Bernie Sanders ran, in part, on a platform of free college tuition for those in the bottom 90% of the economy – those who make less than $125,000/year.
He lost, that that policy has been picked up by New York, is gaining ground in California, and will be a cornerstone of Elizabeth Warren’s campaign if she runs.
Well, to make things more “fair” one academic has decided that college admission standards should be dropped in favor of a lottery system. Admission standards are racist, apparently. A student’s ability – or lack there of – to read or do math coming out of high school should not keep them from obtaining the privilege of a top tier diploma. Students shouldn’t be tested, just selected at random.
This however will still not achieve fairness. Students who can’t perform because they lack the adequate background from high school will fail to matriculate. That is racist. Schools can always work around the English language and justify anything. Math is more firm. So… math is racist and must be dropped.
Who but those STEM majors really need to know how to “solve for X?” It’s not like that will help you decide how much money to put away in your IRA or for a house if you want to plan for the future. It’s not like algebra is a fundamental part of deductive reasoning. It’s racist and has to go.
The end result is that, anybody can get into whatever school they want, if they are lucky, but won’t learn a damn thing while they are there.
These people are going full Socialism with college education, it’s free for the masses but isn’t worth the price.
Which will lead to the implosion of the Higher Education bubble.
Eventually, those who hire are going to learn that degree=/=competence.
Eventually, potential students will learn that overpriced education=/=jobs.
When that happens, you won’t get people going into a lifetime of debt for a useless degree that won’t get them a job. The numbers of people going to school will have a sharp decline, and a lot of schools will have to cut back or close.
One thing I think most of the people demanding “free” college ignore (or are ignorant of) is that “the people with the gold make the rules.” If the state is paying for your college education, then the state gets to tell you what you are going to study and what career you are going to pursue. In the socialist paradises (past and present) you are evaluated at a young age for your ability to do math, have mechanical aptitude, deal with the complexities of law, teach others, etc. If you don’t have aptitudes that the state finds useful, no college for you, no trade school for you, and you will end up as unskilled labor on a collective farm or mucking out the stables at a commissar’s dacha. If you don’t like those choices, well there are always the Gulags.
The “Lottery system” instead of judging by objective qualifications is what you get when you start allowing majors in “minority studies”. The authors seem to be singling out the Ivy League, which is superbly ironic because no techie/STEM major in their right might would pick Harvard over MIT. The conceited snobs at Hah-vahd call MIT the “vocational school” with derision. It makes it easy to dismiss any Ivy League job applicant as unqualified.
The thing is, if a Lottery vs. objective test scores becomes a thing, and especially a widespread thing, one of two things has to happen. Either engineering schools have to double down on testing to ensure they get students who actually can “solve for X”, or graduate schools have to do that, and the BS becomes worthless; a participation trophy.
The alternative is the decline and collapse of western civilization. Which may be approaching anyway.
“the decline and collapse of western civilization”
THAT is the goal. Alinsky 101.