Test.

Geez, I wish I could go back to college.

Ran into an old college housemate in the Haight-Ashbury:

"Allie! How ya been?!"
"Well, a few years back I graduated law school..."
("Another lawyer") "Yeah? So, what are doing with it?"
"But now I'm an erotic dancer!"
("Wha--?") "Oh."
"By the way, this is my husband, Jacob...."
Jacob's earrings were bigger than Allie's.

There's no moral(ity) to this story, but there is a title:
TOP-TIER LAW SCHOOL GRADUATE GONE WILD!!!

There are some Seraphic readers who were probably not expecting the list below... and then there are the Seraphic readers who have been paying attention.

Top 10 Things Overheard in "Porn 101"
by Jake Novak

10) "Hey, isn't that the dean's wife?"

9) "This class is helping me decide my future... I'm gonna be a plastic surgeon."

8) "I'd know Shmuel the Mohel's work anywhere!"

7) "That woman's bra should get the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor."

6) "Great, I finally find a course where the professor let's us eat in class... and it's THIS."

5) "Um professor, the guys at the frat house need this movie back by tomorrow."

4) "Hey, how come there are 500 people at every session of this class when only 13 students are actually registered?"

3) "This class is actually less obscene than the Middle Eastern Studies course I took last semester."

2) "But how can we watch 'Lusty Housewives VII' without seeing 'Lusty Housewives VI first?"

1) "$40,000-a-year, and they can't even show us movies with decent lighting."

Perhaps we should find a new word for "elite"...

Cant say Im surprised.....

It seems a college education is a complete waste these days....

Lance: I think it is symbiotic. These courses are electives--the kids who are tossing away Mom and Dad's tuition money are doing so with eyes open in cases like this. You can get a pretty good education anywhere, if you are looking for one.

I agree Boxer 5. A college education is not a waste. College in the '70's had all kinds of goofy classes too. Times are not all that different than they were 30 years ago. I worked my way around those classes, and received a good education and a dipoloma.

hahaha...some college education...*diploma*

Randi...Boxer5,

Today....college education is a big waste of money, and a complete waste of time.

Today's universities are cesspools of backward thought....Filled with professors who teach that America is the enemy....and that Israel is the cause of strife in the Middle East.

College was so wonderful that had I listened to the business professors I never would have learned to trade commodities. The professors I approached told me I was wasting my time....

I had the last laugh.

Lance, what would you suggest young people do today, without a college education? Professors and teachers who tell you not to go down a certain path are not a new phenomenon. They have always existed. Professors with progressive and subversive ideas...not new either. But the truth is, the percentages say, that without a college education, your choices to a successful path narrow. Thank goodness you didn't listen to your professor, and went after your dreams. But if an employer is faced with 2 prospective employees, one with and one without a college education, which do you think he/she is more likely to pick?
College, I believe, is still the best road to expanding one's options.

I don't know about the situation in the US, but, here in the UK, a university education has become a total waste of time. Successive governments have pushed more and more people into higher education. It didn't seem to occur to anyone that increasing the number of graduates wouldn't increase the number of graduate jobs available. Skilled manual workers -- plumbers, electricians, carpenters -- are now making an absolute fortune because there's such a shortage. Soem of the best graduates get the great graduate jobs and the rest simply enter the workforce three or four years later than the people without degrees, only with more debt and less experience.

> But the truth is, the percentages say, that without a college education, your choices to a successful path narrow.

I think they're quite misleading statistics. Remember that there are lots of jobs for which you absolutely have to have a degree: doctor, research scientist, chemist, pharmacist, meteorologist, college lecturer, etc -- jobs where the work itself is directly or closely related to the degree subject. I'd be interested in seeing what the job prospect stats look like when you remove those jobs from the mix. Because a degree per se doesn't help you get those jobs at all -- your prospects of becoming a pharmacist improve not one iota if you get a degree in art history or astrophysics. So, perhaps counterintuitively, there is a world of difference between saying that there are a lot of good jobs out there that require degrees and that getting a degree means that you have much better and broader job prospects.

> if an employer is faced with 2 prospective employees, one with and one without a college education, which do you think he/she is more likely to pick?

