Not so fast, buddy...

 

It's been claimed that China is "sending thousands of future military pilots posing as civilians to the United States to learn how to fly".  It's not quite as simple as that.  I'm sure some of the Chinese pilots training in the USA are, indeed, going to fly with the Peoples' Liberation Army Air Force, but not all of them.  Many are here for a different reason altogether.

All over the world, nations set their own standards as to what qualifications their civilian pilots should hold.  Many of them are so lax in their enforcement of training standards (for example, most African nations) that their pilots aren't allowed to fly in more advanced aviation environments (such as most First World countries).  A pilot's certificate from one of the low-standard nations is effectively a local qualification only, and I wouldn't feel safe flying with such a pilot.  Indeed, many qualifications are fraudulently obtained:  for example, in 2022 Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) found that 457 of its staff had fake degrees or pilot certificates.  An earlier investigation revealed that"more than 260 of [Pakistan's] 860 active pilots had either fake licences or had cheated in their exams."  (Remind me never, ever to fly PIA!)

There are other nations, usually in the First World, who insist on pilot training and standards similar to, or close to, those in the USA.  Pilots with those licenses can usually fly aircraft in, to and from such countries and others their aviation authorities trust.  For example, any pilot licensed by the European Union can fly to other EU nations, and also internationally to most other countries.  However, the US pilot license and other advanced aviation qualifications are the only ones that are valid worldwide (except for North Korea and Iran, which don't like us at all!  AFAIK, they're the only nations on earth that don't recognize our flying qualifications.)  Basically, apart from those two countries, if you have a US pilot qualification of appropriate skill and seniority, you can fly in all other nations and get an aviation job there, if you wish.

That means there are a very large number of foreign pilots who come to this country every year, from all over the world, to get a US pilot qualification.  They often have to start from the very beginning, despite some of them having thousands of hours in the air on very large airliners, because the Federal Aviation Administration (on the basis of bitter experience) refuses to recognize almost all foreign flying qualifications.  I'm sure the students find that demeaning, but it is what it is.  They have to go through the whole process:  Student Pilot, Private Pilot, Instrument, Commercial, and on through Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) if they want to fly for the airlines.  It can take as little as nine months for an experienced student, or a year or three for someone less experienced (or a complete beginner who has to build up enough hours in the air to qualify to take each successive level of licensing).  Once they have their US qualifications, even if they can't get a resident visa here, they can still go almost anywhere else in the world and be hired as a pilot, at a salary usually rather more than an entry-level pilot without US certification would earn.

That's where many, perhaps most, of those Chinese pilots come in.  They are often pilots already, flying for Chinese or Far Eastern airlines.  They save up vacation hours and their dollars, do what studying they can in advance, then come over here to knock out one or two licenses over a month to six weeks.  Two or three trips like that and they can qualify as a US ATP.  After that, the world is their oyster.  They can leave China, go anywhere else they can get a visa, and be reasonably sure of getting an aviation-related job.  (I know about this from a source in the pilot training industry, who's spoken highly of their perseverance and determination.)

So, yes, I'm sure some Chinese military pilots are coming over here to get civilian pilot training, because the standards of training here remain the highest and most demanding in the world.  However, I'll be surprised if the numbers are as great as claimed;  and I don't think the majority of them are, or will become, military pilots.

Peter

"The Higher Education Bubble That Everyone Forgot About"

 

That's the headline to Jared Dillian's analysis of higher education in the USA at present.  Here are a few excerpts.

My generation, Generation X, the smallest generation, hatched an even smaller generation, Gen Z. The number of students going to college peaked around 5–7 years ago, has been going down ever since, and will continue to go down. Many colleges and universities simply won’t be able to survive. They’re businesses, like anything else, and the schools that have something to offer will continue to thrive, and others will simply wither and blow away. We’ll have far fewer institutions of higher education 10 years from now, and while that is regrettable in a sense, it is probably a good thing.

. . .

Demographers use “demographic cliff” to describe the sharp drop in the population of 18‑ to 24‑year‑olds that began after the Great Recession and is projected to continue into the 2030s. Because this age group makes up the majority of undergraduates, fewer young people almost automatically translates into fewer traditional college students, unless college‑going rates rise a lot.​

. . .

The question is: Will schools be competing on amenities, or will they be competing on the quality of education, or will they be competing on price? My guess is all three. Yes, for the first time in history, schools will have to compete on price. I think we’ve reached the apex of college tuition, and we’re headed downward from here. Not materially, but even if the cost of college remains constant, it will decline in real terms as incomes rise. Same goes for textbooks and room and board and everything else.

. . .

Given declining birth rates generally, 50 years from now, we could have half of the colleges that we have today. Nobody is thinking this far ahead, and nobody is preparing for it. If I were a university president, this would be top of mind—how to financially prepare a university for the day that enrollment is cut in half, building up financial reserves, and not building the indoor practice field.

There's more at the link.

I suspect he's right on the money.  When I look at how many administrators colleges and universities have hired over the past couple of decades (as opposed to lecturers and professors), I'm immediately struck by the huge increase in the former versus the relative (as a proportion of the higher education workforce) decrease in the latter.  All those administrative staff are leeching off the higher education budget without contributing anything, in education terms, to the purpose of that function.  When the only purpose of a function is education, and the demand for education goes down instead of up, what's going to happen to those who aren't contributing anything educational to that sector?  That's right . . . they're going to find themselves out of work.

There's also the question of how much instruction and teaching can be handled by computers and artificial intelligence systems, versus the old lecture style of learning.  High school students have already found they can learn far faster (and get a higher quality of education) through AI systems than through teachers.  Will that translate to higher education as well?  In many areas, I see no reason why not.

I'm currently reading "The Preparation:  How To Become Competent, Confident, and Dangerous", by Doug Casey and Matt and Maxim Smith.

The blurb reads:

Skip the debt. Build the man. What if you could trade four stagnant years in lecture halls for four years of adventure—emerging as a debt‑free EMT, pilot, welder, web/app builder, rancher, and entrepreneur all in one? The Preparation is the field manual for young men (and the parents who love them) who know the old college formula is broken and want a roadmap that actually forges competence, confidence, and real‑world value.

Written by three generations—legendary investor and bestselling author Doug Casey, entrepreneur Matt Smith, and twenty‑year‑old “beta tester” Maxim Smith—this book distills their hard‑won wisdom into a four‑year, 16‑cycle program you can start tomorrow.

• 16 themed cycles—Medic, Cowboy, Pilot, Fighter, Hacker, Maker, and more—each built around a hands‑on “Anchor Course” that forces you to learn by doing, not by cramming.
• Earn‑while‑you‑learn design shows you exactly how to pay your way through each cycle and graduate debt‑free.
• Cost: roughly one year of tuition – yet delivers four years of marketable skills, global travel, and a network of do‑ers, not talkers.
• Foundational philosophy rooted in Stoicism and Renaissance thinking so you don’t just master tasks—you master yourself.
• Bullet‑proof curriculum: step‑by‑step schedules, book lists, online courses, and locations for every skill so you’re never guessing what to do next.
• Battle‑tested results—Maxim used the program to rack up EMT shifts on Oregon wildfires, fly solo over the Rockies, ranch in Uruguay, and sail the Strait of Magellan before he turned twenty.

