Glenn Beck Says the Darndest Things
33 comments on this post
Glenn Beck has a commentary on cnn.com today criticizing the misuse (or, as he puts it, lack of use) of large endowments by universities such as Harvard. He is also critical of the supposed hypocrisy of such institutions in criticizing "the injustices of our government" while doing little to share their own wealth (for the full article, see the link below). Generally, I dismiss pretty much everything that Beck has to say, chalking up his diatribes to merely incendiary conservative rhetoric. But, I'm somewhat ambivalent to this article. On one hand, I get tired of attacks on colleges and universities as being bastions of radical liberalism. Certainly there are a great number of liberal professors, just as there are probably a great number of more conservative CEOs of private corporations. But, from my perspective, very few of these professors espouse a specifically liberal agenda when in the classroom. In fact, many of the best professors I know keep students guessing as to what their actual political commitments are. The goal in the classroom is to create an environment where students can learn about various political beliefs and approaches to understanding politics; maybe it is seen as "liberal" to want to inspire free and critical thought, but I, for one, have never expected a student to adopt a certain belief system in doing so. I think that, generally, professors are more concerned with students understanding why they believe something than they are with what students actually believe. So, I have a hard time buying into his commentary on universities being hypocritical. On the other hand, I agree with Beck's claim that colleges and universities need to be consistent and accountable, but I do so for different reasons than those that Beck offers. While universities are increasingly run like businesses, accountability to students begins to suffer. Growing corporate ties and the emphasis on bringing in money through grants have placed a premium on research. Obviously research is an important part of academia, but when that overriding priority is coupled with money saving techniques of using graduate students and fixed-term professors to teach courses, accountability to students in the classroom begins to decline. As Beck briefly notes in his article, the cost of a college education is becoming astronomical; the returns on those costs - the actual education that students receive - is now being called into question. I'm not saying that there needs to be a return to the myth of the "ivory tower," but that it needs to be recognized that the primary function of the university is to educate students and prepare them for a future career (and, if you subscribe to a more civic republican conception of education, to prepare them to be good citizens). Such an education requires an emphasis on teaching that is supplemented by an active faculty involved in research, and not the other way around.
For those interested, here is the link to Beck's commentary on endowments: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/14/beck.collegeendowment/index.html
And here is a link to a compilation of information on university endowments (so that you can draw your own conclusions): http://www.aau.edu/issues/Endow_Facts_0108.pdf
By Kevin - 5/15/2008
33 Comments:
Kevin:
I read the article early this morning and was happy to see your commentary. You are dead on, Beck lost it when he went on his rant about college professors in the classroom...to me it's him trying to keep face with conservatives...either way you make valid points...look at any Universities budget and it looks way too much like a private business these days instead of an institution of higher learning.
NPR had a piece a few weeks ago about the large endowments of institutions like Harvard and how they still charge some of the highest tuition in the country. The question was whether the tuition was intentionally high to keep them elite rather than equal opportunity.
Kevin, I think that much of the liberal bias in universities lies outside of Political Science Departments. I completely agree that the best professors are the one that keep the students guessing and oversee fair discussions in class. There is a conscious effort in Political Science Departments not to be partisan because you have a room full of students that are hypersensitive to it and will call the professor on it. It has been my experience that some of the other disciplines on campus don't have that understanding of bias so they don't care as much about it.
Harvard is working toawrds free tuition for all non-super rich students, and eventually all students. They should be doing this given their multi-billion dollar endowment, but it is nice to know they are actually taking steps toward it finally. Once they do so Yale and some of the other top tier schools will as well. Sadly, this won't likely flow down to state institutions though. Perhaps that will just be greater incentive to do well in school - do well and you could be going to school for free at harvard or stanford; do average or just well enough and you will be paying a small fortune to attend a crummy state school and will spend 10 years paying off your loans.
Mike D,
Some would say mu alma mater the crummy state school the University of Akron is the Harvard of the Midwest. Oh wait.... no one has ever said that. They have called it the 13th grade though.
Great post Kevin.
I was a business major in school. I only took a couple of political science classes. In my limited experience I found that they were very non partisan.
The business school is a different matter. In our management class we watched Michael Moore "documentaries" on the evils of Nike.
In my retail merchandising class we often discussed the pot smoking hippies that attended the art school. We also discussed the evils of high liberal taxation.
