Well, hold on there.
In a wonderful account of Michel Houellebecq’s now-notorious novel, Submission, Adam Gopnik talks also about Éric Zemmour, author of Le Suicide Français, the much-read attack on the contemporary liberal democratic state (“The tenets of [Zemmour’s] faith,” writes Gopnik, “are simple: liberalism, cosmopolitanism, and international finance are the source of all evil. Liberal capitalism is a conspiracy against folk authenticity on behalf of the ‘internationalists,’ the rootless cosmopolitans. The nation is everything, and internationalism is its nemesis. The bankers cosset us with narcotics of their civilization even as they strip us of our culture.”). One of Zemmour’s claims is up there in this post’s headline: Our universities are playpens for the rich.
UD would like to suggest that Gopnik is broadly correct about the historical trend: Our large and often impressive public universities (the University of California system, the University of Texas, the University of Maryland, and others) continue to be powerful engines of social mobility. But many of our best private universities remain to a notable extent wealthy enclaves (so much so in some cases that national attention has been drawn to them), and many of our worst universities are middle class and poor enclaves.
You don’t help the working poor by spawning hundreds of trashy online for-profit schools; you don’t boost the middle class by shunting them into pointless party schools.
At the other end, the weird vacant surfer guy some newspapers have dubbed “the Princeton killer” “went to Buckley School in New York, then moved on to Deerfield Academy and then [one presumes as a legacy admit] Princeton in 2003. But it took Mr. Gilbert two extra years to graduate from college. And since 2009, his friends said, he led a fairly aimless life that involved surfing, yoga, many hours spent at the gym and parties.”
January 19th, 2015 at 9:41AM
” Our large and often impressive public universities (the University of California system, the University of Texas, the University of Maryland, and others) continue to be powerful engines of social mobility.” sadly not so much these days (or years really)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8pjd1QEA0c
January 19th, 2015 at 10:11AM
dmf: I’m watching that clip now, and I notice that almost all of it is about the for-profit trash schools. No question that debt burdens public university grads; but the debt is easier to deal with, since most of those grads actually graduate and get jobs.
January 19th, 2015 at 11:50AM
yes I figured that you would enjoy the shots at for-profits but to say that “most of those grads actually graduate and get jobs” isn’t telling of either the kinds of employment available for non-STEM folks (in part to pay off massive debts) or to address the miserable social mobility in the US, no?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/college-graduates-unemployment/
January 19th, 2015 at 3:11PM
Football and basketball factories or large and often impressive public universities [that are] powerful engines of social mobility ???
January 19th, 2015 at 3:35PM
Anon: A lot of mega sports factories – the Univ. of Texas Austin, Maryland College Park, U Michigan, U Minnesota – do a perfectly good job of educating many of their students.
January 19th, 2015 at 5:09PM
A glance through the archives suggests that perspective is rarely evident. More likely a reader encounters something like this:
http://www.margaretsoltan.com/?p=45377
“[W]hen you hear the name of a large state school such as the University of Texas or Florida or Michigan you don’t think of a college at all. You think of a football team.”
Success! These universities have truly made it.
January 19th, 2015 at 6:16PM
Anon: I stand by what I said. When most people hear those names, they think of football teams.
January 20th, 2015 at 2:07PM
@dmf, appreciate the link. What is unfortunate is that the non-profits are no better.
http://www.ag.ny.gov › Media Center › Press Releases
It became apparent, at least to me, that the non-profit unis were using the same business model as their for profit colleagues. Point is, while the U.S. Senate came down hard on for profits, they did no such thing for the non-profs. Not one admin, that I know of, that was implicated in running this massive pigeon drop con has been imprisoned, not one non-prof uni has lost accreditation. All that your link had to say regarding for profits can also be applied to the traditional university.
At one time, the American University was the mechanism for social mobility, due to the Morrill Act, which created the land grant uni. Not anymore, it has become a publicly financed sink hole….