The writer is on point, absolutely.

As a university professor, I write lots of references for students who wish to enroll in a solid doctoral program in literature. These students, who tend to be both intelligent and creative, but not wealthy and not "perfect," naturally spend time and money on their applications.

Later they show me the inevitable refusal letters and emails they receive from the elite schools: Stanford, Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, the Ivy League group--and in every instance the letters are formulaic, without respect or human feeling.

Clearly the fancy schools are playing the global capitalist game by sustaining the precise values that universities should be contesting. In return the universities are given grants and endowments to insure that they continue pimping their student body.

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..."most elite higher-education institutions systematically favor people from privileged backgrounds who display selfish, cutthroat behavior. The results are campus environments where disregard for society is socially accepted, where bad people are encouraged to become worse."

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..."colleges end up giving the nation's high school students crash courses in cynicism. They teach young people that money talks, fairness is for losers, who you know matters more than what you know, and some people are simply entitled to what others may never attain, no matter how hard they work."

This is just real life 101.
This is the most important thing you learn at the University of Texas at Austin and apparently at other LARGE universities too.

AND GUESS WHAT PEOPLE -- THE SAME APPLIES FOR THE JOB MARKET HERE IN AUSTIN,TEXAS TOO!
Because there will ALWAYS be someone brighter, more beautiful and more talented and when it comes down to the wire WHO you know IS MORE IMPORTANT than WHAT you know.

And KNOWING that THESE DAYS and how to effectively network could make the difference between a JOB and HOMELESSNESS!

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This goes a long way towards explaining why Obama's supporters acted like Nazi thugs during the Democratic primaries.

Da Banksta

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As a species, we are 100,000 years old. Civilization, for what it is worth has only been around for 4% of that time. Human beings are pack animals. Like all pack animals, we dominate those that are weaker and are subordinate to those that are stronger. Lofty sentiments of “equality” and “compassion” will not change the animal that we have evolved into.

As our population increases, so will inequalities and conflict. Welcome to the beast that is man.

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How does a "a renewed emphasis on meritocracy in higher education" discourage selfishness?

Studying hard, doing your homework, and getting good grades the old-fashioned way may be preferable to cutting corners and working the system, but how is it necessarily less selfish or cutthroat? Don't you still end up with a bunch of competitive, type A people who think their own personal, material success is more important than helping others, or knowledge for its own sake?

To substantially address the behaviors described in the article would seem to require addressing the idea of meritocracy itself. It would mean a de-emphasis on standards, and an emphasis on things like each individual's contribution to knowledge, how each individual would benefit from the college experience--regardless of ability to pay--etc. This may be highly impractical, but my point is that you can't address the evils of meritocracy with more meritocracy.

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The article certainly resonates, playing to the anger many of us feel at the insider club that rules the country.
But it also takes aim at a soft but too narrow target.
My experience with "lesser" universities tells me that the Ayn Rand/Ronald Reagan school of "I've got mine, eff you" flourishes in both undergraduate and MBA programs in most of academia.
It's reenforced by the grants ands endowments which flow from government and corporate research funding. In fact, the impact of corporate funding in the university system is enormous and quite insidious. The corruption created has been well documented but largely ignored.

Who wants to take liberal arts or science when there's millions to be made in "finance"? The current disaster may temper that but I'm skeptical. In fact, it's probably sealed the deal for the priviledged who can still afford to go to the universities noted. It's the middle class or poorer students who graduate with massive debt that will be most affected.

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Is that why we have no student movement, despite the nightmare of what has been happening to the US since Reagan took office?

I realize that I was spoiled by the '60s. We reached the brink then of some genuine change to the way US society is ordered. The frontline agitators were college and university students.

True, that effort largely failed. And the after effects were that the oligarchy was scared. So we watched them purchase the best government that money could buy.

Corruption comes in various forms. As the old song tells us, "Some will rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen."

We know who has trained our pencil pushers.

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Even some High Schools are in on the corruption to get more of their students into the elite schools. Earlier this year, the Fort Lee, NJ (Public) High School got caught doctoring grades for years of some of it's students to make sure they had a better chance to get into elite schools. Often this was done to the demands of the parents. And we wonder why our economy and politics is in such disorder.

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I have a few thoughts I'd like to share.

I've taught as a part-time MBA professor for over 20 years in three different universities and now teach in a large, western state university. Virtually all of the students in my classes are working, early to mid-career professionals seeking to better themselves. They're not always the sharpest tacks in the box, but they're generally a dedicated bunch with a few slackers occasionally sprinkled in.

I had the opportunity to do some guest lecture slots with students from an elite, top ten, MBA program. While a number of those students had also been working professionals who returned to school, virtually all of them were of independent means, and had really big, well-paying jobs with their names attached waiting for them after graduation. They were among the most arrogant individuals I have ever encountered and, as a result, I found myself deeply grateful for not having had to deal with that kind of student in my teaching career.

Now for the really ugly perspective. In my experience, ALL of higher education is riddled with the most feudal, hide-bound, mindless institutional politics and bureaucracy imaginable. In my "day job," I work in many foreign countries as an organization development consultant and I have had the opportunity to counsel many individuals aspiring to pursue undergraduate and graduate studies in U.S. universities. While I knew from past experience that these institutions are rigid, I had no idea just HOW rigid until I started being an advocate for the admission of potential students I thought were likely candidates. Words can't describe the dismissive attitudes and pious quoting of arcane rules and regulations that I and my shocked, disbelieving foreign friends have been exposed to. Regretfully, things got to the point with one individual I was working with that I had to inform the provost of the university where I teach that I would NEVER, EVER again attempt to recruit a student for his institution.