I did not realize until years later that I was being politically manipulated by my professors.
I do not know if my professors had an impact on me politically. I was a liberal in college and I am a conservative now.
I think that in your college years you are influenced more by your immediate family. If you were inundated by a certain philosophy growing up you generally carry that through college.
It is not until you leave the college cocoon and have to survive on your own that you form your own bedrock value system.
ozone -
i aslo attended a very crummy state school - but at least we had a great football team with a $100M annual budget.
I read Becks piece.
A good point is the BILLIONS of dollars in endowments that coulld and should be invested in the students education. I am left wondering just exactly what do these Universities DO with all that dinero? As Beck said - why not cover all or most of their worthy students tuition with all that money?
A poor and most tired non/point is the "flaming liberal professor" thing. Its so worn out I will not comment further on it.
I havent been in school for a long time but I do remember that teachers run the gamut of political persuasion just as any other group in society
Run like a business? I wish I could raise my prices at an obscene pace and then turn to the government for more money all the time claiming tax free status.
Producing good citizens according to whom, The University of Delaware's diversity program?
Very well said....
Ya know Fred, the Nation is so bunged /up we should all just check in to the leatercraft academy
If I remember correctly, you were THERE @ the U of D brainwashing extravaganza
I have heard about some of those brainwashing sensitivity sessions ---one at ODOT comes to mind
Are you recovered from the experience?
Petey,
Everytime I start to use logic my head starts throbbing and as they told me to do when I error I repeat over and over "if it feels good it is right". After while the warmth invades my body and I realize if it feels good it must be true
"if it feels good it is right" - I remember telling Debbie that at the drive-in in my 61 Chevy
Whoever is teaching that @ University is morally challenged
& Debbie would know
She was very religious - she called out the Lord's name
Look at the Board of Trustees and the administration at the University of Akron and tell me how many liberals you count. Precious few. Look at the donors. Mostly conservatives. You can continue the tiresome rants about liberals and diversity all you want, but the truth is at many universities, when push comes to shove, it's the conservatives who are in charge.
At Malone College you can't teach there unless you sign a Christian statement of faith/loyalty oath. That really challenges the students and opens their minds when all their teachers are all in lockstep. Is that what you want?
Except for a few cases, my college professors never pushed their beliefs. For the most part, I wasn't even aware of their political beliefs. I don't understand people like Ben Stein and many others who claim that college professors and other academics basically try to brainwash people into adopting their "liberal" beliefs. In fact, I'm not even sure what those beliefs are. When someone says the "liberal" bias, what exactly does that mean? Is it being open-minded instead of myopic? Well that's a good thing. Is it learning to question the things and happenings surrounding us? That's good too. A lot of the people stating the liberal brainwashing argument, for which they never provide a real argument, are creationists, and therefore are opposed to science and the teaching of evolution. So it stands to reason that they wouldn't like academia. I can tell you with certainty that evolutionary theory is pretty irrefutable. How about the fact that most academics use logic as the means of pursuing truth? In my opinion there are not many pursuits more noble than that. So what is the liberal bias? Academics, in general, are those who seek knowledge and better understanding of nature, history, politics, etc. Most academics are pretty intelligent people. Why wouldn't we listen to what they have to say? There isn't some secret cabal that exists at universities attempting to subvert our youth. I'm pretty sure that the liberal conspiracy argument is presented by idiots whose beliefs are challenged by academia, and therefore attempt to discredit them with weak logic and poor evidence.
I have a friend who is a political science teacher in a brutally conservative region who is by most measures liberal. This pisses off some of the students but he challenges them to A-prove him wrong and B-defend their own philosophies formulating their own arguments. He says at the beginning of the class they tend to start their arguments by saying "Well Rush Limbaugh said.." and by the end of class their arguments are more researched and supportable by fact. He's doing his job. In fact I would argue that he is making better, smarter conservatives. I have another friend who was a very conservative political science teacher at a liberal school. He did the same thing, only he was challenging liberal kids to examine and focus their positions. That's teaching at it's best.
If you want your kids to be told what to think, send them to Bob Jones or Liberty College. They're waiting there and more than willing to provide that service. They'll even encase your child's frontal lobe in a solid Lucite cube to be displayed proudly on your mantle.
It is not until you leave the college cocoon and have to survive on your own that you form your own bedrock value system.