Depends on the employer. I've lost out on a couple of jobs because the employer felt my degree made me overqualified. Your degree may be useful in getting you your first job (though, for me, it wasn't), but, after that, most sensible employers will recruit the guy with the best experience. It's a no-brainer: what I did last week for a successful profit-making company versus what I studied ten years ago and have probably forgotten.

I can honestly say that, if I hadn't gone to university and got a degree, my salary would by now be at least £10,000 higher. And the same goes for my wife.

You know, at this rate, my kids may have to be homeschooled through college!

Randi,

You coudnt be farter from the truth.....

My brother just completed his 25th year at Motorola.....WITHOUT a college degree!!

He received a standing ovation from his fellow employee's and the VP of his division..and he makes great money.

Today, universities fill young minds were garbage....and I think it is alot worse than in the 70's. If you have the courage...read this book by David Horowitz.....The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America....

As Squander Two points out if you want to become a Doctor...Attorney....etc...you need a degree...Otherwise...college is just a complete and utter waste, and as my brother as proven...you dont need a degree to move up in one of the USA's great corporations.

I actually don't have much of a beef with what's being taught at American universities today. Just like always, they have mostly been close to opposite of utilitarian, vocational training centers and a haven for intellectual, (sometimes useless, but still interesting) discussion.

No, the big beef is the OUTRAGEOUS TUITION the schools charge. This is one of the greatest greed-fests of all time coming from institutions that basically claim to be socialist. It's always funny how when people complain about tuition and college's say: "You can't put a price on an education." The answer to that should be: "Yeah, but you just did... and it happens to be an arm and a leg!"

I think you can go far with or without a college education, but it's probably best to go to a very inexpensive school, and work as much as you can while you're learning... even if it takes years to graduate.

I went to one of the most "prestigious" and expensive colleges in America, and I basically learned how to avoid reality. It was fun and interesting though... gotta given them that.

Suggestions for the reading list for a proposed Seraphic U. course ...

Porn 201: "Pornography: What it is, what it does, and how to re-"do it"

* Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism is Corrupting Our Future, by Ben Shapiro

* A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, by Wendy Shalit

* Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by Andrea Dworkin

* [Movie] Jesus Is Magic, by Sarah Silverman (one musical number in particular)

(Notes: All of these are by superbly gifted Jewish-American intellectuals or artists who early on in life decided to go against many a grain. Shalit and Shapiro are Orthodox. Ms. Dworkin, as a radical feminist, is untouchable to some, but I would still teach her - she's a lot smarter than many of her critics. Also, I'm only familiar with the last two suggestions on the list, so please, kind readers, suggest more!)

btw, Jake: you are a PRO, bro! Ha-ha! Whatta top ten list!

No great thought about school & income, but my rule of thumb is "it's not what you make, it's what you keep."

Happy April 2, everybody!

Squander 2, Lance, and Jake: (Robert, please excuse while the students of Seraphic U discuss amongst themselves)...I appreciate everything you have said, and actually agree with much of it. Lance, I understand what you are saying, and believe that there are jobs out there to be had without a college education. Jake, I agree with you as well, that's why my husband, myself, and my oldest son, all went, and are going to State universities.
And while I believe that nothing substitutes for hard work, perseverance, and a solid work ethic...I still stand by my first statement, that college is still the best road to opening one's options (I did not say the only road). (and Lance, I'm not a "farter"...sorry, just couldn't resist!)

Ideally, college should be about more than just a job ticket. An education helps you to a richer understanding of the world around you, whether you are a plumber or a poet. The private college I went to helped me toward that goal, and the tiny nameless state school my wife went to (as she followed me in my career) helped her. As I think Randi was getting at, employability is important, but it is not the whole story.

The criminal bit is when you go in to a class to learn about English literature, and you are instead subjected to tirades from a bitter slob who deconstructs brilliant works and leaves you uninterested in the things you could be learning and enjoying in Austen and Shakespeare. That is very different from signing up for a class on Porn 101. You have a limited time to be on campus (Earth, too, by the way)--if that is how you want to spend it, don't blame the school for your ignorance when you leave. IMAO.