My point is this. Higher education as a whole is a whited sepulcher that appears pure and sacred from the outside but is rotting and putrefied on the inside. The elite colleges exponentially demonstrate all of that same dysfunction while leading their students to think they're getting the best education money can buy.

And, yes, I DO take it personally

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Over the years I have heard many, many progressives, Greens and left brag and speak endlessly about their sons and daughters and other relatives in these factories for greed. It seemed to be OK for all around.

Yes, I have now grown tired of this section of politics in the US.

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I write to concur based my three decades as a federal civil litigation sole practitioner against the malfeasance of attorneys in government-most of who were "Vetted" from the best schools.

As William Duane of Philadelphia, writing in 1804, stated, “[a] privileged order or class, to whom the administration of justice is given as a support, first employ their art and influence to gain legislation; they then so manage legislation as never to injure themselves; and they so manage justice as to engross the general property to themselves through the medium of litigation; and the misfortune is, that to be able to effect this point, it is attended by loss of time, by delay, expense, ill blood, bad habits, lessons of fraud and temptation to villainy, crimes, punishments, loss of estate, character and soul, public burden, and even loss of national character.”

The question for the public is to question why they again have they allowed the elitist to take control. Does anyone doubt that the political and financial crises the Republic finds itself was not caused by the elitist.

Thomas Jefferson stated, "[t]he issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."

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I volunteered and served for four years in the U.S. Army (Airborne Ranger) because I was a fool who thought it was a GOOD thing to serve in the forces of the U.S.. this was at the very end of the Vietnam War and I saw first hand how the policies of our wretched Government affected the brown peoples of the world. I should have listened to my dear departed brother!!!

Then I went to College for four years, not an elite institution but saw the same stratification of society that is defined in this article. I also had many spirited discussions with Profs about the merits of American intervention and foriegn policy. I was a member of a "hippie" "fraternity" called Pi Zappa Krappa and we saw the System for what it was. Still we played the game and I went on to a miserable career where "ring knockers" (you know them, the college grads who are twenty years away from Graduation who still wear their rings, what dorks) ruled and stupidity, country club parties, and fucking golf ruled the day.

Anyway I guess all I have learned in this long life is that we are nothing but "Monkeys Gone Mad". It won't improve because most people are not inherently "Good" they are most definately inherently very "Bad" and will kill you to get what they deem neccessary.

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...heart set on.

In determining which applicants they will admit and put on the fast track, most elite higher-education institutions systematically favor people from privileged backgrounds who display selfish, cutthroat behavior.

Ranting and pouting can be cathartic, but just make sure you get that behind you and start working at what you want. No use in wallowing in self pity. Good luck finding a spot where you fit in!

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This article raises an interesting point but I wish it had dug a little deeper, especially on the subject of cheating and other ethically questionable behavior going on within MBA programs.

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It's nice when somebody who has authority on a subject -- like this writer -- justifies my world view. I'm going to add that the vast majority of people who get good grades in high school and get into these IVY League type schools aren't smart. They just know how to follow the rules. They do what they're told. If the rules are unethical, it doesn't matter most of them are too dumb to make any distinction, and they're too selfish to care. We need to uproot the Ivy from the wall and let some people with some brains take over.

WBBLACK

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Great articulation on the subject Ivy League Colleges, however spontaneous compustion explosive mentality is what they actually acquire... Failing Upward is constantly rewarded over and over.

http://21stcenturyreversepyramid.blogspot.com/

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Currently, the entire education system is primarily personality based with the intellect being the highest achievement of man. The intellect by itself only knows separation. Sometimes a glimmer of that which is higher comes through and the concept is seen that service or altruism matters.

The current young generation has lived within this ultra competitive educational model at its fine-tuned cut-throat peak. Remarkably I meet many products of this system who anticipate creating a world built on cooperation and sharing. Knowing the beast intimately, the upcoming generation has many within it that have the understanding to change it. Also, their intellectual development has given them a strong foundation for developing the bridge to what ultimately matters - the soul.

Expect man's true and higher nature - the soul - to become the focus of education. The soul knows no separation and has aspects of itself of love, intuition and pure reason. The soul's nature is to serve and as more people evolve to be more connected with this quality of themselves then the goal of education will change.

The times and the evolving nature of man demand no less.

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no matter what side of the argument you are on, was emailed this link and kept it as a good laugh... so true...the politics of academia exposed!!! and many of these folks discussed in this article are on doc acceptance committees for grad schools...

and you wonder why academia has problems!!!

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/
ward-churchill-redux/

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At some point they ended up turning out brats and pompous asses prepared to go through life with their connections. Well educated men and women who would be a credit to their alma mater got lost in the planning. Then there's the other group of children who grow up with the belief that so much is beyond them. At the end of Word Ward II all schools, including the Ivy League few opened their doors (and their minds) to the men returning from the war. The results were astounding. Some guy who worked at a brewery suddenly had a son at Yale. As students they were succesful and many were way above average. But now they've created a way to keep out the "riff raff" by simply teaching them very early on, not to hope for too much. It's no longer about smarts, it's about social standing. Maybe it's time to go back to good old 'entrance exams', not the SAT'S that kids start preparing for in the first grade. It's easy for some and impossible for others, having nothing to do with ability. That should change. The performance of government and corporations are evidence of the acceptance of mediocrity as the standard. It's fair to say that it isn't working. Thanks, ANNA

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I went back to school in the late 1970's and the same elitism was present then too. Maybe it was a touch less pervasive but it was definitely there. As a single parent with little money and no connections I found my 3.89(out of 4.00)really didn't matter at all. Merit meant little then as now. I wasn't allowed into the programs I wanted nor could I get into the graduate programs or schools I chose. But then I lived in Boston, the center of selfish snobbish elitism. Now that I am old and retired I look back on those denials with gratitude. If I had been accepted I might have become one of those despicable, loathsome corporate types.

