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(Tenured Radical)

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

A Diplomatic, Well-Bred
Brown University Student...


...begs to ask, in the campus newspaper, fundamental questions about that school's ripoff curriculum:

"At present, courses in many departments appear to be based merely on the preferences of the faculty...Brown faculty members like to hug the shorelines of their specialties... [M]ost fundamentally, is maximizing students' choices the only criterion for the curriculum's success?"


This student is beginning to grasp the dimensions of the scam. Throw infinite disconnected numbers and types of courses at students in order to make it look as though you're responding to consumer desire for variety ("maximizing students' choices"). If students fuss, toss yet more courses in. Whatever. What the hell. More choice.

Slowly it dawns on some of the students that they're leaving school with bits and pieces of exotica (often corresponding to professors' specializations) and no real education ("I've been able to become an expert on many subfields, but it has been difficult to find broad classes that cut across the curriculum."). It's a scandal that'll go on and on, though, for the institution is powerful fond of it ...