Hello All:
I am a professional scientist, but have studied history independently for over 35 years (since childhood). Simply for intellectual stimulation and to meet others interested in the subject, I began taking post-grauate work PT in history. At the university I attend, the dumbing-down – the “Oprahization” of the academy is complete. In my historical methods class, expecting to be taught the basics of archival work and other methdologies of research, instead the feminist professor launched into a lengthy diatribe against western civilization, the great books canon, and indeed the scientific process. There was plenty of post-modernism and Marxism, including plenty of Derrada, Foucault and the rest. I was dumbfounded that many of the students as well as the professor sat there questioning whether facts exist, or scientifically verifiable truth. If any of my classmates had been scientists or engineers, I’d have discussed the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or Godel’s Theorem, but they were not talking about that. They were questioning whether or not the Gettysburg Address happened, or the like. I retorted with a couple of simple questions: If scientific inquiry is simply a social construct, a matter of feelings, then when you (a post-modernist) are sick, do you go to a witch doctor or shaman, or a scientifically-trained physician or other healthcare provider? When you want to fly somewhere, what do you do – board an airliner designed and built by engineers and other skilled technicians, or go up on your roof and flap your wings? Needless to say, I have not yet received an answer that supports the post-modernist position.
Incidentally, after years of self-study, I know more history in my specialty areas than any of the Ph.D.s on the faculty.
Universities love Oprah because universities, as Dennis Prager has noted, are places of little wisdom. They also now esteem making money over academic achievement. They know where their bread is buttered! Well, looking on the good side, I will be too old to attend any university with buildings named after Oprah or Jerry Springer… I hope!
If you are a parent, you are better off sending your child into a skilled trade, the military or elsewhere than into a university – unless he/she is going to study outside of the humanties, “studies” departments or the like. Engineering, the hard sciences and business fields earn their pay still. If you have any doubt at all about the wisdom of sending a child to a four-year school, by all means let them work in the real world for a few years first, or use a community college instead of a big-name school.
Unfortunately, much of what goes on at most of our colleges and universities is a waste of money and basically an excuse to extend adolescence.
You will do your child a favor by investing the tuition money in a good index fund or some other productive inevstment, rather than throwing it away on useless courses. After a few years, it could be used for a nice downpayment on a home or something useful.
