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Excellent addition to Hammer's already excellent piece! When I was a kid, I had my tonsils removed because they became vectors for constant strep infections. The university system, and the administrators of those universities, are the tonsils of America and Canada. Every new moral panic that sabotages real progress, undermines social cohesion, wastes resources, and exacerbates cultural rot can be traced back to the academy, and especially the liberal arts programs. Every. Single. Time.

I say raze the university system to the foundations, smash the rubble to dust, and salt the earth. But failing that, let's follow your counsel and cap administration at 5% of budget and manpower and put these DEI commissars out on their whiny woke asses. If they're going to prostitute themselves for money, there are plenty of street corners and plenty of pimps to give them jobs in the private sector.

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Jan 17, 2023·edited Jan 17, 2023Liked by John Carter

I hate to be the asshole here (sorry, I have a toothache), or act like I know better than our host, but cmon, how worried was Mao about the Red Guard budget? No one is pinching pennies when they're engaged in an existential ideological struggle to exterminate their class enemies and seize total power. Our Corporate Social Justice overlords wouldn't care if it was $15 billion or trillion (hey it aint their $ anyway), the proles will continue to be battered with re-education, rectification and struggle sessions until the rule of the progressive oligarchy is locked in.

The New Left has been plotting and scheming for 50 years (!) for this moment, when they at last get to take a sledgehammer to the evil European capitalist patriarchy and cement their status as the regime's ruthless commissariat, and now they are fully funded and have the total backing of the state, the corporations and every cultural megaphone.

The Cultural Revolution is here, it's real, and there is no cavalry coming to save us.

(But luckily for me the dentist prescribed Tyenol w Codeine)

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The rot goes back many decades. The core problem is that the federal government is THE main customer for nearly all universities, thanks to the combination of research grant money and federally issued/guaranteed student loans. A university which fails to meet DIE targets is at risk of losing EVERYTHING. Ergo, meeting DIE targets is more important than providing an education. You get what you pay for.

My forthcoming solution will be: take the entire gross federal student aid/loan budget and just divvy it up to all natural born citizens when they come of age. Call it a Universal Inheritance. No more whining about what happened to your ancestors. And it puts teeth into the concept of Equality of Opportunity.

Now, universities have to compete against other uses of said unconditional grant money: buying a starter home, starting a business, going to trade school, or buying a bitchin sports car. Right wing ninnies will whine about those sports cars. Guess what? Blowing your wad on luxuries early in life is 100x more educational than getting a degree in excuse making. And it gives the rest of us license to say "You dumbass" to perpetual whiners.

The grant does not have to be enough to provide a complete fancy four year degree. Let universities issue loans for the balance using their endowment funds. Invest in promising students instead of the stock market. Subject the loans to the usual bankruptcy rules, and university administrators will have a huge incentive to avoid handing out bogus degrees.

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Just insane - a phrase I’m so overusing these past few years it has lost all impact - I need a more visceral lexicon 🙄 - anyway, thanks for the review - fully expected it to be a wickedly high price for all this damnation - imagine the total cost over the whole public and private sectors!

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$15 mil was VA. Times 50 approaches a billion. America is a wealthy country, and like all wealthy people, we waste a lot. The problem isn't the wasted dollars, it's the wasted minds. We need to work on restoring rational values.

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Is there another example in history of a civilization hating itself? Plenty of *people* hate themselves individually, but have the elites of any other civilization ever actively encouraged hating their own civilization’s foundational values? I can’t think of a single parallel.

DIE will be a marvel to future generations.

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founding

Loathsome as they are, the administrative tapeworm in higher education serves a vital purpose: managing the servitors camouflaged as n radicals who award the credentials and directing the selection and formation of white-collar drones.

The DEI admin people help with training those who need to do the 'emotional work' in selected areas of an economy with a grossly oversized service economy.

One way to improve things is to re-focus everyone's attention on demonstrated skills in STEM at an individual level. This is the Achilles heel. Physiognomy does not lie...neither does IQ. They hate the IQ issue the way vampires hate the sun.

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Jan 23, 2023Liked by John Carter

BFTP 'Peanuts' toon observes..

.needtoknow.news/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/cartoon-no-education-to-overthrow.jpg

=Text in image=

NO ONE IS GOING TO GVE YOU

THE EDUCATION YOU NEED

TO

OVERTHROW THEM.

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".... taxpayers are lavishing an incredible $1.35 billion on these fattened leeches..."

One especially nauseating way to think about this stat is that it is Cantillon money, taken from productive people and distributed to Leftists by our Leftist government regulator overlords.

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Jan 17, 2023·edited Jan 17, 2023Liked by John Carter

What gets me about US education admins is that they think education is a zero-sum game, because places like Harvard only have so many spots. Admins fundamentally fail to grasp that education is about making smart people who can do good, such as finding new cures to a disease. From their zero-sum attitude they justify horrible policies like "reducing the achievement gap", i.e. dumbing down the smart kids.

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The DIE bloat is one aspect of administrative bloat that has been underway for decades, as veterans of the higher ed wars know. DIE ideology would exist even without the overall administrative bloat, but fewer deanlets would mean fewer people to take part in the current mischief. One way to cull their ranks would be to relieve teaching faculty of external pressure to publish and let them use their liberated hours to return to their traditional work of advising and counseling their students. Then send the supernumerary deanlets off to law school or something.

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'What price diversity, inclusion, and equity?'

why it's EduKayShun , eh, Prof John?

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The DIE bloat is one aspect of administrative bloat that has been underway for decades, as veterans of the higher ed wars know. DIE ideology would exist even without the overall administrative bloat, but fewer deanlets would mean fewer people to take part in the current mischief. One way to cull their ranks would be to relieve teaching faculty of external pressure to publish and let them use their liberated hours to return to their traditional work of advising and counseling their students. Then send the supernumerary deanlets off to law school or something.

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