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Not surprised. Fancy schools are where the rich snobs go and pretend to learn so eventually they can inherit mommy and daddies fortune.

RT
Privacy Center

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Is it true that Condi Rice and our dear "waterboarding" friend Rumsfeld are teaching in Stanford ?

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At some point, it seems to me, universities and colleges changed from being true institutions of higher learning into degree factories, where the salary you could earn after graduation was much more important than whether you really learned anything at all.

I earned a degree in art nearly 30 years ago -- highly "impractical," and I have often been laughed at for it. Nevertheless, I would not change those 4 years for anything: Four years of doing something I loved, taking classes in many different disciplines, learning and enriching my life. And, in spite of it, I have always managed to support myself and my family.

Now, I worry to the point of losing sleep about my wonderful, compassionate teenage daughter who wants so badly to become a doctor (and not just any doctor, but the "Doctors without Borders" kind of doc who goes out to help people with the most desperate need).

I hope that the current state of academia will not ultimately crush her idealism and her dreams. Our world badly needs young people like her who would rather make a difference than join the country club.

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Not only are these "private" schools favoring the rich, they are doing it with OUR TAX MONEY.

We may not actually send them tax money in a suitcase -- we allow them to NOT PAY IT.

Same $$ either way!!

These institutions pay no tax on the huge incomes earned on their endowments. Contributions they receive can be deducted from the taxable incomes of givers, so that is more tax money NOT RECEIVED. Most of them also pay no local property tax.

If these "private" schools were taxed like anyone else, the government would be receiving hundreds of millions of dollars every year in additional funding.

I did some round calculations and, due to the huge size of these endowments and the large incomes on them, all untaxed, the sums of federal tax NOT PAID by these instutions was about equal to all federal educational funding for all other types of education combined. Then, you have state taxes also not paid.

There is a way to fix this.

The Congress could say that the ratio of kids in a school who come from families with incomes in the top, say, 10% would determine, using a formula, the tax deductibility of the donations the schools receive and of endowment income.

Too many rich kids, your tax deductibility would be reduced by, say, 50%, or 70%, so depending on the income-bracket structure of the families of your students, they would have to start paying taxes on their incomes.

That would get their attention fast.

In just a few months, financial aid programs would spring up and suddenly, whatever adjustment in the income bracket structure of student body that was necessary to preserve their valuable tax-exempt status would become reality.

Don't just whine -- demand that it be fixed!!

IT'S OUR MONEY!!

Jan VanDenBerg

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Only tangentially related to the article, but what are multiple-choice questions doing in a test that to a large degree determines one's academic future (except that they are easy to grade automatically and therefore cheaper to administer)?

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The only school worthy of the name is the School of Love. We just don't get it. We're being fooled on such a massive scale that the Weapons of Mass Destruction fiasco is nothing in comparison. We were created as lovers by the Lover and are supposed to be lovers. Instead we have evolved / devolved back into killers with the theory of evolution itself being one of the killers (survival of the fittest and all that genteel liary). The obscenity of it is there are clear and convincing reasons to convict us if we had the guts to look. And it does not happen on a social, corporate, personal or impersonal projector screen. Persons and people have become so corrupted even in words that corporations and even dogs are claimed to have the rights of persons. It's in the jurisdiction of love and when we leave our base of love we are lost in terrorizing confusion and serve as fodder for the basest predators. We are lovers turned killers and all of us are complicit especially those who religiously pretend otherwise. If we're not enraged at evil we are not engaged with the real. There is only one way and that is to return to Go some 150,000 years ago when we were created as lovers who broke the mold of predatory hominids and carnivorous animals all around us (subsequently eroded by the return of hunter bloodlust). The story is way too long to tell here but if we can't tell the difference between a lover and a killer there's no sense in wasting our time in braindead terroritory. If I'm boring, insulting our supposed intelligence, irritating or rousing our hatred--good because at least we're not heartdead; and if such politically incorrect preaching is not appropriate, delete me, spam me, whatever. I will copy this to Love Government Blogstream because that's where it's at. --Dennis La Lover from Ojai (as in O High Hotel California)

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The problem is grade inflation and the dumbing down of the public school system. Half the people in colleges should not have graduated from high school. For example, with close to a 3.5 or so entrance requirement half the freshmen class at the U of Washington require remedial math classes.

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As an MBA, and a former career woman, business school was simply training for "the real world" or "the big leagues". Let's not forget the influence that corporate sponsorship has in all schools......like that of pharmaceutical and insurance companies in med schools.
Snakes in suits, or snakes in corduroy....they are of the same genus.

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Like the world needs more fucking MBA's.

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No one has mentioned the obvious elephant in the room. University campuses are totally dominated by liberal left wing "progressive" professors. Does Wade Churchill ring a bell? Even then, he wouldn't have been given the boot if he had not lied about his Indian heritage and plagiarizing others' art work for his own. Universities are indoctrinating their students with "Progressive Nazism", and will embrace the vulgarities of capitalism whenever necessary to obtain the finances to fund the "Change (chained) We Can Believe In".