The Problem: College now averages $140,000+ and often delivers little more than ideology, debt, and obsolete credentials.

The Preparation: compresses that money and time into a crucible that turns raw potential into a modern‑day Renaissance Man—one who can protect, build, heal, sell, and lead in a world being up‑ended by AI and economic turmoil.

If I were a young person today, looking at making my way in life but not yet certain what I wanted to do, something like "The Preparation" as an alternative to college would be very intriguing.  If I had a son or daughter, I'd certainly be making sure they read it, and considered it as a viable alternative to the current higher education grind.  At the very least, it would turn out someone far better prepared for whatever life could throw at them as the typical college or university student.  Remember Robert Heinlein's timeless advice:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

We won't get that from today's universities!

Peter

Another perspective on the job market

 

Mike Rowe, who's spent much of his life trying to revive interest in the skilled trades and related jobs, spoke with Ford's CEO the other day.  In the light of our discussion about jobs yesterday, I've taken the liberty of reproducing most of his interview here.

I just had a great conversation with Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford Motor Company, which will air Sunday night at 10pm on One Nation. (That’s Kilmeade’s show on Fox.) Jim told me that as of yesterday morning, Ford Service Departments around the country had 6,000 empty bays. Not because people’s cars and trucks didn’t need fixing, but because the shortage of technicians has become that profound.

Ford isn’t alone. Every single automotive company in America is struggling to hire technicians, and the problem – (in spite of what you’ll likely read in the comments,) has nothing to do with the pay, the benefits, or the working conditions. These jobs offer a clear path to a six-figure career, with little to no college debt. In part, the problem is mathematical – this year, 37,000 new techs were hired across the country. Unfortunately, 76,000 retired. That’s a 2:1 ration, which is actually pretty good, compared to the 5:2 ratio in most of the construction trades. But along with a lack of warm bodies, there’s a lack of interest in the work itself. A will gap, in other words, combined with a skill gap. Happily, I think that’s about to change. Unfortunately, at the expense of a colossal upheaval.

I know I’m a broken record on this, but I think our workforce is about to undergo a truly seismic change. Amazon is eliminating 14,000 corporate roles, citing both economic concerns and the impact of artificial intelligence on how the company operates. Some say the actual number will be closer to 30,000. UPS is cutting 34,000 operations roles, driven by automation. Target, Intel, Paramount, American Airlines, Starbucks…every week, another big corporation lays off thousands of people whose particular skill sets are no longer relevant. And yet, not a week goes by when some industry leader like Jim Farley doesn’t tell me about the extraordinary, unprecedented difficulty of getting skilled workers into the pipeline, and onto the jobsite.

I’ve never seen it like this. I’ve spent seventeen years trying to reinvigorate the skilled trades, by making a more persuasive case for the opportunities at hand. Typically, I’ve focused my efforts on young men and women starting their careers by offering scholarships to trade schools, and this year, I’ll redouble my efforts in that regard. But as of today, I’ll also be thinking about the hundreds of thousands of white-collar workers who are either going to retire prematurely, or hit the reset button, and learn a skill that’s in demand. Because many of those people simply don’t understand the other side of the workforce, and the myriad opportunities that exist today.

Last month, for instance, in Plano, Texas, I toured a Data Center. It was overwhelming, and in some ways, a little unsettling. But I met with a few electricians while I was there, who told me they’d all been poached from different companies at least three times in the last two years. These guys were all under 30, and all making well over $200K a year. They constantly get offers from the competition for ever-increasing salaries, because the need for electricians is acute, and their jobs are not threatened by robots or AI. (Not yet, anyway. And probably not in our lifetimes.) The same is true of welders, HVAC techs, plumbers, and so forth.

Apologies, if I sound glib. I can only imagine how scary it is for a middle-manager in a white-collar job, or a paralegal, or a coder, or a stock broker, or a graphic artist, to be told it’s time to “hit the reset button.” I know how absurd it might sound to a person in that position to be told that the ship building industry has 200,000 openings, or the energy industry has 300,000 openings, or the construction industry has 250,000 openings, or that Ford has 6,000 empty bays as of this morning.

But that’s where we are. Your jobs are not being eliminated; your industries are being eliminated. That doesn’t mean your only option is to learn a skilled trade. But the option is there, nevertheless.

I admire Mike Rowe for his tireless efforts to improve the image of skilled trades in the eyes of the average American, and highlight how critically important they are to our economy as a whole.  If I were starting over, I'd look very hard at a trade instead of the usual university-to-white-collar route that I followed.  I think I'd have a lot more fun, and I'd probably make more money, too.

Trouble is, so many First World economies have de-emphasized skilled trades as a career path that it's hard to find good training and education in the field.  In South Africa, we had so-called "technikons" as a parallel education path to universities.  One could study for a "technical degree" as easily as an "academic degree", and go all the way to a doctorate in many fields (somewhat similar to the German system of technical education, culminating in the "Dr. Ing." qualification).  Unfortunately, as part of the reorganization of South African institutions that followed the advent of democracy in 1994, the technical universities were folded into the academic system, so that today one can no longer choose which "stream" to follow.  I thought at the time that was a mistake, and I've seen nothing to make me change my mind.

Mike Rowe is doing an outstanding jobs with his Foundation to encourage and sponsor technical training.  More power to him!

Peter

An alternative point of view concerning extremism

 

Yesterday I cited Rod Dreher at some length concerning right-wing extremism.  As usual, the responses were mixed:  some for his views, some against.  I find it concerning that some were absolutely dogmatic in their views - it was their way, or the highway, and their agreement or disagreement was absolute.  That's very dangerous.  You'll recall Oliver Cromwell's words to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1650:

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

Too many of us (including me, sadly) can assume that we are not mistaken, whereas our opponents are.  In many (but by no means all) cases, it would be a lot better for us to listen to the other side and see whether there's any common ground to be found, or a better approach to achieving something of importance to the society in which both of us live.

An anonymous reader, commenting on yesterday's article, provided a link to this post on X.com by a user calling himself "Wokal Distance".  I thought it made sense.  The reader who posted the link thought it rebutted Rod Dreher's perspective, but I think it does more to sustain it overall.  I decided to re-post the whole thing here, so you could compare and contrast them for yourselves.

I despise the Groyper movement, but if you want to understand where Fuentes gets purchase with young men I will tell you how it happened by telling you about my experience at the orientation night when my son joined elementary school band:

My 11 year old son son joined the elementary school band, and so I went to the parents orientation night which was held at a local high-school. As the night went on it became obvious to me why young men rage against the larger social system.

The classrooms were inundated with DEI messages and trans pride flags. On the walls there were posters, stickers and various decorations that all invoked the various totems if diversity. Black lives matter messaging, decolonization messaging, LGBTQ+ messaging, and basically ever sort of race and gender social justice messaging you can imagine was present. The advertisements for post secondary opportunities featured social justice education prominently, including advertising a course on indigenous ways of knowing" as something grade 12 students should pursue upon graduation.  Many of the teachers has "this is a safe space" sticker son their doors, and others had variations of "in this house" messaging on their doors or on the walls of the classroom.

The entire aesthetic which dominated the decoration of classrooms was the progressive leftist coded "in this house" and "be kind" aesthetic. As soon as you walked into a classroom there was no doubt as the the political leanings of whichever teacher occupied that classroom. The only way I can describe it is to say that progressive social justice activists have colonized the school and marked their territory. 

