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The Forum > Article Comments > In defence of universities … under fire from left and right > Comments

In defence of universities … under fire from left and right : Comments

By Joan Beckwith, published 9/6/2021

Universities are under fire from both sides of politics. And I don't like it. Not that I think that counts for anything.

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Australia has NO universities, only Marxist Monoversities.

NO Australian child will be safe until we cut education funding by 100%. Close down the entire Australian education industry & start again from scratch.

This evil industry is so radically, extremely evil & toxic our children would be better off being home schooled.

A question in plain, simple english for the author + any & all commenters...

Q, What is the profile of the average, garden variety child sex predator today? A, She is female & a public sector employee.
Posted by imacentristmoderate, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 7:42:13 AM
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Joan is into "writing and activism"; and she doesn't like universities being criticised. Bryan Caplan is the person we should be listening to. Who cares what "the left" thinks.

University entrance should be restricted to people wanting to work in health, engineering, education, science, finance and the like. People wanting to waste time on humanities, arts etc, should be out looking for a proper job as soon as they finish Year 12, instead of learning to be ratbags and good little Marxists - which is all they are capable of intellectually.
Posted by ttbn, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 9:53:21 AM
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ttbn. Very true. There are other places for those who wish to engage in other things. I might give the Victorian College of the Arts as an example.
David
Posted by VK3AUU, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 1:21:10 PM
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There was a time when we were the third wealthiest nation on the planet when things like an education and shelter were considered part of the suite of human rights we were entitled to in a country as wealthy as Australia.

Our tax dollars built every one of these institutions. And when we were still an egalitarian society that hadn't yet commodified education and water that fell from the sky as a gift from God for everybody.

If you want to create a banana republic from a wealthy egalitarian society, then put the extreme right-wing/robber barons in charge and allow them to privitise at will. No?

You mean we've already done most of that? And today's outcomes are the result! TH lessons of history are bound to repeat and repeat if these same idiot idealogues, ignore the lessons in favour of a few dollars more for themselves and their greed-driven cronies?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 9 June 2021 2:02:13 PM
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Joan,

This is a strawman argument, the right does not claim:

Most education doesn't teach you anything you use on the job.
Getting the certificate is all that's important.
Education's payoff comes from clearing hurdles. 'If you flunk a class, plenty of employers will trash your application. But if you pass that same class, then forget everything you learned, employers will shrug.'
That is, qualifications are used by employers as profiling tools, and inefficient ones at that.
This kind of profiling leads to credential inflation. The education needed to get a job outstrips the education needed do the job.
We should, in such terms, be pushing for less education rather than more

For most courses, the above is complete bollocks. However, some liberal arts courses have no use in the real world.
Posted by shadowminister, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 3:17:17 PM
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shadowminister, these points paraphrase Professor Bryan Caplan, economist, who sets up AN argument about how universities fail employers. The more general argument is about the function of universities and, at an even more general level, the meaning of the concept of education.
Posted by Jayby, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 3:30:22 PM
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Any sources to back up your answer to your own question about predators, imacentristmoderate? This report from the Australian Institute of Family Studies does not support your claim:
"Research focusing on perpetrators of child sexual abuse is extensive compared to other forms of abuse. Evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the majority of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by males (ABS, 2005; McCloskey & Raphael, 2005; Peter, 2009)" https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/who-abuses-children
Posted by Jayby, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 3:55:03 PM
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Hi Jayby, Left wing feminists have been making that argument for decades.

Females dominate in ALL professions that involve close contact with vulnerable children & the results of the RGR child abuse RC clearly shows that.

The media is smothered in stories about female teachers abusing boys.
Posted by imacentristmoderate, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 4:20:29 PM
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Back in the fifties and sixties it was the major technical colleges such as Swinburne and Melbourne Tech before they became universities which produced people with real diplomas, who provided industry with useful people. The ones with university degrees were pretty useless until they had learned on the job for a while. We still need technical schools to prepare students to start apprenticeships and learn their trades at TAFE.

David
Posted by VK3AUU, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 4:35:36 PM
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No argument about the value of skills and the need for training in them, VK3AUU, or the need for ways to provide the training. That WAS the role of technical colleges, and the later TAFE system. But, I also want to salvage the 'idea of ideas', and universities as places to 'learn how to learn', develop critical thinking, and pursue creative research. Part of the original essay that didn't make the word count cut might help make my point:
“Uni is where I learnt how to learn,” a young woman told me. She completed an Arts degree (in 2010) including Japanese, cultural studies, ancient history, and philosophy, but has never worked in related areas. Learning how to learn, however, provided the basis from which she taught herself the drawing and computer skills she now uses in her employment as a digital artist and illustrator. Not a predictable trajectory from university to employment, but that’s part of the point.
Posted by Jayby, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 5:06:28 PM
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I'm a mechanical engineer. By the time I'd finished at Sydney Uni, I could work out the stress a conrod in a motor was subjected to at 1000RPM, or at 8000RPM. I knew lots of stuff, but I could never have built a highly stressed engine, that would hold together in racing conditions.

A few years later I went motor racing. I got a club member to help me prepare my Morgan+4 for racing. He was a total amateur, an accountant, but a very knowledgeable amateur. He taught me how to look at a part & see how stresses were effecting it.

Later I got serious & bought an aging formula 2 Brabham. My accountant mate & I built an engine for it from scratch. Some bought bits & some home built. We were competing with engines from the top engine builders in the UK.