Randi: I have been informed that NO lady does that--just us guys...

"An education helps you to a richer understanding of the world around you, whether you are a plumber or a poet."
Boxer 5: exactly.
And...who said I was a LADY?!!!

Nuts and bolts: I learned grammar from studying foreign languages from scratch (where you have to learn grammar rules) not from English Department courses I took, where most of it is "winging it".

Randi,

College is not the best option...
Only liberals and elites believe such non sense.

I can point out numerous high school and college drop outs that are more succesful than most university graduates.

Plus, their minds are not polluted with the garbage that liberal professors want to impart.

Lance, sorry you think what I say is nonsense. I appreciate your point of view...and will continue to stand by mine.

Let me tell you guys an interesting story. A few weeks ago we did a viewer email question on my show that went like this: "Did you learn anything in high school that helped you in your adult life?"

We got an unusually strong response on this. About 60% said "no," but of the 40% who said "yes," almost all of them said the most important thing they learned in h.s. was that you have to get along with others and problem solve with people from different backgrounds, etc. Since I went to Jewish schools for all but one year of my k-12 life, I had to wait until college to really learn that. And, thankfully I did.

What worries me about Jews or anyone other group not going to mainstream colleges or college at all is the lost opportunity to strengthen their beliefs by seeing that the outside world isn't such a challenge, and of course that everyone not like you isn't necessarily a threat. I understand why someone would send their kids to a school where there is no threat of them taking Porn 101 or "Hating Israel 101," but maybe it's better to trust your kids' judgement and everything you've tried to teach them up to then.

OF COURSE this can all be achieved without paying 40k a year and falling into the terrible pressure zone most of our smart high school students fall into when it comes to applying for college. I hope my daughter will be more laid back than I was... and I was pretty laid back for that time in my life.

Oh, and CALLING TORONTO PEARL!! Perhaps she can explain how the best schools in Canada cost about 12% of what the best ones in the U.S. do. BTW, at one of those elite Canadian colleges, you can take classes taught by my dad. WHAT A BARGAIN!

Jake, I agree with you on all counts.
I would love to take a class with your dad...
Instead of term papers, I could turn in Top Ten lists (or at least bribe him with babke)

Jake:

Don't worry so much about the Orthodox Jews who study in yeshiva their whole lives. There are several generations now of Jews, as you well know, who went to yeshiva grade school, high school, and then to Yeshiva University or the sister school Stern College for Women. They are professionals in all walks of life and not shuttered away in some mental shtetl.

And those who are, various Hasidim, well, you know what, we need them also, to carry on their mesorah, their traditions, which are as valuable, excuse me, more valuable, than a degree from, ahem, Columbia.

That they don't interact with the wider world, well, neither do the upper crust who shuttle between the upper east side and their homes on the Hamptons.

I will politely excuse myself from this conversation.

How these kids react is dependent on attitudes taught by parents. My dad would admit to me, because of his Holocaust experiences, that he could never trust "the goyim"...but he also admitted he knew it was religiously not right, but who could blame him...yet, in his dealings with the people who worked for him, and anyone he came into contact with, he was always a mensch; He treated them as human beings, with respect, and he cared about them.

It was a powerful message for me.

If anything, I think the yeshivah kids, as a group, are more polite and decent than kids being brought up in "diverse" backgrounds, and to echo Robert, get along just fine if not better.

I have observed the kids growing up here in "podunk", St. Louis, MO, and they are as nice a group of now young adults as one would want to meet. I think, in fact, they have less problems than other kids their age, and deal just fine with the outside world.

Do some of these kids have problems or prejuidices? Sure. But my contention is that if taught properly, to really understand about the idea that b'tzelem elokim applies to all humans, not just Jews...they'll treat others with that respect. It's certainly there to be taught.

It's what we teach our kids. Teach them that we have a separate life, but we live in the world with others: Respect them, treat them as we would be treated. That's all a matter of education and attitude and the example of teachers and parents.

