Looked at through a purely capitalist lens, the American university classroom surges with potential for professors.
Professors, to take a common instance, can cash in on their captive market segment by making their own books a course requirement.
Years ago, UD covered on this blog a professor who sold ads for a local pizza establishment on his syllabus. He got a cut, as it were, from the pizza joint. (Can’t find the post!)
She covered a professor who, on the first day of class, told his students to write down their social security numbers and pass them forward. He’s in prison now, for theft. (Can’t find that post either! I swear I’m not making this shit up.)
UD has covered several professors who target their sitting ducks not for reasons of personal gain, but personal power. These professors, or their spouses, are running for political office, and they make passing the course contingent on leafleting the neighborhood or answering phones at campaign headquarters.
The noblest of this category of American professors are those who make grades dependent upon each student documenting that she has given blood, or voted, or performed some other civic duty dear to the heart of the professor.
Yes, indeed. A class is a terrible thing to waste.
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The latest capitalist wrinkle is on view at Metropolitan State University, where since 2003 the business school has been raking it in by having students sell tickets to local sports events or else. In one course, you get bonus points for selling extra tickets, plus there’s a superduper bonus for “exceptional sales volume.”
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All of this is not to be confused with simply enslaving students.
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UD thanks David.
February 21st, 2014 at 11:10PM
Are you telling me that a guy/gal, who spent so much time getting their PH.d, is running a identity theft scam, on undergrads??? WTF, is he/she some god damn tweeker, smack slammer, cooking a batch of stash in his/her motorhome??? This is the shit that some tweeked out, freaked out, scab infested, tooth decayed wretched of the county does to get their fix. I knew that the unis were hiring grossly underpaid adjuncts to fund their deranged athletic/administrative overhead, but now, their getting degenerate junkies, as well??? Jebus, it’s worse than I thought….
February 21st, 2014 at 11:13PM
Oops,sorry, ‘they’re’ rather than ‘their,’ I don’t need the Scathing One after me, too….