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But it probably did him good. He still has that sting of rejection inspiring him. I unfortunately, won the elite college lottery and it ruined my life. I was first generation to go to college, from a very mediocre public high school, with only my SAT scores as a worthy credential to admit me to the Yale class of 1973, just a little behind George W Bush. I was about as dissolute and undirected as W as an undergraduate, thought I surpassed Dick Cheney and finished. I now have a Yale diploma on the wall to look at while I make my weekly unemplyment compensation phone in report. George Bush's family saved his sorry ass, not his Ivy league degree. He could have wound up in the same place had he gone to University of Texas or Panhandle Bible College. Get over it Peter. Family connections can put you on the road to success even after a spin out into the bar ditch, but W is a rare exception. Bill Clinton and Barak Obama made it to the White house on talent and drive, not SAT coaching.

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I was just wondering why there is no mention of comparison between US and foreign colleges? I say this because I was the beneficiary of tuition money from the British government when I went to college in Scotland (this was for the full four years, btw). I had no 'connections' - I had simply been resident of the EU for the requisite number of years. It was an incredible experience, not just because of the free tuition. Most of my friends attending were not just poor - most were dirt-poor. And this was a quality university we were attending. Everyone got more than a fair chance to prove themselves and the admissions practices were never questionable. In fact, a wealthy girl from my high school did not get in. Thank God! The benefits did not stop there. I even qualified for some help from a hardship fund. They did not have to advance me this favor as an American, yet they did. We may think this country is great, but we still have so much to learn. A truly intelligent person has values beyond the almighty dollar, which isn't so mighty anymore now, is it?

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This article is one of the WORST I've ever read on AlterNet, which is saying a lot as there have been some stinkers. There is no supporting data, no logical reasoning, the whole article is one long whine. It totally ignores events such as students at Georgetown and Stanford going on hunger strikes to secure better pay for university custodial workers. It totally ignores that "elite" universities like UPenn and Berkeley are intensely multi-racial and multi-ethnic - you don't see this at the University of Arkansas. It totally ignores that anyone with an income under $50 or $60K can attend an Ivy League university FREE, or that Ivy universities supply substantially higher financial aid. And how about the record number of kids applying for programs like Teach for America? Sure, some of the spike in applications can be attributed to the poor economy, but there ARE entry-level jobs available that pay more than TFA and don't involve living and teaching in the inner city.

This is EXACTLY the kind of article that gives liberals and progressives a bad name. Blech.

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Yale Medical School does not give out grades, nor do they have class ranking. This is a deliberate policy to encourage cooperation and prevent that sort of cutthroat competition. It's not a competition among doctors in a hospital (at least it certainly shouldn't be); why should it be like that in school?

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You live
in the youth
of a summer
resort, your
delicate voice
appears in
my mind like
a winged creature,
and even a
pleasure describes
in a moment
a bright sensibility.

Francesco Sinibaldi

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"Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire", know the American Empire will not last nearly as long. It is already cracking under the strain of greed, incompetence and stupidity.

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Struck me as ironic that today, anyhow, the banner ad at top of the page for an article acerbically critical of elite not-for-profit universities promotes a not-so-elite, for-provide online university: Walden. BTW, Walden is owned by the mega-corporation Sylvan Learning. The ghost of H.D. Thoreau must be howling.

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I had a hydrologist/landscape architect friend who claimed, "engineering students start out like human beings, but somewhere in their 3rd year, ...
...a professor or aide sneaks up behind them, ...
...taps a spigot in the back of their heads ...
...& drains out all common decency

He may have been onto something.

Education has little to do with *learning* these days.
Take a look at the ads for 'prep' schools: they emphasize 'programs' but also emphasize, 'friendships to last a Lifetime'.
& they mean it.
It isn't about LEARNING, its about "relationships", "trust", "conformity of opinion", & best of all, "clannish exceptionalism".
The money & 'character references' are about *exclusion* not work ethic or learning capacity

Let us consider, if you will, the case of Ann Coulter & Keith Olbermann...

Of the two: WHO WENT TO THE 'REAL' Cornell?

I don't know about YOU, but to look at Olbermann, I think we know who took the ETHICS classes!

Coulter is like a living, walking, (living?) case of 'How To Lie With Statistics' (Huff) taken as *gospel* to prosperity.

Facts don't matter!: defending your sticky side for *relationships* does, right Ann?

Both Olbermann and Coulter went to Cornell, but different colleges. "Keith didn't go to the Ivy League Cornell; he went to the Old MacDonald Cornell," she writes.

Olbermann responds:
Poor Annie has completely lost it. Cornell diplomas don't make any reference to individual college or major. They're Cornell diplomas.
Mine looks exactly like hers, only if she was an out-of-stater she probably paid 8-10 times what I did for mine. And the premise of the University is that anybody can take almost any course. Nearly half of mine were in "her" Arts College.
And this is the first time since I went there in 1975 that I've ever seen a Cornellian rag on all the other colleges. It's a long way to go just to rationalize Limbaugh not knowing the Constitution from the Declaration of Independence.

Coulter, you're an emotionally stunted *bitch*: your school did you NO FAVOURS.

I suppose having a father who was an infamous Union Buster meant you could never feel sorry for the families YOUR family ruined... best if you numbed your mind, logic & spend your free time binging & purging & trying to find more black cocktail dresses that, 'hide your candy'.


