Once, when I was teaching at an institution that bent over backward for foreign students, I was asked in class one day, “What is your policy toward foreign students?” My reply was: “To me, all students are the same. I treat them all the same and hold them all to the same standards.” The next semester there was an organized boycott of my classes by foreign students. When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
—Thomas Sowell, “The Highway to Serfdom,” today.
Related: Speaking of academia, Walter Russell Mead explains “how to ruin your life:”
Enroll in a college you can’t afford. Take really easy, fun courses [e.g., Politicizing Beyoncé, or The Sociology of Hip-Hop: The Theodicy of Jay-Z]. Don’t worry about marketable skills. Blame society for the consequences (unemployment) of your attitude problem. Then demand the government (or your parents) bail you out. We guarantee you all the misery you could ever want.
Well, yes.
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