According to this AP article the University of Illinois is suffering from its first drop in applications iin five years, and they can't seem to figure out why.
Could the following passage fromthis Brian Hecht column, maybe, offer an explanation?:
'Bill Ayers, a leader of the Weathermen in his own right who is also currently a "distinguished professor" of Education at the University of Illinois, is not only on record as having said he thinks the Weathermen “didn’t do enough” in their pursuit of violence; he also wrote in his memoirs of the Weathermen’s sexual experimentation and their determination to “smash monogamy.” But while smashing monogamy might seem diametrically opposed to a future career dealing with legal issues involving the American family, it is the Weathermen’s predilection for violence and explosives which makes it most difficult to imagine an erstwhile leader of the group holding a faculty position at a top 20 law school. Ayers reportedly described the Weather Underground’s credo as such: “[k]ill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at.”'
My folks are U of I alums, and they've stopped contributing to the alumni funds. It seems that the Ward Churchill disease is widespread and may become costly to cure.
4 comments:
While many variables play into things such as application declines, it seems unlikely that many potential applicants pay close attention to individual faculty members and their backgrounds. Especially, in this case, since the drop is at UI - Urbana Champaign, while Ayres is on the faculty at UI - Chicago.
A much more likely explanation is the ballooning cost of attending a public university. Universities are out of control, expanding way beyond their intended mission, and continually adding costs.
Really, I was being a bit flippant about the connection between Ayres and the drop in apps at UI (& I really DO know the diff between UI and UIC despite the way I make it look)...
And you're quite right about the multiple factors. Nevertheless, part of the ballooning costs can be laid directly at the feet of the political extremists who push for "diversity" in the programs, at the cost of loss in basic college education. As the more liberal programs start expanding, and political agendas are served at the larger universities, though, it seems that there has been an upsurge in apps at the more conservative private colleges.
In terms of the diversity programs, are you talking about curricular, academic programs or other, peripheral, non-academic stuff?
I'm talking largely about the academic stuff (although sometimes the peripheral tends to spill into the academic). I've never quite understood why one needs a separate department for, say, ethnic studies or women's studies (especially at he undergraduate level), when one has fine history and anthropology departments whose members are sufficiently versed in the topics.
When one divides a field into tiny, disparate sections, one loses the ability to view the whole of it, and the educational process suffers accordingly.
Narrowing a view is seldom the way to gain full understanding, and, in fact, is a slick way to manipulate data and minds.
Of course, I'd have to say that, since I'm the product of a liberal arts education, myself.
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