Olbermann is a credit to ALL OF CORNELL... Coulter is merely a cookiecutter bookend at the ReichWing cocktail circuit.



perspective, people.


Perspective.

The Jeff Farias Show: streams FREE & LIVE Mon-Fri, 6-9pmEDT

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I don't blame Yale for the perverse, depraved, incompetent imbecile that later became president, I blame his family. They knew a long time ago what a reprobate he was and that he was not a decent candidate for the presidency, yet they helped him achieve that goal to the great detriment of the world, the US and the American people. How many lives would have been saved if he had just paid attention to the warnings of a potential terrorist attack prior to 911, and he had a lot of warning? How much more secure would the US now be if its military weren't creating new terrorists everyday in the Middle East? How many more people would still be able to house and feed their families if he had done his duty to properly manage the economy, instead of allowing a wild west form of capitalism to create a High Noon where something had to die and it was the whole financial industry? That family is the bane of America and the world.

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I'm not sure I agree with the author. When I read the brochure which comes with my 401(k) funds, I notice that the managers of the different mutual funds come mainly from midwestern schools (not usually state schools, and not Grinnell eiher) and small eastern schools (not the Williams type either). Very seldom do I see Harvard, Yale, Michigan, U of Chicago, Berkeley or Stanford mentioned. The people responsible for the collapse of the endowments of these elite schools are less their own students than students of schools which do not get academic stars.

I do believe that students have changed a great deal since the Sixties. My son always asks me why I'm not rich when I'm so smart (I started taking classes at UC Berkeley when I was still in high school), but getting rich was never an interest of mine. I sense that today students are, for the most part, focused on making money and enjoying themselves (drinking?). Nothing could be further from the students I went to school with when I was young. School was so important that students disappeared from protests if they had a paper to write or a test for which to study. Now I see that students apparently don't study until right before the final, because the library is open ALL night just before and during finals. The young people I have worked with over the last five or six years in corporate America seem to have no interest in learning, or in anything that I can see. Perhaps they are interested in making money. I do notice that they spend it, mostly on clothes.

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These institutions are bastions of Liberalsim. You should be happy.

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Anyone of any influence or wealth is a sociopath. Shit rises to the top. The nicest people I meet are always those with the least. The middle class will always try to emulate the upper class, and this 'will to power' machiavellian crap is widespread. The human being, however, is largely socially engineered, and we are witnessing the unfolding of a mechanism adrift. Ideals are dead. Universals are the same thing. 'We the people' refers to a 'nobody' in particular. The commonplace of cynical subjectivity is powerless beyond solipsistic criticism. The invisible hand is supposed to distribute through the apparent mechanism of greed, therefore, perhaps widespread greed, and the decline of mythologies is a good thing, even if not pleasant. I believe confucius has a saying in his analects about the common people emulating the powerful. If america is broken or the common man is a failure despite the attempts of the enlightenment, perhaps it is because of the double sided reality of his 'superiors'. The first thing first of 'bread and circuses' is the bread, otherwise no circus is going to be sat through. People are smart enough to see a bad tree from its fruit, despite a corporate monolithic lie machine.

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People who graduate college SHOULD go after what they want. To promote any less is pathetic. Its like asking a hot babe to dress down or hide her boobs. Total silliness.

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...are NOT teachers, but the investment bankers who manage the endowment. That shows what Harvard 'values'--in the both the metaphorical and literal senses of that term.

As a Harvard grad I can tall you that this writer is spot on. The snobbery and cut-throatism is grotesque--and highly valued. Snobby students describe their peers as 'presentable' or not, and as 'clubbable' or not. Creepy. I knew several students from working class backgrounds who dropped out or transferred because of this crap.

When people are impressed that I went to Harvard, I tell them not to be. While the single best teacher I ever had was at Harvard, so were 5 of the worst. I have graduate degrees from 2 public universities where the quality of instruction was far higher overall than at Harvard. Actually, I think private colleges and universities should be abolished. Education is a public function that should be performed in the public interest--especially when so much public money is involved.

The Ivy's connections to the current economic debacle is obvious--from Rubin and Summers (both Harvard) under Clinton (Yale) to the greedy clowns under Bush (Yale and Harvard) and Cheney (flunked out of Yale; not easy to do!). Similarly, the Ivy's connections to the Vietnam War, 'Reaganomics', the economic rape of eastern Europe in the 1990's, and other disaster of the late 20th century can be demonstrated as well.

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So, because so many of those corrupt bankers on Wall Street are from Ivy League schools, those in Ivy League schools are corrupt? If all As are Bs, that doesn't mean all Bs are As. That's basic logic.

The anti-intellectualism on this message board is staggering, though I guess not surprising. This is a country that voted for George Bush. Twice.

Sigh. But what do I know? I'm just one of those stupid Ivy League graduates who probably got in based not on merit but on the enormous pull my father had as a high school teacher in a little farm town. Yep. I got everything handed to me on a silver platter. Good thing I'm too dumb to realize how much better off we'd be if community college students ran things.

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It was when colleges and universities
began to see the financial worth in letting
in the unwashed that policies began to
change.

Connections and bloodlines have always
mattered to the elite and always will.

If one does the proper research
of bloodlines, an uncanny DNA link
exists between people who are
considered elite.

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. . . this article is absolutely correct. And "lesser" institutions are less guilty of such behavior only because they have less money and power to wield, not because they are more circumspect.

It used to be that liberal arts colleges provided a curriculum which encouraged reflection on values and which aimed at molding responsible citizens. This mission has gone by the wayside in our collective deification of money and power. Will our current crisis spark a change of course? I have my doubts.