A woman in a mask (who was in charge) got up and read a number of land acknowledgements before acknowledging the contribution of indigenous people to ways of knowing. Standard leftist land acknowledgement boilerplate. Additionally, every interaction was done in the style of HR style professionalism mixed with progressive leftist coded gentle parenting.

When it comes to how the teachers behaved I am going to draw on both that night and the other times I have been at my sons school in order to explain it. To begin, the boys are treated almost as though they are defective girls. The feminine modes of interaction and socialization are treated as though they are the only legitimate modes of interaction and serve as the taken for granted way to properly interact and navigate the world. Almost all the authority figures at my sons school are women with almost no exceptions. One day my son found out that the school had hired a single male education Assistant, and my son came home and told me, in wondrous amazement, that he saw a "boy teacher" at school. The level of wonderment and surprise he expressed was on par with what I would expect if he had walked into school and seen a triceratops walking the hallways. 

My son often comes home from school and expresses utter frustration at the fact that his preferred way of communicating, as well as the things that are aligned with his temperament are treated as though they were somehow inferior. As he is 11 (and being assessed for autism) he lacks the correct technical language to describe this, so it generally shows up as him getting in trouble for being insufficiently "gentle" and "kind" in response to various passive aggressive power plays and instances of bullying carries out by his more socially developed (often) female peers. 

To say that band night was feminine coded would be an understatement. It would be more accurate to say that feminized modes of behavior and communication were embedded in every single interaction. It was a totally alien environment for anyone who isn't well versed in navigating the social codes of progressive leftist institutional spaces. It was like the slogan "the future is female" was taken to be a command delivered from God Himself turned into an education program.

Now, I want you to imagine what it is like for an 11 year old boy to be saturated in that environment day after day. he is an alien in his own school who is treated essentially like a ticking time bomb who needs to be effectively managed rather than engaged with an taught, and he knows this is happening. It is hard to overstate the level of hostility towards boys that is  floating around in the ambient culture of the school system. It isn’t so much that there is an explicit form of anti-male bigotry (although examples of that exist) it is more that there is an overall attitude of distaste for anything masculine and an utter indifference towards the interests, fortunes, and inner lives of young boys. The expectations, norms, rules, and standards of behavior cater to the sensibilities of girls and women.

This is the entire social system that a young boy goes through from when he is 6 years old all the way until he is graduated from university.

It’s an old trope on the right to say “imagine if the roles were  reversed,” but that would be to miss the point. I know that many on the left will say that all of this is perfectly acceptable because of historical injustices and the pursuit of Social Justice. What I want to  point out to you is how absurd the world must appear through the eyes of  the average 11 year-old boy. He is basically told he has a host of social advantages (white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, etc) that he has never experienced and will never benefit from, and this justifies the system which he is immersed in. And the worst part is, if young men point any of this out, the very people who are doing it will look them in the eye with a straight face and deny that any of this ever happened. Making matters worse these men begin to figure out that the institutions have been used to advance a leftist political agenda that scapegoated their group (young white men), and when they point this out everyone in authority calls them evil bigots.

And all this happens during their formative years.

Now, Imagine you are a young white male.

You graduate from the school system and are released into the world only to find that the feminine modes of socialization pushed on you are entirely unfit for purpose. That the social skills you were taught fail utterly in both the job markets young men tend towards (construction, engineering, building, landscaping, etc) and have no purchase in the dating market where highly agentic, masculine, wealthy men have a huge advantage over the passive, docile "nice boy." On top of that, imagine that a great deal of the job listings that you peruse make it clear that preference will be given to women and "diverse" candidates, and that the job interview itself is full of shibboleths, coded statements, and trap questions meant to elicit responses that allow the hiring party to exclude anyone who isn't sufficiently versed in and aligned with the priorities of the DEI/Woke/Social Justice paradigm.

On top of that, that if a you do get a job you will exposed to various sensitivity trainings, DEI trainings, and intersectionality workshops in which your group (straight white men) are repeatedly scapegoated as the source of all the worlds pathologies. Laid at your feet are patriarchy, colonialism, racism, sexism and a great number of other social evils for which you are taken to be complicit in and have a responsibility for fixing in virtue of being a white male.

While all this is going on a series of scandals (COVID, Men in womens' sports, trans kids, etc) reveal to you the degree to which the institutions that make up the society you live in have adopted an ideology that is actively hostile to you because you are a straight white male, and have been denying you opportunity while scapegoating you for all societies problems and treating you like you are a defective girl.

Once you understand this, the real question is not "why are some young men radicalizing?" the real question is "why are there any young men at all who have not been radicalized?"

None of this is to excuse any of the extremist radicals who are attempting to harness the resentment and anger of young men for their evil purposes. The point is to get you to understand why young men will attach themselves to any voice who is willing to stridently call for the obliteration of the social system and ideology which lied to them during their formative years and is currently doing things which rob them of opportunities for advancement and success.

The institutions have totally blown their credibility with young men, and have completely destroyed young men's trust in institutions. Young men view the current set of social institutions as ideologically corrupt and totally illegitimate, and they view the narratives that emerge from those institutions as being expressions of as nothing more then a story told to legitimize an ideology which seeks to hold them back. As such, the institutions and their narratives have absolutely no normative pull on young Gen Z men. 

I am not saying the situation is hopeless, but unless you acknowledge what I have laid out here, and engage in a good faith attempt to understand what the school system, Universities, non-profits, HR departments, and other civic institutions have done to young men, you will never be able to gain their trust enough to lead them away from guys like Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate, Andrew Torba, and other pathological influences.

That certainly highlights why so many of our young men are attracted to extremism in one form or another.  It's a chilling condemnation of what we've allowed our schools to become:  institutions where our children are brainwashed and propagandized, rather than educated.  I can't think of a better argument for home schooling than the description above.

Compare and contrast that to Rod Dreher's perspective, as covered in these pages yesterday and ten days ago.  What do you think, readers?

I've come out of a background where differences of opinion led - literally - to civil war, mass murder, and the utter destruction of the fabric of a nation.  I've seen it at first hand in the Third World far too often to be under any illusions about how bad it can get.  I would far rather talk than start shooting, unless and until the latter option becomes the only way to defend what one believes in - and yes, I've done that, too.

Only those who've seen and experienced how bad it can get have any real idea of the ultimate development of the mess we're in.  Ask those who served in Mogadishu, or "hot spots in Afghanistan or Iraq.  They know . . . and they don't want that to come here . . . but if we don't get a handle on extremism on both the left and the right wings of our body politic, it's going to come here.

Peter

A school massacre narrowly averted

 

Full marks to two Florida teens who came across a TikTok video last month, and in the process averted a tragedy.

The video included a five-second clip of the interior plans of an unidentified building, along with disturbing elements suggesting violence.  After talking with a friend, the teens contacted the authorities in Florida and told them about the video clip.  The authorities had nothing to go on except the clip, but from the video the FBI were able to identify the building as a school in Kennewick, Washington.