I would worry a lot more about the kids growing up with no moral or spiritual anchors. The kids who perpetrated Columbine and other such horrors are not yeshivah buchers or Stern students. These other kids have nothing to hold on to, but hey, they are being raised in the "real world", and not that phony, insular, ghettoized yeshivah world.

I think we are worrying about the wrong kids.

Jake.....Unfortunately, many of those elite Canadian universities breed the most vile atitudes towards America...Israel...and Jews.

Certainly....a minor saving grace would be to take a class with your Dad....who is a brillant Talmudist.

Robert....I agree....YU has a long and brillant list of professionals who are a credit to religious Judaism.

I fail to understand the postion that going to University makes one better equipped to interact with the world...or more apt to be successful. I really think it is non sense...and it is based on elitism....my degree is better than your degree....etc..than anything tangible.

I also want to know...though the yeshivah and Stern kids didn't get a chance to take Porn 101...do you think they have any clue where those babies they are making are coming from?

Just a thought.

Maurice.....

I bet the Yeshiva and Stern kids have a better clue where babies come from than most....and they certainly dont need garbage like Porn to teach them.

No, my point was that more Jews interracting with others would strengthen Judaism. No one denies that And if we lose a few who couldn't stop themselves from the temptations of silly secularism... well, they probably weren't going to be such assets as it is.

I guess I should also come clean and say I've been teaching an undergrad course at NYU (40k a year for tuition), for the last 5 years. I;m good, but I ain't worth that!

Jake, too bad I graduated university back in 1983 and that your dad wasn't teaching there in my time -- I'm pretty sure my schedule -- being that I took Jewish studies -- would've crossed with his...and just think...I could've known your dad before I knew you!

I never understood why U.S. schools are costlier...and when I was younger, I also always thought life was greener on the other side of the fence -- um, I mean campus. I thought U.S. colleges offered so much more in so many ways.

From all these collegiate threads, I realize that I guess I was wrong.

.Otherwise...college is just a complete and utter waste, and as my brother as proven...you dont need a degree to move up in one of the USA's great corporations.

I disagree wholeheartedly with this. There are few opportunities in life in which you can devote large chunks of time to education.

It is nothing more than fear mongering to suggest that university life is infected with one particular viewpoint.

The story about your brother is nice, but it is not proof that a college education is unnecessary. The fact is that it is easier for a college graduate to find employment.

I don't have time to respond at length, or I would go on. But don't fool yourself into thinking that there is no value in having the opportunity to devote time to reading classical literature, learning philosophy, engaging in courses on logical analysis and critical reasoning. And don't forget that it teaches how to avoid run on sentences.

Jack.....you show your ignorance if you ignore the fact that universities are not heavily weighted towards the liberal point of view.

Maybe you should widen your reading list past publications like Mother Jones and The Nation.

I can list professor after professor at universities across the US that hardly stick to their chosen subject...

Instead they use their tenure to pedal their anti-Americanism....anti-semitism....and anti Christian point of view.

This running argument is a good one! a very good one! Tenured university professors, if they want to receive their salaried sabbatical year, I think should also then have to teach for a year without salary.

I'd like to weigh in with support for Randi, Boxer5 and Jake.

Young people who have been brought up with strong values at home are hardly in danger of being "poisoned" with ideas and opinions different from theirs. One of the reasons I read Robert's political posts, although I strongly disagree with them, is in order to understand a different point of view. As free-marketeers, you conservatives should be supporting the "marketplace of ideas." I know many people who have attended institutions of higher learning with a bias other than their own and have come out of the experience with their own basic views intact but with a much more nuanced understanding of the world.

Here in Israel, by the way, we do unfortunately have the phenomenon of Yeshiva kids who are brought up in a hothouse of hatred for others, and who act on that belief through violent acts toward non-Jews. (Please don't flame me for this last comment. I don't mean to say that ONLY Jews act this way, or that there are not worse kinds of behavior on the other side, or that this behavior is typical of Yeshiva kids.)

And speaking of the cost of private tuition, that is not due to "elitism" as some would have it but due to, well, the free reign given to the free market in the United States. Canada, Europe and Israel offer lower tuition rates even for excellent universities because tuition is based on - gasp! - Social Democratic principles. Since pure free market-ism has begun making inroads in Israel, tuition has been creeping up and there are those who speak now of tripling it. Then higher education will really become something only for the elites.

