#Occupyfail: When the Paper Chase Becomes a Mobius Loop

With various colleges determined to really emphasize the “liberal” half of the phrase “liberal arts” by offering courses on Occupy Wall Street, in the Wall Street Journal, Glenn Reynolds proffers “A Syllabus for the ‘Occupy’ Movement.” No word yet if he’ll be teaching this course himself at the University of Tennessee in the fall:

Schools from New York’s Columbia to Chicago’s Roosevelt University are offering courses on the “Occupy” movement. This has inspired some derision from the right, but I think that derision is misplaced. There is much that a course on the Occupy movement might profitably cover. Here are some possible lessons:

1) The Higher Education Bubble and Debt Slavery Throughout History. Since ancient times, debt has been a tool used by rulers to enslave the ruled, which is why the Bible explains that the borrower is the slave to the lender. One complaint of many Occupy protesters involves their pursuit of expensive degrees that has left them burdened by student loans but unable to find suitable employment. This unit would compare the marketing of higher education and student debt to today’s students with the techniques used to lure sharecroppers and coal miners into irredeemable indebtedness. Music to be provided by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.®

The really sharp professor will remind his students of the postmodern irony overload of their running up student loans to learn more about a protest about (among other things) running up their student loans.