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Life and job opportunities are all about socially accredited status, they are status factories more then they are educational institutions. It's a polite way of justifying class warfare on the basis of 'meritocracy', of enforcing cruelty, selfishness and condemndation of the 'inferior @ school' to poverty or the lower jobs with lower pay.

I really doubt many people in the top universities are testing for intelligence. I'd think school and university is mostly about status and not ability after a certain degree of competence. I find it really hard to believe all the "A" people are going to be more able then B or C people.

It's mostly about human beings perception of a persons worth according to socially constructed hierarchy of where someone 'belongs' in the status hierarchy.

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It is an Outrage that these Universities and Colleges were complicite and Culpable in the re sinstitutionalization of a Feudalistic Cast System in the US.
You don't need a PhD in Sociology to figure that out - merely a damn dictionary and some common sense. "Trickle" indicates the measely amount that will be afforded those 'Below'. What remains will be reserved (Hoarded) for & By those at the top of the socio- economic Heirarchy.Exactly like the system our ancestors fought a Revolutiaonry War to free US from.And lets not be so naive as to think it was not passed down generation to generation- so 'Blue Bloods' remain at the Top of the Heap,decade after century. What's those names again Morgan, Rockefeller, Kennedy....Worse yet is they have not only maintained their financial status as 'Noblity', but have moved into the Gov't Houses (Of Lords?).although I am a avid Supporter of Teddy the Liberal Lion and appreciate Mr Rockefeller's stances for the most part- I do not feel these Children of priviledge should be the sole heirs to Political power.
Frankly there should be a nation wide investigation into these Colleges of Economics,Business & Poli-sci to determine what these Professors have been teaching their students in these cirriculums- perhaps the Sociology Depts should be reviewing these other programs, and making recommnadation about changes - not only to lesson plans but staffing.The Concept "Greed is Good" should not only be Rebuked, but result in 'Pink slips'.
Only a mental idiot or the morally corrupt considered Trickle Down anything other than Economic Treason. Add to that the ability to Siphon off 'liquidity' by hiding a good portion of it in off shore accounts- might as well be the Vaults of the monarchies Treasure- away from Prying eyes, the tax mans hand and inaccessible to the circular flow of financial resources throughout the system.
What ahs also occured is that these 'blue Blood' Corps have barred real access to the Market by predatory practices and destoying innovation.They kill off smaller competition by needless Direct competition via locale (Homedepot vs Mom & Pop hardware) or cutting pricing to the point that these smaller Co's can not possibley compete- once they go out of business, these montrosities can increase pricing as they see fit- "Only Game In Town". Far more egregious is their ability to force patent sales due to control over production abilities, then shelve the idea to maintain their own products profitablity (Electric car of the '80's).Thus essentially Killing accessibility to the Free Market for average citizens or small business.
Big surprise that ultimately the "Free Market" system would run dry- between hoarding, siphoning and Exclusionary tactics, our Economy has died from Dehydration.

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..I too work at a major research oriented public university. It draws the best and the brightest, but also quite a few students of unquestionable talent who are far from rich (often even at arms reach from middle class). There's no doubt that institutionalized self-interest is present-someone tell me what organization does not suffer from this? On the other hand, universities are still one of the places you'll most likely see creativity, self-expression, altruism and concern for the greater good, at least among some students. As examples:
students have organized a CSA and farmers market, reformed the food service on campus to emphasize local and organic and sustainable, they build trails in parks, work in 3rd world countries to develop infrastructure in remote, poor areas, they lobby their local legislature for energy policy. The found art collectives. I've even seen a fair number of MBA types work to develop plans for alternative energy and novel green technology.

what we need is for more people to have the opportunity to go to a solid 4 year institution if they so wish, and we need to reverse the 50 year trend of less support for higher education. State and federal money now constitutes around 30% of most public uni's input, whereas it was above 50% in the 50's. We can't simply continue to raise tuition (for both political and moral reasons)-so where's the money going to come from? All the corporatization of uni's that we all so regret is a desperate response, and one of the few alternatives left. Why as a society, do we spend more money on prison cells than classrooms?

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Yes that dismissive attitude...i knew a guidance counselor who was once told that a local high school, one of 3 in town, just didn't have the type of students Princeton wanted ( i.e. most of the kids had parents who worked in factories, this was before all the factories left town; now they work in the service sector.....less pay and no unions )this is why the GI Bill was so great; one prfessor wrote in his memoirs that they really feared all these low life veterans from the streets would seriously cheapen the college degree. instead, he was surprised to find the veterans to be the best students he had ever had.... and at least one researcher has argued elite schools should do away with admissions altogether and let everyone who wants to come on in, and see if they can handle it. I've no doubt most hard working students can do passing work or even stellar work at Yale. in fact, schools like Brown and Stanford used to be noted for basically giving grades away. Stanford at one point never gave less than a B.

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I've got to tell you, for years I regretted dropping out of High School when I was just passed my seventeenth birthday. The more time passes by, the least are my regrets. Seriously.

peace....

Tom Degan

"The Rant"

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Mr. Schmidt does us a valuable service by exposing how the elite private colleges and universities that educate the nation’s aristocracy -- the ruling class -- are training schools in the moral imbecility of capitalism: infinite greed elevated to maximum virtue. Mr. Schmidt’s disclosure that the present-day economic crisis is the direct result of such teaching provides an informative example of the historical reality of class struggle. But Mr. Schmidt’s work would have been more broadly useful had he linked our other national afflictions -- the industrial world’s most murderously discriminatory health care, its worst public schools, its most miserly social services and its most oppressively limited public transport -- to the core capitalist coda that greediness is godliness.