Here in Israel, by the way, many people do not get a well-rounded education but only study the subjects that will directly prepare them for a career. One can see the results in a general ignorance of important areas such as history and literature, which does lead to a certain narrow-mindedness. Moreover, paradoxically, a narrow higher education leaves students less prepared for an incredibly rapidly changing employment market, in which almost overnight the subject they studied may become obsolete. Teaching students how to think and express themselves effectively - how to analyse a problem, tackle it and share the fruits of their work with others - is giving them a much more valuable skill than does teaching them a technical trade.

I know that much of my own understanding of the world and human nature is directly attributable to my university education (as well as that I received in my excellent high school, an "elite" but free-of-charge girls' high school in New York.)

Randi, sorry you felt you needed to leave. Everyone else, please reply politely, as Robert always exhorts us all to do.

Sara,
Thanks! One conservative point against lamenting the high tuition is that the same freer market also offers the recent grad more opportunity to make more money. Maybe you think it's bunk (I did when in college), but these days I'm open to such thinking.

Personally I consider universities hostile to my intellect, but obviously I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't gone.

As a black American friend related to me once (a Yale grad, btw): when he was a kid his grandmother told him that HER grandmother used to lecture her to get as much of an education as possible. She got her point across because her index finger was missing - when she was a girl her slavemaster cut it off when he discovered that she had set out to learn how to read & write. After that, how can I grudge anyone who wants to get an education the opportunity? (Besides, does that remind anyone of a hit movie from about 10 years ago?)

Everybody:

It's late here n LA, Karen and I have had a very hard day for it is Ariel's ZT'l secular birthday which is why I've been absent most of the day. But I do recognize how valuable and yes, in a way, inflammatory this thread can be, so let me make a few quick personal observations.

1. This post started out because I was shocked how some whacky professors are teaching porn in some universities. I lamented this fact and still do, I see it as intellectual degradation and a moral vacuum. If you read the article carefully, you will notice that some parents celebrate these courses as "cutting edge eduation." I think these parents are idiots. But when you are paying such high tuition fees, well, I guess you tend to justify anything. But then maybe they are just bad parents. As these teachers are bad teachers.

2. Our new friend and commenter Boxer correctly pointed out that these courses are electives, thus not requred. He went on to say that you get out of an eduation what you put into it. This struck a chord with me.

3. I went to a wildly liberal arts college where I majored in Film. I took other courses, of course, but quickly discovered who the charlatan professors were, and avoided them like the plague. I avoided the Marxists, the Structuralists, the Feminists, all the isms I could, and concentrated on my field like the Yeshiva student I was at heart, which is to say, that I delved into film like a Talmud scholar, preparing myself for a a career in film with ruthless dedication.

4. And so for me, college was a blessing for there was no way i could have learned what I needed to know about film in the Beis Midrash, in the yeshiva study hall.

5. But I also learned that the supposedly "open and liberal world of the college campus" was in reality not so open and in fact, deeply muted--an echo chamber of single digit ideas. The conformity demnded on my little campus reminded me of my yeshiva in more ways then one. At least in my yeshiva there was a dedication to an ideal of G-d and truth and modesty and virtue. But on this wildly liberal campus, the greater conformity demanded was in service to nothing more than hedonism, romantic Marxist notions that were truly dumb and ultimately dangerous, and finally I sensed a creeping antiSemitism in an antiZionism that was just picking up steam on the campuses, which, let me remind you, is now in full bloom, and the Jihadists are delirious with joy for all the potential collaborators.

6. It is funny, but for years I was this yeshiva kid dying to get into the secular world, and then suddenly I was in the secular world, but yearning to get back into yeshiva.

7. As far as cost, the most expensive universities are the ones that get the most money from the federal government. Yeshiva University, which gets no federal funding whatsoever, probably has one of the lowest tuition rates for a fine university in the country. Harvard, which cost the earth, has the largest endowment of any university and receives zillions in federal research grants. So, it is not the free market that is moving tuition costs, not at all, but a kind of creeping socialism that is making costs rise.