The federal authorities immediately contacted law enforcement, and a combined team tried to narrow down the identity and location of whoever had posted the video clip.  The story of how they did so is interesting detective work in itself.  Through hard work and some lucky breaks, they were able to identify and arrest the fourteen-year-old would-be perpetrator, Mason Bently-Ray Ashby, before his planned attack.

A screenshot that was deleted about 7 p.m. Sept 20, about 45 minutes before the search warrant of Ashby's home was executed, had the beginning of a manifesto, according to court documents.

"Hey, you found my manifesto I am sure you will all be laughing at me by the time you figure out who I am and why I did what I did ...," it said. "I'm sure my Discord and other social media will be released nearly instantly after the massacre."

The manifesto said he had sent photos to friends and, "Hell, maybe, I'll even record the attack and send it to a select few."

There's more at the link.

If convicted of the offense, Ashby can only be incarcerated until the age of 21, because he's still too young to be charged as an adult.  That's a whole new set of problems for the justice system to deal with as the case progresses.  There's also the issue of why parents weren't given more warning, and more information, as soon as the danger was known.  Some of them are asking very pointed questions about that, pointing out that it left their children in danger.  I find it hard to disagree with them.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, I hope somebody acknowledges and rewards the initiative shown by those two Florida teens.  I think it's beyond reasonable doubt that they prevented a school massacre.

Peter

The death of lecture-based universities?

 

That's what the Australian Courier-Mail foresees.  A tip o' the hat to our Australian reader Andrew for sending me the link to the article.

The future of face-to-face learning at Australia’s universities is in serious doubt as more institutions ditch old-school lectures in favour of full online or hybrid learning models.

While some students and staff are campaigning to save lectures from the chopping block, others in the sector say the train has already left the station and the future of universities is online as students “vote with their feet”.

The face-to-face debate reared its head again recently as Adelaide University students and staff protested what they claimed was a move away from in-person learning at Australia’s newest university – a claim the university continues to deny.

Meanwhile, Open University Australia helps potential students connect with more than 890 online degrees in response to changing student preferences.

University of South Queensland (USQ) Associate Professor Alice Brown has researched and written on the challenges and opportunities of online higher education learning, finding the ultimate determiner is the students themselves who routinely “vote with their feet”.

“There is a trend and phenomena of students becoming increasingly discerning about how they want to study and when they want to study,” Professor Brown said.

“If they are not offered an online option, then they will vote with their feet and go to courses that are fully online.”

. . .

The debate comes as a number of Victorian universities are now offering digital-only lectures, with most choosing not to reintroduce in-person models post-Covid.

RMIT environmental engineering student Ted Oldis, 24, said attending his university in-person was a toss-up decision he makes daily.

“If you’re trying to juggle work, friends and study you have to balance the convenience of the online lectures with attending in-person,” he said.

“If you don’t need the social aspect and you think the learning is the same, it honestly comes down to convenience, and more often than not it’s easier to do the online learning.”

Mr Oldis said he had toyed with attending as many lectures and tutorials as possible in-person this semester.

“This semester I made a conscious decision to attend every class and lecture I can in-person,” he said.

“I wanted to try to engage more and meet new people. But to be honest, I don’t feel it’s been worth it compared to doing the same stuff online.”

There's more at the link.

I have every sympathy with those students who are avoiding in-person classes and focusing instead on online and distance education.  I hold four university qualifications, two of which I obtained through distance education only (i.e. by post) and two by part-time evening classes plus distance education.  I can't say I felt in any way short-changed by not having the full "campus experience" of a full-time education.  In fact, the professors in my Masters degree often said to us students that they preferred working with us as opposed to full-time students, because we'd already learned to fend for ourselves and earn a living, and didn't expect the world to provide everything to us on a platter.  Comparing ourselves to the self-centered idle twits who infested that campus' post-graduate programs, it wasn't hard to see why they came to that conclusion.

Looking at the pro-Palestinian protests across many US universities over the past couple of years simply makes the contrast even starker.  The only reason those students could carry on so irresponsibly (not to mention violently) is that they had parents and trust funds and bursaries to pay for their existence while they did so.  The rest of us, who have to work for a living, may want to protest in favor of causes we support, but we can't afford to do so nearly as often or as long, because we know that our employers will kick us out and hire replacements who'll be willing to earn every dollar they pay us.  We've grown up.  Most of those students haven't.

I think American higher education would be a lot better off if we got rid of at least half the campuses in this country and fired all the professors who live in their academic cloud cuckoo land instead of in the real world.  I'd also suggest that we fire every student who doesn't pass at least half their courses every year.  No do-overs, no accommodations, no touchy-feely wishy-washy excuses.  Unless there are truly exceptional circumstances to excuse them, they can pass, or get out.  Why should my tax dollars be wasted on supporting them?

Grrr . . .

Peter

Some very thought-provoking essays

 

I subscribe to a few Substack authors that pique my interest and make me think outside my usual box.  This morning I'd like to mention a few articles that have hit the mark over the past few days.  I highly recommend that you read them.  Individually and in aggregate, they try to forecast where our society is going - and with it, our future.

First, Ted Gioia says that "a huge change is coming".

Would you believe me if I told you that the biggest news story of our century is happening right now—but is never mentioned in the press?

That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

But that is often the case when a bold new worldview appears.

• How long did it take before the Renaissance got mentioned in the town square?
• When did newspapers start covering the Enlightenment?
• Or the collapse in mercantilism?
• Or the rise of globalism?
• Or the birth of Christianity or Islam or some other earthshaking creed?

The biggest changes often happen long before they even get a name. By the time the scribes notice, the world is already reborn.

. . .

There’s a general rule here—the bigger the shift, the easier it is to miss.

We are living through a situation like that right now. We are experiencing a total shift—like the magnetic poles reversing. But it doesn’t even have a name—not yet.

So let’s give it one.

Let’s call it: The Collapse of the Knowledge System.

It's a valuable examination of why our "common knowledge" is becoming uncommon, to the detriment of our society and those who are (and will be) growing up in it.  Very important, IMHO.

Next, El Gato Malo (who eschews capital letters, but will doubtless forgive me for using them) points out that the political playbook of the progressive left is nothing new.

why is so much of the modern left constantly in alliance with the worst possible people and trends?

why do they champion only anti-social anti-heros?

why do they attack virtue, resilience, and any sort of rugged individualism?

why do they seek to break any sort of successful structure, high trust system, cultural or individual confidence, exceptionalism and function?

it’s a playbook.

they do it because they need to.

and nothing about this strategy has changed since 1919.

. . .

only in the first phase is marxist-leftism about lawlessness.

that's the precursor to set up the conquest.

it's ultimately authoritarian subjugation by boot and bayonet.

the disruption serves to destroy your culture and set the stage for the demand for another one, a strongman to step in and make the streets safe and put food on the table and stop the chaos.

the goal is destruction. they want wreckage and dissolution, amorality and failure.

they want fear and dependence. that’s the only soil in which such an odious weed of tyranny can take root.

this is why marxist revolutions always commence by wrecking everything high function about the societies they seek to subsume.

they seem like the enemy of success and sanity, of flourishing and fecundity because they are.

they can only win by wiping such things out, destroying them utterly.

Last but by no means least, Rod Dreher sees in the Los Angeles riots a portent of a new civil war, one that might easily spread to Europe and engulf the entire Western world in a new "civilizational collapse".

