“Why do we want a liberal education? Because everyone in the modern university is living i
“Why do we want a liberal education? Because everyone in the modern university is living in the opposite, and it sucks.Universities are run like businesses whose primary product is certificate generation among people who already have the certificate. The goal is grant acquisition while generating certificates for people who might one day get more grants.The people who buy the certificates pay fortunes because they need the certificate to get a job. Thus, the university is serving a very pragmatic role in certification and job qualification, whose virtues are very easy to explain without any appeal to philosophy or aesthetics or vague ideas about "well-roundedness”.Most of the questions I answer for students are about how I grade and what information will be on the test. This is because they need good grades to get the certificate to get the job. I oblige because I know they need the certificate and so my bosses don’t get mad. And if a student wants office hours just to talk about interesting things, I am annoyed because I need to spend my time grading papers so the other students can pass the class, get certificates, and get jobs.So you see we all know why we’re doing what we’re doing. No mystery, no fuzzy talk, no effete notions about the human spirit or whatever.And it sucks.“ -- source link
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