish a beachhead, they would be forced to do what use real world, real adult, hard working Americans do every day - work a real job.
Thankfully...at least for now...the K-12 segment of the Big Education industry has done a spectacular job indoctrinating young boys and girls into swallowing whole the "College Experience." These kids are simply not going to attend college online, because it is the experience on a physical college campus they value most, even more than their education or the career that might come with it. Ergo, "Suburbanite SWPL" Suzie will spend $150,000 of her daddy's money on her "International Studies" degree. Gary "from the Ghetto" Gormanson will spend $50,000 on his African American Studies Degree. And Tanner "Lacking in Testosterone" Tilbertson will piss away $100,000 on his Masters in Poetry. And thus Big Education will continue to get their shekels.
But for anybody who has half an eye open and an ounce of intellectual honesty, the hypocrisy coming from America's academic community is painfully clear and blinding. They are in it NOT for anything as noble as "the environment" (or feminism, or equality, or minorities, or the poor, etc. etc. etc.). They are in it for the money. It would be one thing if these academics, professors, and admins actually provided something of value in exchange for 4 years of childrens' youth and $100,000 in tuition. But most of the products they are offering are completely worthless.
If only there were accredited online colleges that offered worthwhile degrees for a fraction of the cost and greenhouse gas emissions...
Oh wait.
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12 comments:
I used to work as a maintenance man on student rentals in Newark, Delaware. The U of D was famous for alcohol consumption, and based on what I saw, there was way more boozing than learning. One group of students called to complain that the four bedroom house they were renting was very cold upstairs and too hot downstairs in winter.
I went into the basement and closed down some dampers on the heat ducts feeding the downstairs. I explained to the students that the restricted downstairs duct would force more heated air upstairs and should even out the temps. One of the students already had his BS in Mechanical Engineering ( Saw it on his bedroom wall ). He had no fucking idea what I was talking about.
Mechanical common sense score - Hillbilly who barely graduated high school - 1. Young man with a BS in Mechanical Engineering - blank stare.
don't forget about all of the rape that could be prevented by moving classes online. that terrible campus rape epidemic could finally be solved.
anyone against this is a pro-rape misogynist.
Absolutely. Include hate crimes in this. Anyone who insists on physical campuses clearly wants minorities to suffer needlessly.
Wait, so you're saying global temperature change is a scam because you have "street smarts" and a high IQ?
The thing is, I have more than my share of the same, at least for a white guy who's only been in about four fights in his life and a long list of criminal achievements under his belt. Yet my high IQ and street smarts have led me to research what the scientists say, to be critical of their reports but nonetheless assume that people who dedicate their life to science might be better experts at science than me even if their IQs are lower (and frequently, they're not).
The overwhelming consensus there is that global temperature change is a real thing, that it's manmade, and is accelerating. They also mostly point out that individual choices to, say, bicycle instead of drive are not enough to stem the tide, and that we need to rethink how we produce energy, how we consume resources, and hour the infrastructures of our nations and cities work.
The point is, not only is climate change real, and provably so, but staying home from school and learning online isn't going to put a dent in things. In fact, the shared camaraderie of college might be just the thing to help galvanize a new generation of politicians on the left to sweep out all the science-haters on the right, the young Evangelical libertarian contradictions currently swelling the ranks of the Republican Party.
If we don't choose to follow the advice of a self-professed climate change denier in how best to combat climate change, maybe it's because your attitude seems to imply what we've already inferred: IQ is a pretty crude measure of real intelligence.
"don't forget about all of the rape that could be prevented by moving classes online. that terrible campus rape epidemic could finally be solved.
The terrible 'rape' epidemic on campuses would also be solved by just making it compulsory for male students to take their courses online without even setting foot on any campus. Additionally, the males could finally be taught course subjects in a way that is geared to the male learning style.
It would also protect those same male students from false accusations by delusional feminist female students since there would no longer be any male interaction with them.
Just think: no female students worrying about being 'raped', and male students being able to be taught in a way that is best for them, with the bonus of not having to worry about false accusations.
Who could possibly be against THIS?
Ironically, existing campuses could slightly re-tool and continue to rake in money. They just need to cut some of the administrative bloat and re-purpose others to essentially hold students' hands through completing the online courses of the students' choice and getting their degrees. Sell the students on living near other college-aged students and getting the conventional "college experience." Sell Mom and Dad on providing someone to hold their child's hand and make sure they attend all their classes and have quiet rooms to study. The campus just needs to provide semi-private rooms with 99.99% reliable gigabit Internet access. They could even add coffee and common areas like today's co-working spaces. They could offer 4-year subscriptions, 1-year, or semester. Students could take their online courses at a New England campus for fall semester and a Florida/Arizona campus for spring semester, for example. In short, some enterprising entity will make tons of money by outsourcing the teaching portion of college to the current online schools and instead focusing on value-adds that satisfy both what students want and what their parents want.
In an ideal college environment, we'd just have internet classes where you order books online, do multiple choice quizzes online, and submit essays online, and your online instructor grades them. And once you've finished enough classes, your diploma arrives on the mail. It's not High School anymore. We can do away with the middle man and give people the freedom to do college at the comfort of their own homes. It gets rid of the travel costs, the building and maintenance costs, and the hassle with rape in colleges. Everyone wins!
But God knows that's not gonna happen.
Or buy the ebook online from Amazon for pennies.
Close the liberal arts schools,
Save the planet.
It's a win-win liberals, come on ...
You could replace the entire educational process with the internet K through PhD. Learn from the best anytime any where with digital content making the experience personalized to the abilities and interests of the student. All the craziness over what to teach, how to teach, when to teach could be controlled by the parents and students. You can get rid of buses, school lunches, textbooks, and crappy buildings.
K-12 has become glorified government supplied daycare and college has become finishing indoctrination centers. Overpriced, wasteful, and self serving based on the old industrial factory model of punching clocks and gaining seniority. It is way over due to privatize K-12 education and the college bubble needs to burst.
The exact same thing is true of business and working from home. More so, in that it's not just a 1-4 year ball-and-chain that professionals must wear.
In the times when I've worked from home, my productivity has at least doubled. This is a combination of:
• no stress from driving and trying to find a car park
• no constant having your concentration broken because of ringing phones and people having problems with their computers
• no constant interruptions from other staff grouching about idiot workers (the grouches are contagious)
I strongly suspect that both academia and business suffer from the same mental syndrome: they need to have their thumb on their student/worker.
This mentality is somewhat self-reinforcing, since (IIRC) schools are built on the old Prussian model, designed to turn children into obedient workers to be fed directly into office jobs and factories.
Is there any wonder that we are all out of touch with each other and nature these days?
writerdmcollins, here's the sea level measured with eyeballs and a ruler, not modeled, at The Battery in New York, from 1856 to present:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8518750
Notice it's a straight line, with no hockey stick when fossil fuel use really started increasing in the 1950's. If the sea level rise didn't increase at the same time as fossil fuel use increased, then more ice didn't melt at the same time as fossil fuel use increase, and the climate didn't warm at the same time as fossil fuel use increased.
Another test you can do is to look at depths published on US coastal navigation charts in the 1970's vs. the depths at the same locations published today. Avoid dredged areas.
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