Waking up this morning in deepest Gascony ... I can’t help wondering if what’s happening in L.A. — and that spread overnight in some ways to other US cities, I’m just seeing — is a foretaste of Europe’s future. Except things are far, far worse in Europe. If they try mass deportations here, what’s happening in L.A. will look like a schoolyard fight.

. . .

Are we at the point of Submission Or War? If Trump’s decision to enforce American law — think about that: enforce American law! — is an autocratic casus belli (as the California governor says), then … where are we, exactly? Put another way, if the only way to avoid this conflict is for Trump to say that borders don’t matter, then isn’t that a choice to surrender the country?

. . .

Yesterday in Camus’s vast living room, we listened to him discourse on how cultural knowledge has already collapsed in France. Camus is not a politician or a political polemicist, though that role has been forced on him. He became a polemicist because he is a deeply cultured man who has lived through the ruin of the things he values most. As he makes clear in his Great Replacement writings, the barbarians from abroad were aided and abetted by the native barbarians — chiefly his former comrades on the Left — who demolished cultural knowledge and authority for the sake of “justice”. This grand leveling has dispossessed the French in their own land (and has happened throughout the West). I pointed out too that technology has more recently played a role, with professors back in the US telling me that their students now can scarcely read. It’s not that they are illiterate, in the sense of not understanding what words mean; it’s that they lack the attention span to process a lengthy text, and don’t see why they should have to make the effort. AI is going to “remember” it all for them, right?

It’s civilizational collapse all right. Camus said to us yesterday that it’s imperative that people today who want to survive this intellectually and culturally form retreats where the knowledge of what it meant to be a civilized human can stay alive. He likened this to the Benedict Option. This elderly gay agnostic French writer, who has retreated to his own small rural castle, full of books and music, has taken his own version, and says we all have to find ways to do the same.

Three very important articles, IMHO.  All three reinforce each other in identifying the collapse of education and "common knowledge" into a society more ignorant of reality, and deprived of wisdom, than any in the past century or two.  I recommend them all . . . and I'm grateful that I won't be alive long enough to see their forecasts come true, if the authors are correct.

Peter

Remembering the Greatest Invasion

 

Back in 2014, the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France, Jean-Christophe Rosé produced this 90-minute documentary for France Télévisions.  It uses archival footage that was remastered and colorized, and is probably one of the best sources to understand what the run-up to D-Day involved (with training and other preparations) and the reality of combat on that day.

I'll also mention my father, who was not part of D-Day itself, but served in the Royal Air Force throughout World War II, and shouldered his share of the burden.

Finally, may all those who died on D-Day, on all sides, rest in peace.  There's no enmity beyond the grave.

(Oh - and for those wondering about the headline:  the D-Day invasion, known at the time as Operation Neptune, was the largest in history so far, in terms of numbers of people [on land, at sea and in the air], numbers of ships and aircraft, etc.  The largest invasions of the Pacific War were Operation Musketeer (the invasion of the Philippines), Operation Detachment (the invasion of Iwo Jima) and Operation Iceberg (the invasion of Okinawa), but none of them were as large as Operation Neptune in Normandy.  The planned invasion of Japan in Operations Olympic and Coronet would have been larger, by a significant degree, but those invasions never took place, thanks to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

Peter

Graduation without education?

 

I had to laugh at this report of a young graduate at the University of Buffalo who was determined to have his infant son share the stage with him - despite regulations forbidding it due to safety reasons.  Despite campus police trying to stop him, he succeeded.

A University at Buffalo graduate and proud father defied school officials as he ran across the stage to receive his diploma with his young son in tow and police in pursuit, according to viral footage that has been viewed over 8 million times.

Jean Paul Al Arab had promised his son they’d collect his diploma together. He kept that vow at the university’s Alumni Arena on Sunday despite the youngster not being allowed to cross the stage because of safety concerns.

. . .

School security and a police officer attempted to grab the determined graduate, but failed when Al Arab made it on stage and celebrated in front of the raucous crowd.

Al Arab also shook hands with the school administrators on stage before walking off as a police officer waited behind him on stage.

I liked the University's comment about his son.

Al Arab’s son, despite wearing the traditional cap and gown, did not receive a diploma, with the school saying he was a few credits shy of graduation standards.

“We hope to see him back on stage in about 20 years so he can follow in his dad’s footsteps,” the school said.

There's more at the link.  Here's a video clip of the event.

That video should definitely go into the family album for future posterity . . .

Peter

Not your average training device!

 

I was amused to read about training ranchers and cowhands for calving season.

It’s a life-size steel-reinforced cow made of epoxy and fiberglass with a 70-pound unborn rubber calf inside.

Veterinarian Kelly Schaefer said that not only can the simulator help ranchers and their kids keep more calves alive while birthing, it was the most fun she’d had in a while.

Look at the expression on the boy's face!

“That was the first time we've ever used it, and it's an amazing tool,” Schaefer told Cowboy State Daily. “It’ll never be 100% accurate, but it lets people practice calving scenarios before an emergency happens. It was a huge hit.”

There's more at the link - some of it a bit technical for this non-rancher reader, but entertaining and interesting.

I must admit, I'd never thought about the financial aspect of momma cow health, but it's significant.  According to the article, a new-born calf already represents a value of about a thousand dollars, which puts a whole new perspective on keeping them alive and healthy.

Here's a video clip showing the momma cow simulator in action.

I'm sure the real deal, in the rain and mud and wind and cold, would be a whole lot less sanitary - but under those conditions, it's too late to learn everything at first hand.  You lose calves that way.

Peter

Is a college degree worth the money?

 

For most of us, unless it's in a subject requiring high academic qualifications such as medicine or some of the STEM fields, Mike Rowe says it's not.  This video clip will be well worth the twelve minutes it'll take to watch it.  (I like his comparison to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven".)

If you have kids coming up to college age, or your friends and extended family do, may I suggest they should be encouraged to watch that clip, too?

Peter

Deep Schools corruption???

 

We've heard of the Deep State often enough, but Tulsa, Oklahoma looks to have a Deep Schools problem.

The highly anticipated state audit for Tulsa Public Schools released Wednesday [last week] accuses former leaders of promoting a culture where financial misappropriation ran wild for years.

. . .

Byrd pointed to various areas of concern highlighted in the audit, noting that her office found more than 1,400 financial discrepancies. She said multiple district administrators fostered a culture of financial noncompliance and disregarded laws and policies meant to protect taxpayer money.

Key findings from the audit:

• Byrd says the investigation focused on more than $37.7 million in expenditures.
• $25 million of the money investigated, according to the audit, violated the district’s own policies.
• Former Chief Learning and Talent Officer Devin Fletcher was able to commit fraud because of lax financial and internal controls. Fletch was convicted and sentenced to 20 months in federal prison in 2024.
• Tulsa Public Schools paid more than 700 vendors without receiving proof of services.
• Some vendor contract language was vague.
• Some invoices didn’t list services on them at all.
• State auditor’s office experienced difficulty obtaining some records pertaining to the audit due to poor record-keeping practices.
• Processes were taken to bypass the local board of education to avoid oversight.
• Conflicts of interest in awarding vendor contracts.

“Oklahoma law states that no payments can be made without an itemized invoice, as well as proof of receipt of goods or service,” said Byrd. “TPS’ disregard for this statute was perhaps the most pervasive issue uncovered during our investigation.”