Unfortunately, college professors never get a chance to do this. Hence, they stay trapped in the mindset they formed in college, which is usually liberal. Many campuses have become liberal sanctuaries from reality. Hell...I was liberal in college.
I dismiss pretty much everything that Beck has to say, chalking up his diatribes to merely incendiary conservative rhetoric.
That was a mighty dismissive piece of rhetoric you spouted out yourself! I'd love to know exactly what you love to dismiss that Beck says.
Well, like I said in this particular piece, I find his characterization of university professors to be trite and unfounded. I also don't think he did a very good job of presenting why university endowments are important and what function they actually perform. I usually find this to be true in his pieces...sometimes he makes good points, but they get bogged down in over-generalizations and half-truths that turn me off. Maybe a better way for me to have put it would have been to say that his rhetoric makes it easier for me to dismiss a lot of what he has to say (and before that gets jumped on, I recognize that such rhetoric gets used on both sides of the liberal/conservative divide).
Look, Beck and others aren't going to make a dime spending an hour of airtime praising ideas, institutions, etc. There are plenty of people out there who need their daily dose of "America has gone wrong, it's everyone else's fault but yours and mine, and here's why....".
Next on Fox: " American False Idol ".
"It is not until you leave the college cocoon and have to survive on your own that you form your own bedrock value system.
Unfortunately, college professors never get a chance to do this. Hence, they stay trapped in the mindset they formed in college, which is usually liberal."
Really?? That's quite a generalization. I know several professors who "got out" and had a business career before returning to academia. I know several professors that went on sabbatical for how ever many years to whatever part of the world (thus experiencing more than any business person might). And I knew several college students who remain conservative throughout college.
I find it interesting that you basically indicate that college students can't think for themselves, when in reality that's when most learn to do so. And frankly, professors didn't suffer through however many years to get that Ph.D and not figure out how to reason, whether this resulted in their views being liberal or conservative. I have yet to meet a professor who blindly agrees with his/her peers, and who can't back up an argument.
The last anon comment about sums it up. Professors are very intelligent persons of many persuasions.
Russ - used to be liberal...come come now
Liberal ideology on college campuses is often part of the student codes of conduct on many college campuses.
There have been countless examples of the implementation of "speech codes" on campuses, even public universities. And they are almost always liberal in nature. Just saying that you believe affirmative action for black students is wrong, can get you disciplined and eventually thrown out of school. Good piece on speech codes here.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/30795.html
To say that most universities are controlled by conservatives is really ludicrous. I took courses in humanities, sociology, psycology, and philosophy, and i found a bias in every single one. Not so much from the proffesors as in the text books themselves.
I have no problem with universities being run like businesses, that sure beats public school systems that are run more like traditional beaurocracies. When an institution creates a better learning environment for its most gifted students, and also brings in cash for it's research, I think it's in the best interest of the school to continue to fund research and work hand-in-hand with the private sector.
Jeff, I only cited The Univ. of Akron and Malone as examples of conservative control. I didn't say all or even most.
And one man's bias is another man's doctrine.
Jeff, I am here to say that many profs in the early 70's were ass kicking / gun totin righties. Some were lefties - but in NE ohio, I remember that conservatism was prevelant.
I agree that many of the texts have succumbed to the PC sunami. I remember a text (60's) that compared the volume of craniums of the different "races" - on the theory that the smaller / the less intelligent. Absurd. I guess all ages have corresponding mass insanities in education.
If a college prof is worth his salt - he will teach THINKING
sorry menk, misread you there.
OSU was pretty liberal in my opinion, I wasn't aware that U. of Akron was so conservative.
I'm with you Petey. I remember the fights I got in with my women's studies teacher. I would always try and argue that our gender roles may not be 100% driven by society, since after all, ants, fish, lions, and our close cousins the apes all have them too. To this she replied that I was mistaken, "who's to say that ants don't have societies." There was little thinking going on in that class, just indoctrination.