8. Back to the Porn 101. It seems to me that if a university legitimizes this kind of bizarre discourse, and in response if we're not at least disgusted or outrgaed, if we're so jaded or amused, then we're in trouble. It means that maybe we're all suffering a kind of... well, it's like a core of nothingness is just boring into the heart of our collective soul.

Jack.....you show your ignorance if you ignore the fact that universities are not heavily weighted towards the liberal point of view.
Maybe you should widen your reading list past publications like Mother Jones and The Nation.

Lance,

I'd be more careful about tossing around poorly chosen invectives. You don't know much about me, not nearly enough to make any sort of educated assessment about who I am and my beliefs.

Furthermore you do nothing to support your allegations other than claim that the facts support your narrow POV.

If you want to be taken seriously you need to provide facts, not rhetoric.

I can list professor after professor at universities across the US that hardly stick to their chosen subject...

Instead they use their tenure to pedal their anti-Americanism....anti-semitism....and anti Christian point of view.

Yes, I am calling you on all of this. Just for kicks, I'd like to see you provide some substance. Here are a few questions that you need to answer:

1) How many professors are part of your "sample" group? Are you looking at community colleges, state universities, private institutions?

2) How have you arrived at your claim that they "pedal their anti-Americanism....anti-semitism....and anti Christian point of view.'

What is anti-American? What is anti-semitic. What is anti-Christian. I could make an argument that many of the courses taught at YU are anti-Christian. Are you counting those, or they not matter.

Again, the success story about the man who succeeded at Motorola is nice, but it doesn't provide any proof that college is unnecessary. It just shows one example of someone who did well without a degree.

My gardener doesn't have a degree and neither does the cleaning woman. Can I use them as examples of the need for a degree.

I think that what we are really going to find is that we are engaging in nariskeit. We haven't agreed upon a definition of success. We haven't agreed upon a definition of Porn, or defined any number of other elements.

It is fine to react with emotion, but just remember that passion does not pass for fact.

Jack,

And you've just given a fine example of the kind of critical thinking that a good higher education provides.

Robert -

First, I know how hard yesterday must have been for you. I'm with you and Karen in spirit.

About the subject at hand:

I absolutely agree with you about porn being disgusting and degrading; it offends my religious, humanist and feminist sensibilities that this filth is actually being taught as a "legitimate" subject.

Could you expand a bit on what you mean by "creeping socialism" keeping prestigious university costs high?

Jack....

Like the good closed minded liberal you are....before you begin to threaten me...I would go back and re read your posts....and Randi's posts. The one's who began the degradation of this thread with personal insults at me. However, I expect nothing less from liberals because the ad hominem argument is one that is central to how your kind argue.

Jack...I would like to remind you that your posts provided ZERO...ZILCH...NADA...in way of facts. Just repeating the tired mantra of so many leftists since universities are your breeding ground for backwards thinking.

It is apparent that none of the defenders of "higher education" are quite up to date with current affairs. Have you not removed your rose colored glasses long enough to see the likes of Cornel West....Noam Chomsky...etc...who are so out of step with reality?

As I mentioned in my above posts, which you clearly did not read, I invite you to gather up some courage and read the book I mentioned above by David Horowitz.

He points out.....quite eloquently....what is so wrong with the universities and colleges you cherish so much.

"and Randi's posts. The one's who began the degradation of this thread with personal insults at me"...
I said I would politely leave because I realized, once I had been told my thinking is "nonsense", there was no longer a point to staying here.
But I'm back to defend myself and then I promise, I will be gone.
No where in this thread did I insult you Lance. In fact, as I reread my comments, I was very much open to partial agreement with things you said, while giving my opinion. I don't like being accused of something that I did not do. That is all I will say.
To Robert, I wondered why you were so quiet yesterday...I should have been more intuitive and realized that your silence was probably your pain. I'm sorry you and Karen had a hard day.
I'm sorry that these attacks have gone on, on your blog. My very first comment here was a joke...that seemed to lead to much aggression.
As people younger than me say today..."I'm Out"

Sara:

I don't mean to speak for Robert, but I suspect he was referring to the fact that Universities are only trying to help very poor people with real financial aid. Thus the rich and the middle class pay a lot more. This situation favors the deserving poor a little, but it mostly is an attack on the middle class.