. . .

News 4 also received late reaction to the audit findings Wednesday from Governor Kevin Stitt who encouraged Drummond to take action:

I requested this audit in 2022, and today Auditor Byrd finally confirmed what myself and many other Oklahomans believed to be true— where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And it’s deeply troubling to see Tulsa Public Schools having engaged in such gross financial misconduct. The release of the audit is only the first step in holding wrongdoers accountable. The Attorney General needs to take immediate action and bring charges wherever possible. This can never be allowed to happen in Oklahoma again.

There's more at the link.

As if we needed any more evidence of why a D.O.G.E.-style investigation of any and all administrative bodies, in federal, state and local government, is vitally necessary!  $25 million is chump change on a federal level, where we're talking expenditure in the billions and trillions of dollars;  but it's a huge financial burden on the taxpayers of Tulsa, who are now on the hook for however much can be proved to have been stolen or misused.  How long will it take them to make up that loss?  And how much impact will that have on their children?

Full marks to the Governor of Oklahoma for pushing for this investigation, three years ago;  and full marks to the auditor for pushing for its publication, despite resistance from Tulsa Public Schools.  As usual, the administrators and bureaucrats are scuttling for cover now that their misdeeds have been uncovered.  I hope much of the money can be recovered from those responsible for its loss, and that those guilty of criminal malfeasance in office will spend long enough behind bars to regret their error of judgment.

I wonder how many other school districts have similar problems that haven't yet been detected?  I'm willing to bet it's more than a few, in every state in the nation.

 

Peter

Yet again, jobs take a hit

 

Waste Management, a very large - dare I say it? - garbage industry in Texas, is planning a significant reduction in its workforce.  The reasons behind it are seldom discussed, but apply to many sectors of the economy.

Houston-based Waste Management will continue to shed jobs in 2025 by reducing dependency on roles that require physical labor and turning more to technology and automation for its services.

“There has been a long-term plan to not backfill specific vacated roles. By 2026, we’re anticipating that will lead to the reduction of about 5,000 positions,” said Kelly Caplan, senior director of external communications. ”At the same time, increased automation is reducing the demand for these types of labor-intensive roles.”

. . .

“Our average heavy equipment operator is approaching 53 years old. It becomes difficult to find folks to drive a truck or to work on a piece of heavy equipment,” Fish said on the show. “So this is almost by necessity that we’re using technology to replace difficult-to-hire roles. I think one thing that I wanted to make sure I was clear about on here, though, is we’re not laying folks off. All we’re doing is using attrition. Some of those jobs have very high turnover rates.”

There's more at the link.

Note the critical issues:

1. These aren't layoffs, but natural attrition.  Nobody will be fired, but as they resign or retire, they won't be replaced.
2. It's hard to recruit employees for jobs that are physically hard work, unpleasant, etc.  Therefore, automation is not only a viable alternative, it may be the only alternative.
3. Companies are now building reduced workforces into their plans for the future.

That's going to impact a large number of industries and a lot more companies in the not very distant future.  Expect it to impact the number of jobs that need to be filled.  Excuses from pro-migrant pressure groups that migrants are "doing the jobs Americans won't do" sound pretty hollow against the reality that most of those jobs won't exist soon.

We've already seen how robotics and automation are impacting farms.  Preparing the fields, planting, fertilizing, weeding and harvesting the crops can now be automated to a surprising extent, reducing the required workforce by a very large proportion.  Cellular telephone technology, drone (UAV) supervision, artificial intelligence, satellite navigation and other innovations are becoming commonplace.  Sure, the initial costs of the automation are high, but once it's paid for, it just goes on working (given routine maintenance).  Its long-term cost averages significantly less than the wages of the number of people it would take to do the same work.  It doesn't get sick, doesn't need vacations, works long hours without complaint, and never goes on strike.  I know of a couple of big vegetable farms that now employ only about 15% of the staff they used to hire every season, and many of those they hire are skilled, educated technicians rather than unskilled labor.  They earn big money to do a sophisticated job.  Farm work ain't what it used to be . . .

Fast food is seeing the same transformation.  Young men and women used to start out their careers by flipping burgers in a fast food joint, or waiting on tables.  In many places, automated ordering kiosks have replaced cashiers to take orders, and food preparation is increasingly being handled by robotic equipment.  All the advantages discussed above of automating farms apply to restaurants and fast food outlets, too.

Washington D.C. is now experiencing (at express-train speeds) the same phenomenon.  Huge, overstaffed, slow, kludgy federal bureaucracies have grown too big to afford, and too large to be efficient at their jobs.  President Trump is taking an axe to them, reducing workforces, insisting on technological updates where necessary, and slashing budgets to reflect our economic reality.  It has to happen.  If President Trump did not do it, someone else would have to, or else our sclerotic bureaucracy would implode under its own weight.  However, tens (even hundreds) of thousands of jobs are going to be lost in the process.  What will happen to those who are laid off?  Do they have the skills to find good jobs elsewhere?  In an era where good workers are harder and harder to find, will such jobs even be available for them, or will they have been automated out of existence?  In the private sector at least, the answer to the latter question is increasingly "Yes".

Have our schools adapted?  Are they preparing students to enter this increasingly technological workplace, to deal with the advanced automation they're going to encounter?  I fear not.  In fact, I think the poor quality of education in American schools is making them less able to deal with it than if they were home-schooled.  Note this exchange on X over the weekend:

Think about that in the context of an increasingly automated society - and then compare it to schools that still behave like dinosaurs.  Sure, there are big dangers about ideologically warped AI trying to propagandize our kids, rather than educate them;  but whether we like it or not, the advantages of AI-assisted education are already so evident as to make them virtually unstoppable.  Even companies that forbid their employees to use outside AI tools are faced with widespread disobedience from their staff, who simply find such tools too useful to ignore.  I'm willing to bet that companies like Waste Management are already figuring out how AI can help their garbage disposal operations, too.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Peter

That gets it said

 

Found on social media:

It's funny, but it's also tragic.  Oh, well.  Let the cleanup continue!

Peter

Quote of the year (so far)

 

"Woke"-ness, political correctness, sexism and sheer plain daftness are all evident in this one-liner:

“When Black female students are repeatedly disciplined for being social, loud, or goofy in the mathematics classroom, they experience mathematical violence.”

"Mathematical violence"???  What on earth is that?  Perhaps it's a variation on the ancient Roman custom of decimation, where one legionary out of every ten was put to death to punish severe misconduct?  There's certainly mathematics involved in that, and violence too (very much so) . . . but I haven't yet come across any school, college or university advocating the execution of one in ten students for "being social, loud or goofy".  Perhaps someone should try that, on the grounds of being mathematically - albeit not politically - correct?

The toenail-curling stupidity and mindless blathering of the "woke" are still with us, it seems . . .