The fact that my proffesor could be so stupid makes me realize another way that campuses are liberal. Engineering majors and physicists have to take courses in the humanities and arts, supposedly to make them more well rounded. Meanwhile a women's studies proffesor doesn't even understand basic biology.
jeff,
i understand where you are coming from with being subjected to profs saying stupid shit.
as far as why engineers and physics majors have to take humanities for their degree? the official line when i went to osu was "well rounded education". my take on it was and is "more classes = more money for te university".
it's cynical, but there you go.
i could have gone to a two year tech college and got my math degree and skipped the educational requirements, i suppose.
as far as liberal profs, i remember only one overt one who spoke ill of reagan (and i can't blame him on a personal level). he shouldn't have, not for the math class. but he did.
i wasn't influenced since i already agreed. even if i didn't, though, i wouldn't have changed my views just because he spoke up.
i'll also say that if i was exposed to teachers saying stupid sutff, there were also a fair number that were cool as shit. an astonomy prof would put on pink floyd at a low level while giving a planetarium lecture.
the profs that didn't count attendence because they were only interested in what you learned, not how you went about learning it (no cheating!)
the profs who let students skip the final who did well enough on the mid terms.
the goofy ass profs whoe broke the monotony of their subject with humor.
and so on.
college isn't highschool. it's more than just learning. it's experiening. it's exposing. it's expanding.
Yeah, I agree. It is just that many professors try to create a mold for the students to expand in.
I remember being told in econ 101. That marxist theory was really on the cutting edge of economics right now. WTF was he talking about. There is nothing cutting edge about a theory that is over 100 years old, and what economic journals today support command economies, anyway?
It's more than just "stupid shit." It is almost a religion.
And frankly, professors didn't suffer through however many years to get that Ph.D and not figure out how to reason, whether this resulted in their views being liberal or conservative.
You said so many other ridiculous things, but it's late and I'm going to bed. But this comment warrents a reply. "Suffer" through years to get a Ph.D? And a guarantee, because of the idiotic system of "tenure," to have a job for life.
Puh-leeze.
That right there has to show you how NOT based in reality universities have become. A job for life...regardless of performance.
Indeed.
Seriously, Russ, do you know people who have worked for a PhD? There is quite a bit of suffering that goes along with it. I watched 75% of my incoming graduate class drop out because they couldn't handle the pressure of grad school. Graduate students often work very long hours with very little pay, and I saw several of my peers trying to help support families at the same time. At the beginning of my grad career, we had very little in the way of health coverage, and we really had to fight an uphill battle to finally get dental and vision coverage.
And tenure is not the carrot at the end of the stick that many people think it is. It is very difficult to get tenure...new faculty must shoulder the brunt of the teaching load in their first five years, while they are also expected to have an active research and publishing agenda.
I do agree with you, however, that the tenure system is a problem. In fact, I think it is one of the major reasons why it is very difficult for many PhD's to get a job in academia. I know many PhD's who are struggling to find jobs because they simply aren't there. And those who do find jobs often have to take fixed-term positions because universities can pay them much less than they would for a tenure-track position.
So, please, do not scoff at something with which you apparently have no experience.
there are good points to tenure, and like so many other good points there is sometimes problems with it.
one of the points of tenure is to allow those who have it academic freedom w/o being shackled. for instnace, by a university administration that may have a different view and try to force or threaten their faculty into line.
that's a good thing.
a bad thing would be a profesor taking it too far. which is the rub: what is "too far"?
one thing to consider. we hear of the cases that make the news. how many are there that have over the years, and how many faculty that actually have tenure? what's the ratio to abuses and good uses?
if i were make a sweeping condemnation based on only the things that made the news, i would think that most houses catch on fire, that most prescription drugs are abused, and that most trains derail.
Seriously, Russ, do you know people who have worked for a PhD? There is quite a bit of suffering that goes along with it. I watched 75% of my incoming graduate class drop out because they couldn't handle the pressure of grad school.
Kevin...please do not take this the wrong way, but "boo-hoo."
Ya wanna see a drop out rate, look at people who try to become brokers or financial advisors. Look at people who try to make it in sales and bomb. Med school? Fuggetaboutit.
I was not knocking the work Ph.D's accomplish for success. I was pointing out that those that get through it and get a job for life as a prof really did not "suffer" through anything. In this case, the end justifies the mean. I bet Chuck even busted his ass for his law degree. Did he "suffer?" I don't know. Does he have a job for life? Hardly. He actually has to be accountable.
in all fairness Russ the reason that medschool has such a high graduation rate is the degree of selctivity up front. It is gettin in that is the difficult part, they wean out all of the people that couldn't make it because training them is so expensive
Post a Comment
<< Home