What's funny about the bashing of Universities is that it reminds me of the bashing of the mainstream news media. While 90% of the criticism is based on cultural or political beefs, it's greed that's the real culprit. That is not to say that the far left doesn't have a comfrotable perch in most of our major schools... it does. BUT that affects very few people in a meaningful way. What does affect almost every American are outrageous college tuitions, the advent of the SAT as an educational goal that actually teaches nothing, and the demise of our skilled blue collar workforce because the lie of "everyone needs to go to college" is perpetuated so schools can put 21-year-olds $100k in debt.

The same thing is true for the news media. Yes, we have our Dan Rathers and stories that make terrorists look good. But I think most of American ain't fooled. The bigger problem is for ratings and circulation numbers we do stories about celebs, sex, crime that are meaningless. (BTW, you think Time did this porn story as part of a continuing series on higher education? LOL!)

Jack....

Like the good closed minded liberal you are....before you begin to threaten me.

Lance,

The only thing in my post that you find threatening is a point of view that does not agree with your own.

However, I expect nothing less from liberals because the ad hominem argument is one that is central to how your kind argue.

Lance, this is a perfect example of why the dialogue between people is becoming so coarse. Do you really want to use a term like your kind here. Days before Yom Hashoah and you bring up this tripe.

Not very impressive.

Jack...I would like to remind you that your posts provided ZERO...ZILCH...NADA...in way of facts. Just repeating the tired mantra of so many leftists since universities are your breeding ground for backwards thinking.

Lance, I almost choked on my breakfast. You want to talk about facts. Where are yours? I listed a number of questions and you didn't answer them.

I know that it must make you uncomfortable to be asked to prove that what you say is true, but it is part of a grown up debate. If I wanted to be as juvenile as you have been in your response I would say that I eviscerated you and declare victory.

But I don't need to because some things are self evident.

It is apparent that none of the defenders of "higher education" are quite up to date with current affairs. Have you not removed your rose colored glasses long enough to see the likes of Cornel West....Noam Chomsky...etc...who are so out of step with reality?

Fine, so you mentioned two professors. Like I said last night. How many are there? Is it two out of 2,000,000 or two out of 200. Let me answer that for you, 200 is not even close.

I'll be conservative and suggest that there are approximately 50,000 professors in the US. You provided two examples, that works out to be .00004 which means that it is not even statistically relevant.

The numbers are even worse when we look at the Motorola example you provided.

In short I think that you mean well and that you are probably a very good guy. But you need to take a refresher course on how to construct a logical, fact based argument.

I welcome your response and encourage you to do more than suggest that I read a single book. Provide fact. I don't have to provide any, I didn't make specious allegations.

Lance,

May I also request that you refrain from personally insulting people because of their beliefs? "Your kind"? Really.

> And speaking of the cost of private tuition, that is not due to "elitism" as some would have it but due to, well, the free reign given to the free market in the United States.

Not true. The problem with the universities is that they don't operate in a free market. They all agree that their fees should go up year after year, regardless of costs or inflation. No colleges choose to buck the trend and lower their costs in order to compete. In other words, they operate a cartel, which is one of the many ways of unfreeing a market.

> The fact is that it is easier for a college graduate to find employment.

What we've learnt in the UK is that, while this may have been true, it was true not because of the college education itself, but because of simple supply and demand. As long as there is more demand for graduates than there are graduates, graduates find it easier to find employment. Pushing too many people into higher education has caused there to be more graduates than there are graduate jobs, and a shortage of skilled non-graduates. In Britain today, people in traditionally highly-paid graduate careers such as stockbroking are actually quitting and retraining as plumbers, because the money's better. Seriously.

The moral is that the best way to ensure good employment prospects is to get good at doing something that not too many other people are doing. As long as degrees remain scarce, get a degree. But they may not remain scarce, and then they become useless.