Peter

Visas, immigrants, and adversarial politics in the USA

 

The fuss over H1B and other worker visas is ongoing, and doesn't look like being resolved anytime soon.  That's a pity for our country, because there are good arguments to be made on both sides of the issue.  Certainly, we have too many immigrants at present (and I say that as an immigrant myself!);  but at the same time, our education system is churning out a truly vast proportion of our young people who can't read, can't write, and can't handle basic numeracy.  Even worse, when the best of our youngsters get to university or college, they're wasting time (in some cases, years) on "remedial education" to fix those earlier problems, then studying a lot of courses that have nothing whatsoever to do with the specialization they've chosen.  As noted in our earlier article today:

The rot at the heart of universities in the West goes beyond expecting very little of students. It also shows up in the politicised nature of what they are asked to do. Engineering students ... complained after they were set the task of creating ‘a product for LGBTQ+ people focussed on providing education or safe spaces’. Students, not unreasonably, questioned what relevance this task had to engineering, and why it was worth 70 per cent of their module grade. Previous cohorts of engineering students apparently got to build a Mars rover.

The "woke" establishment is basically treating education as a tool to indoctrinate students in a particular political and philosophical perspective, a world view that's based almost entirely on dubious, flimsy theories that collapse in the face of the reality in which we live.

This is directly affecting the debate over work visas to the USA.  For decades I've watched the quality of graduates from US universities, both from the perspective of a businessman who had to select applicants for jobs in the information technology industry, and as a pastor looking at how such applicants were coping with life, the universe and everything.  In so many words, you could say (and I do) that US universities are failing to produce graduates who understand reality.  Everything is theoretical to them;  and if the issue of reality raises its ugly head, they prefer to try to ignore or change that reality rather than adjust their views.  It's astonishing to see, but I daresay many of my readers have encountered it, and understand what I'm talking about.

Foreign graduates seldom exhibit the same cocooned approach to reality.  Many of them have had to struggle and sacrifice to graduate, after competing against vast numbers of applicants to get into university in the first place.  They want to come to America because it offers an environment in which success brings worldly reward and upward mobility - something often conspicuous by its absence in their home countries.  If you're a good engineer in, say, Mumbai in India, or Jakarta in Indonesia, you'll earn more than those around you, to be sure;  but that income will still be circumscribed by the fact that there are a dozen graduates eager to take your place.  They have nowhere else to go, because the doors of emigration to the West are all too often closed and locked against them.  Therefore, they'll compete with you and each other, thus driving down income and upward mobility in society.  Under those circumstances, why wouldn't they strive with might and main to get a work visa to come to a society that offers them so much more?

Compare and contrast the average US tertiary education graduate, as described above, with the average Third World tertiary graduate.  Who's hungrier for success?  Who's going to work harder to achieve it?  Who's going to accept that in order to succeed, they have to start with low expectations and look to rise by proving their ability, their worth, to the satisfaction of those who pay them?  The answer to those questions reveals the impetus from corporations to keep the H1B and work visa stream flowing.  If it wasn't profitable to employers, they wouldn't support it.  They certainly don't want the administrative and financial overhead of bringing such employees over here:  it's costly, inconvenient and carries with it a bureaucratic tangle that makes compliance difficult.  Nevertheless, despite those obstacles, it's still cheaper for them than hiring local graduates who want a lot more money to produce a lot less work, and who are less driven to succeed.  That's the blunt reality of the situation.

I agree with many critics that foreign graduates are often of lower intelligence (as measured by IQ) than local graduates.  That's not nearly as important as many people think.  A worker with an IQ of 120 may be bored silly by more repetitive tasks, or try to "coast" by using his intelligence instead of working harder.  A foreign worker with the same qualification and an IQ of, say, 100, may produce more and better work than his local, "more intelligent" rival simply because he's used to working harder, with greater application, than those around him.  He's had to do so in order to get where he is.  Nobody checked his IQ score, and did more for him on the basis that "he's smart".  Instead, they checked whether he was working harder, and producing more and better results, than his competitors in the university and/or workplace.  That's how he got where he is:  and he isn't going to sit back and relax because he's now in a job, a company, an environment, that doesn't drive him as hard - not if he wants to stay there.

There are all sorts of arguments that such foreign "imports" produce a lower quality of work, or abuse the system by "gaming" it, or try to hire more like themselves in order to drive Americans out of the workplace.  All those complaints are probably true, as far as I can judge from my limited knowledge of the field.  Yet, despite all that, corporations continue to hire them.  Why would they do that if it wasn't to their advantage to do so?

That's the question none of the opponents of workplace immigration will answer.  If you locally supply the demand, that will automatically shut down most of the inflow of foreign skilled workers . . . but if you don't shut down the demand, that won't happen.  Corporations won't shut down the demand, because it's to their advantage to continue with the present system.  You won't be able to reform the system unless you first reform the conditions that gave rise to its growth - and that means tackling the US education system, just as much as business and immigration law.  Do you hear H1B opponents saying anything about that?  No, you don't.

Visa reform is only one element - and probably not the most important element - in a structural reform that will impact many areas of US society.  Unless and until we recognize that, and begin to address it, the abuse of work visas at the expense of US employees will continue.

That's the bottom line.

Peter

"The death throes of the university are upon us"

 

That's the headline of an article by Joanna Williams.  She writes from a British perspective, but precisely the same issues are visible in American tertiary education, with a trans-Atlantic flavor.

Perhaps most significantly, the financial crisis in England’s higher-education sector is coming to a head ... The thorough-going marketisation of higher education has also affected the quality of the education on offer. Many popular institutions have expanded by lowering standards. Indeed, entry requirements for international students, whose fees are uncapped, have virtually disappeared at some universities. Even the lecturers’ union has noted that the ability to speak English is being discarded in the dash for cash cows. One professor told the BBC that 70 per cent of his recent master’s students had inadequate English, making it difficult to teach anything but the basics. Now, after decades of growth, international recruitment has fallen this year, adding to the sector’s financial woes.

Universities’ response to the cash crisis reveals their deeper crisis of purpose. Up to 10,000 university jobs are reported to have been cut this year. Yet diversity, equity and inclusion teams seem to have been largely spared the axe. Instead, universities are cutting core academic disciplines ... Once, it would have been unthinkable for a university not to offer degrees in major branches of learning, such as literature or philosophy. These subjects were taught not because ‘the market’ made them ‘viable’, but because they contributed to our understanding of the word and what it means to be human. That they can now be so readily discarded speaks to an impoverished intellectual climate that universities themselves have helped to create.

. . .

The rot at the heart of universities in the West goes beyond expecting very little of students. It also shows up in the politicised nature of what they are asked to do. Engineering students at King’s College London complained after they were set the task of creating ‘a product for LGBTQ+ people focussed on providing education or safe spaces’. Students, not unreasonably, questioned what relevance this task had to engineering, and why it was worth 70 per cent of their module grade. Previous cohorts of engineering students apparently got to build a Mars rover.

Another insight into the politicised nature of higher education came when the thesis topic of an unfortunate PhD student at Cambridge went viral on social media. Ally Louks’s research into ‘Olfactory Ethics’ – essentially, linking descriptions of bad smells to prejudice and oppression – prompted a ferocious backlash. But, as one shrewd observer noted, on many undergraduate courses ‘the study of structural oppression in its various forms is the degree, and primary texts and historical context and linguistic and subject knowledge become “nice-to-haves”’.

There's more at the link.