Thus Mr. Schmidt missed an important opportunity to show us the ultimate truth about the United States: how at all levels, federal, state or local, its government and governance serve but one purpose: the propagation of capitalism -- that is, the absolute protection of the ruling class and the total subjugation of all the rest of us. Thus too the vast rewards heaped on the powerful and the profitable -- those who own the nation’s wealth and those workers who remain exploitable for profit -- and the euthanasia by abandonment and neglect inflicted on any of us deemed unprofitable: those of us disabled, elderly, or chronically impoverished.

But the greatest failing in Mr. Schmidt’s work is his attempt to link academic testing to capitalism’s moral imbecility. This is an absurd hypothesis -- testing or not, capitalism is always moral imbecility. And anti-test rhetoric is itself a Big Lie, protecting the legions of lazy and/or incompetent public school teachers against legitimate discovery of how poorly they teach their students. It is also the latest offensive in a decades-long war to deny college educations to those of us who rebel at the bully-enforced conformity, anti-intellectuality, teacher ineptitude and glaring hypocrisy of U.S. public schools.

My own history is typical. Despite a high IQ (with exceptionally high verbal skills, reasoning ability and visual creativity), my public school grades were wretched. Growing up with a significant family library -- one of the principles of Marxism is maximum education of the working class -- I resented being taught by “teachers” who were demonstrably ignorant, often obviously stupid and in any case visibly threatened by my efforts to escape the boring mediocrity inflicted by prescribed grade-level limits. Nearly all my teachers thus despised me; thus too I was typically evaluated with maximum malice, the result of which was graduation from high school with a low-C average. Had it not been for my performance on critical tests -- the old Michigan State Comprehensives c. 1957, the scholastic-aptitude series of that same era -- I’d have never been allowed to attend college.

Not that it mattered. Though my college experience was mostly one of welcome recognition -- academic average 3.0 or better, professors who often urged me to pursue an academic career -- the odium of my public-school records (bad grades, defiant behavior, familial dysfunction, lesbian mother, Marxian father) nullified my Dean’s List appearances and permanently denied me access to the requisite scholarship money. Thus, with only the insultingly miserly Vietnam Era GI Bill, I was 36 years old before I earned my bachelors degree and had no hope of ever paying for graduate school. The value of my effort was proven few years later when a white, Harvard-educated female personnel executive said of my academic record, “obviously you weren’t serious about doing college-level work. You graduated from high school in 1958 and had all the advantages of being a white male but it still took you until 1976 to earn your BA…”

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I went to a provincial university in Canada, and I saw the same behavior as was mentioned in the article. Who is this author kidding --- the culture is the same in every educational institution, everywhere.

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As a professor for over 25 years, I find this article extremely weak. The author presents his views, but he fails to provide any evidence to back them up. The only data that he presents concerns cheating, which is surprisingly high (56% in one group). Although this is number is depressing, it is impossible to interpret because the author provides nothing to compare it to. For all we know, this 56% could actually be lower than what it was say 10 years ago, and lower than what would be found at non-elite schools. I'm not arguing that the elite schools do not have problems, but only that the author fails completely in documenting them. Educational criticism requires better scholarship than this.

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'... Our latest economic crisis could inspire similar soul-searching and a renewed emphasis on meritocracy in higher education. ...'

The fundamental purposes of an educational system are to (1) manage the intellectual life of the country for the benefit of its ruling class, and (2) to replicate the personnel of the ruling class.

Since one person rules another, and one class rules another, only by force and fraud, we could expect a meritocracy to be worse than a ruling class populated by the heirs of the better-off because they'd be more effective.

However, when I look at history, I can't say that the meritocrats are all that effective. In the end they seem about as stupid, fraudulent, and brutally violent as the scions.

Remember "the best and the brightest"?

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There are exceptions to the rule (Obama, for example), but the rule remains: birth circumstances shape your future more than we all want to believe. As for SAT prep courses, I tend to believe they play a lesser role and parents' education and wealth are key. I don't just mean that children of well educated, wealthy parents tend to do better on the SAT and other standardized tests. I mean that the correlation is almost perfect: high parent eduction and socioeconomic status=high SAT scores; low socioeconomic status=low scores. You tell me the mother's education level and family income and I will tell you the student's SAT score range.

The only way to address this inequity is to provide quality parent education (focusing on how to nurture and enhance their child's development) and early childhood education for all, of course especially to disadvantaged families. This is an old idea, and we have made some efforts in this direction, but we need to ramp up these efforts as part of a new New Deal. We will all benefit.

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The rankings in the US News and World Report are based almost solely on endowment size. I went to a liberal arts college that rates "third-tier" in the US News, but the curriculum and books were virtually indistinguishable from Harvard's, and the GRE test scores of students going to grad school (which is a large percentage of the student populace) exceeded the GRE test scores of Wellesley College students. The reason my school was rated "third tier" was simply due to endowment size, period.

Several coalitions of colleges are boycotting participation in the US News surveys because of this. Hopefully, alternative measures will emerge that openly explain their ranking logic and show how hollow the US News rankings are.

As proof of how empty the standard college rankings are, consider this: you can get a degree from Brown University on a pass/fail basis. What kind of a joke is that? You get a leg up in life because you attended an expensive school where you could take classes pass/fail? What a sick joke.