I suppose a large part of the problem can be ascribed to defining the purpose of higher education.  It used to be the case that education was at the service of society, teaching us where we came from and giving us the aspiration - and the tools - to progress further.  Now, it's become yet another tool of indoctrination, discarding (even vilifying) the past when it's no longer politically correct, and trying to actually change the course of society by making us feel guilty about the way we live and the attitudes we hold.  The message of "woke" is, at its heart, a message of hatred for the human condition that exists, and a drive to remake that condition into something entirely foreign to human nature.

There's also the question of whether education is to equip us to work in our society, or to live in our society, or to impose different models (e.g. business, or technology, or world view) on our society.  Education is no longer seen as valuable for its own sake, but as a tool to help us accomplish things.  This is in stark contrast to earlier generations, who saw education - serious, challenging education, not frivolous, valueless courses - as something to create a well-rounded person.  My parents encouraged me to get a generalist Bachelor of Arts degree as my first tertiary qualification for precisely that reason.  After that, they assured me, I could "specialize" in whatever took my fancy.  I followed their advice, and I've never regretted it.  After my B.A. (English, History and Philosophy) I did a post-graduate diploma, and then a Masters degree, in Management;  and, after the good Lord changed my career calling, I studied Theology and related subjects.  My generalist education and business experience, plus some military background, all came in very useful as a pastor and chaplain, and I think made me more approachable to my parishioners.

As part of this conundrum, I think the concept of a residential University education has come to be little more than a self-indulgent, hedonistic existence.  Every one of my four University qualifications was earned through part-time and distance education, because I couldn't afford to attend full-time and live in a residence with other students.  Frankly, I think that's proved to have been an asset.  I had to learn right from the start that I was responsible for my own expenses, my own needs.  If I didn't do what had to be done, nobody else was going to do it for me!  I wish more tertiary students today could learn that lesson the hard way.  I suspect it would make them better human beings, cutting through self-indulgence and forcing them to confront reality.

Finally, I find myself wishing that more of our leaders, in politics, business and academia, had enjoyed a generalist education, to broaden their horizons before they'd climbed the ladder of success.  Too many of our leaders have a blinkered approach to their work.  They see it from one perspective only, through a single set of lenses, ignoring the fact that there are many other aspects to which they're giving no weight at all.  It's a bit like the "Fair Witness" approach described by the late, great Robert A. Heinlein in his novel "Stranger in a Strange Land".  We need more "Fair Witnesses" in our midst, IMHO, but also more "Fair Leaders" who can be similarly accurate in their assessments.

Oh, well.  My university days are far behind me, so perhaps I'm no longer qualified to judge contemporary institutions.  Is there a post-graduate qualification in Curmudgeonhood?

Peter

Will AI devalue university degrees?

 

One observer argues that artificial intelligence, if permitted and used in university education, will indeed devalue the product of that education.

Why would any firm or institution that produces a very valuable currency of its own then want to debase it?

I’m talking about education, where the currency is the academic credentials it produces. The sector has begun to clip its own coinage, by allowing artificial intelligence (AI) into classrooms.

Just last week, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) boasted how it would introduce AI-generated course material. In a press release, a professor of Comparative Literature called Zrinka Stahuljak said that: “Normally, I would spend lectures contextualising the material and using visuals to demonstrate the content, but now all of that is in the textbook we generated.”

That’s nice. Then again, with course modules called things like “Ternary Positionality: Relationality, Decoloniality and Interpretations”, one suspects she may have been getting a robot to generate her course material for some time. She may even be one herself. Who knows?

Using large language models (LLMs) to create or assess work comes with a couple of serious problems. The AI introduces factual errors, or “hallucinations”. Any accurate material that comes out of AI isn’t very good, either: it’s typically a bland and generic mash-up that has earned the name “slop”.

But that’s not the real problem, which is much more profound. Once students use ChatGPT to write their essays, they can disengage from their subject and bluff their way through.

It’s cheating, pure and simple. And if teachers become reliant on using AI to mark their students’ essays, as they are being urged to, they can disengage from their jobs too.

It reduces teachers and students to mindless zombies pushing buttons in their sleep. This scenario may seem far fetched, but it’s already happening. Speed marking and essay writing services abound.

Now think what happens when a student goes to cash in their expensively acquired credential with an employer. A survey for Currys last week found that the majority of students (63pc) believe that AI has improved their job prospects.

They may be in for a shock. If they’ve graduated from a college known to be using AI, the employer has no idea if the student is diligent, or a cynical and lazy cheat. So graduates will find out the hard way what credential clipping means.

. . .

Eventually many further education credentials will be worthless.

There's more at the link (which may be paywalled).

I'm not so sure that AI is primarily to blame for the devaluation in university qualifications.  Much of the blame, IMHO, lies in the teaching of worthless, academically useless courses that cannot possibly benefit students in any career field.  (Classic, if over-used example:  underwater basket-weaving.)  When students are forced to study subjects that they know have little (if any) relationship to the world in which they live, and in which they will be expected to work and produce results if they're to earn a living, they become demotivated.  Demotivated students (those with any sense, that is) won't work hard to produce good academic results in pseudo-academic fields.  Q.E.D.

When I was a manager, I tried to hire people with work experience and part-time education whenever possible, rather than those straight out of university.  A programmer with three or four years' practical experience plus a part-time business degree would be productive almost immediately.  One with a four-year degree and no business experience would take six months to a year to become productive, because they had so much to learn.  That was decades ago, of course . . . if I had to hire people today, I'd actively motivate against any candidate with only a degree, because I'd expect at least half of what they'd learned in university to be "woke" hogwash.  They'll take a year or two to get it out of their systems and become capable of learning, let alone deliver work of an acceptable and commercially viable standard.

I'm glad I don't have kids wanting to go to university these days.  I'd rather pay for them to take an apprenticeship in a hands-on skill, where they'd learn useful things and earn a worthwhile salary from day one of their employment.

Peter

The intersection of "fatness" and "blackness"???

 

I'm a bit mind-boggled after reading about a new course offered by the University of Maryland.

"Intro to Fat Studies: Fatness, Blackness and Their Intersections," is being offered as a General Education course to students for the spring semester. The three-credit course can be taken to fulfill the university's Distributive Studies or Diversity course requirements to graduate, according to the university website.

The course description says it "examines fatness as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability."

"Though we will look at fatness as intersectional, this course will particularly highlight the relationship between fatness and Blackness," the description continues. "We approach this area of study through an interdisciplinary humanities and social-science lens which emphasizes fatness as a social justice issue. The course closes with an examination of fat liberation as liberation for all bodies with a particular emphasis on performing arts and activism as a vehicle for liberation and challenging fatmisia."

There's more at the link.

"Fat liberation"?  "Fatmisia"?  Ye Gods and little fishes . . .

This is so stupid it's almost beyond parody.  If fatness is "a vehicle for liberation", why not call it "eating your way to freedom"?  And, of course, we'll have to forbid courses on healthy eating and dieting, because by definition they would reduce the amount of fatness out there, thus discriminating against the "fatly enabled" (or should that be disabled?).  As for "blackness" and its association with "fatness" . . . isn't it automatically discriminatory to even think about linking them?  Next thing you know, Lizzo will be iconic for all the wrong reasons!

Of course, the students will have to be highly motivated - indefatigable, in fact . . .

As it happens, I'm fat, but I'm not black.  Am I merely melanin-challenged, or am I politically incorrect for being the wrong skin color for my avoirdupois?

Peter