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Educated people aren't "elitists" at all!! Stop putting your insecurities on them and look at the shortcomings of your own mentality. Colleges and Universities are the site of many differing value systems. Business schools, scientific instituties and others who must appeal for vital research funds must cater to industry. But there are many other scholarly efforts going on that support and promote dissent.

I should know. I went to the UW-Madison from where many a great dissenter. C.Wright Mills received a scholarship in 1939 to get his Ph.D in sociology there and, in 1948, published the most widely used critical compilation of the works of Max Weber with UW sociologist Hans Gerth.

It was a place where Willaim A. Williams, the founder of the Revisionsist School of US history that launched the New Left and anti-war movements of the 1960s, the time in which Williams taught in Wisconsin. His best student, Thomas J. McCormick, was my teacher in the early 1980s. I suggest McCormick's America's Half Century.

It was the place where Maurice Zeitlin, a sociologist who studied the Cuban Working class under Castro, taught and promoted alternative models of third world development.

In line with this, the UW-Madison featured alternative learning institutes like The Land Tenure Center and The School for Workers which challenged free market ideas and official US policy in the US and around the world.

The History Department had radical teachers like Harvey Goldberg and public intellectuals like George Mosse. They opened up whole new worlds to students.

Universities open minds. Closed minded people cry "elitist" in an insecure and cowardly way. They scoff at University learning because it both threatens their own comfortable world and because it threatens to raise the bar in an unthinking society. This is pathetic. These are the people that need universities the most. To strike out at universities in this way is to play into the hands of those right wing forces like Horowitz and FOX News that trash University learning with McCarthyite tactics in general.

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Its elite was obnoxious wannabe yuppie men and obnoxious wannabe MRS degree women who said they were there to get an education, but were really there to "catch" a husband, as their mommies and daddies sent them there to do. Very few of them were at college because of intelligence. They were there because their parents wanted them to be there. They watched too much TV. They did not know how to think for themselves.

Needless to say, I did not fit in with those types and did not care. I was with a group of friends who were just much of an outsider as I was, and just as proud of it. We made fun of those "elite" classmates, those people that were supposed to be such big role models for us, those people we were supposed to want so much to be like. We studied hard, but we also went to clubs all the time too. I probably had much more fun than my "elite" classmates ever will.

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I appreciate those who have taken time to discuss my essay, and have posted a response to some of the more thoughtful critiques on my Web site, www.colorandmoney.com.

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Welcome to the monetization of American life. The first installment was the Reagan response to the PATCO strike, as a downpayment on the Ayn Rand Objectivist/Monetarist marketplace view of life. That unfortunate situation morphed into the gross excesses of the Clinton and Bush Administrations.

Clinton was cynical in his triangulations and did what he could to appease those that could help, without really having any central values. And he let Greenspan and Rubin dictate policy because anything was better than a return to the bad old days of the first half of his first term.

Bush was too stupid to resist his advisor calls for less regulation, and presided over the most idiotic and ultimately damning buildup of debt in history. His blind obedience to shaky ideas that compounded the prior Greenspan hands-off screwups. Alan Greenspan will go down in history as one of the worst public servants ever.

They both got jobbed by the PC twist in modern life. ACORN and others wanted to get their share, and figured out how to be shrill enough to use their 15 minutes at the bully pulpit of public opinion to get the housing market completely off track. Combine that with lax regulation (why not let Freddie and Fannie go hog-wild? Why regulate derivatives, even if Buffett publicly denounced them as instruments of mass destruction?) and the lack of accountability anywhere in the entire chain of legislation and the market - you get record foreclosures, unemployment and mass unrest on the horizon.

That is the environment that children see and hear. Is it any wonder that they want to get theirs before it is too late? They see that playing by the rules and being good citizens will only play in the red states and then only if there are jobs. To make in in the elite colleges - virtually all in blue states - takes connections, luck, hard work, intelligence, and occasionally decent values.

Some people can enjoy their college years. They like learning. They want to contribute. They may have the luxury of doing so, or access to some means to allow being a professional student.

Others are legitimate prodigies. There is a place on the bell curve (or pick any other statistical measure that may fit) for those out on the fat tail a few standard deviations east of the mean. They have an advantage in life's lottery, but that isn't everything, and there is more than one of those lotteries.

Now ask yourself how you want your children to grow up, and what type of world you want for them. Do you want trophy grandchildren? Do you aspire to vicarious thrills at pre-school culmination events? Do you have the ability to avoid the shake-down of modern schools?
Good luck and Godspeed.

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that this is considered "news"...

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number of privately funded colleges and universities in the world. George Bush would still be in grade school if it had not been for private schools. The purpose for private schools is to tie learning to money. The wealthy and powerful hate publically funded educational institutions. This is why the current radical right, mouthpieces of the monied, are promoting anything that will destroy or weaken public schools. The promotion of vouchers is to siphon off public school money into schools that they control. Then, of course, they will cut funding to the voucher system and leave public schools even worse under funded.

They promote "merit pay" when they know that the Carnegie foundation once spent 200 million trying to predict who might be a good teacher. The honors given teachers are usually earned in bed. The people that promote merit pay are either ignorant about how it actually works or they are pimping for school administrators.

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The Northwestern University intercampus bus goes through my neighborhood about once every 15 minutes. It has a big sign on the side that says "The Free Enterprise System." I have told many people (and now you) that this is their excuse for the very questionable things they tell their students about trade and culture -- one of which is that we live in a "free enterprise" system.

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