I finished second in my first race in it, then won the race, or my class in F1 races in every race I started for the next 20 months. I sold the car when I was given a F1 drive with a good team.

The skill to make that car a winner, & totally reliable came from my accountant, amateur racing mechanic, not from my time at Sydney Uni. That time was not wasted, it got me the job that paid for the Brabham, although it contributed very little to that project. In the real world it is hard gained experience that matters, not book learning.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 10 June 2021 1:43:21 AM
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Joan Beckwith must be a Muslim because she apparently thinks like one. She thinks that institutions built with government money and subsidized by the taxpayer should be beyond criticism. Sorry, Joan. As a taxpayer I want my government to make sure that my money is used to benefit this country and it's people. It should not become like the ABC I bet you support, and become a government funded institution dedicated to overthrowing the established order, and reinstituting another one which has already failed in every country stupid enough to embrace it.

If both sides of politics is criticizing universities, then the onus is upon you to decide which side is right. As a right winger, I would have assumed that those who can afford to pay for their own education should do it, while those of lesser means who have displayed academic gifts and aptitudes should be assisted by the government, for the benefit of all. And free speech has always been what universities were all about. The freedom to discuss any issue and decide on what is the best course of action, without government or party intervention, was one reason why the western democracies rocketed ahead of every other culture.

You mentioned how universities are being attacked by people demanding merit based entrance and commercially usable outcomes. Of course those who enter university should be intelligent enough to handle the work. Just shovelling people with low IQ's into Artz courses on the public dime so that they can learn to be enemies of the civilisation that they prefer to live in, seems bonkers to me. And of course there must be some remunerative benefits to the community which builds and subsidizes these universities. Could you please do a university course in Economics if you still think that money grows on trees?
Posted by LEGO, Thursday, 10 June 2021 4:31:53 AM
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One of my teachers in high school was a certain Miss McKim, imacentristmoderate. I sure wish that she had sexually molested me.
Posted by LEGO, Thursday, 10 June 2021 4:36:32 AM
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Hi LEGO,

Miss was not interested in that fat ugly kid with a face full of pimples up the back of the class. She was taken by us handsome dudes sitting down the front. Besides, you had Mrs Palmer and her five lovely daughters, what else did you need?

I've missed our little discussions, where have you been, not on another pilgrimage to Nuremburg?
Posted by Paul1405, Thursday, 10 June 2021 6:07:24 AM
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You popped up on one topic and challenged me, then when I replied to you, you had fled back into cyberspace, Paul1406. But I am glad you are back because I miss reaming you out, and I keep wondering if you are bright enough to be turned away from the Dark Side?
Posted by LEGO, Thursday, 10 June 2021 7:55:33 AM
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I haven't done "a university course in Economics", LEGO, but am aware we might be on the cusp of a paradigm shift (link follows).
I don't know where you were coming from with your first sentence but, for the record, I found it offensive. And not to me. (I'm an atheist.)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/are-we-entering-a-new-political-era
In response to Hasbeen, "hard gained experience" is a key component of effectiveness in most endeavors, I would think. It's crucial in my own profession (psychology) but so also are things like having broad knowledge of available theory and practice, openness to new ideas and respect for different ideas. How much did I get from university in these respects? It's hard to parse out, but uni sure gave me a kickstart. I also studied disciplines (like philosophy, statistics, mathematics, social theory) that provided lenses through which to critique what I learned in theoretical and research psychology. There is no such thing as 'wasted' learning, imo, although there can be misapplied learning or contextual learning that we don't even recognise the importance of. No amount of "hard gained experience" at building a motor from scratch would, I suspect, produce much more than skinned knuckles and greasy jeans for me.
Posted by Jayby, Thursday, 10 June 2021 11:02:47 AM
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Hi Jayby, Universities were NEVER supposed to teach you how to think. Primary school is supposed to teach you how to think + teach the tools for further learning. Like the 3 Rs & some modern history about the Reformation, from which ALL good things flow.

My primary school taught me how to think. Then in the 1960s ruling, left wing elitists began dumbing down the curriculum both in the schools & in the teachers colleges, so that more children could be "graduating" from school illiterate & unable to think logically.

How old are you Jayby? If you are anywhere under 60 that would explain a lot.

Hi Hasbeen, So true. That is why traditionally ALL trades & professions were learned by apprenticeships, that combined part time book leaning in tertiary education institutes with part time, practical "on the job" experience.

Hi LEGO, Spot on comment.

What teenage boy "getting his rocks off" is going to complain about it? That's why so many females get away with molesting boys. It usually only gets police attention if his mother finds out, or she gets pregnant.

How would you like to begin your working career after finishing your education, with both a HECS debt & the Child Support Agency coming after you? Even when the authorities KNOW her pregnancy resulted from the statutory rape of a 14 or 15 year old boy.

BTW:- Left wing religion is actually a viral mental illness which renders it's victims incapable of reasonable, rational, logical thought processes.

So i don't hold out much hope for Paul1405 or any other leftists.
Posted by imacentristmoderate, Thursday, 10 June 2021 11:27:20 AM
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Hi Jayby.

Since you are slow on the uptake, I will try and make it clearer for you. Muslims think that their religion is beyond criticism, to the extent that if you do criticise it, you might have a bunch of the more crazy ones trying to kill you. Have you forgotten Charlie Hedbo already? And they were lefties like you that got slaughtered too? Joan Beckwith thinks that universities should be beyond criticism too. But I will hand it to Joan, at least she won't come after you with an AK 47 if you do.

I presume you are an educated socialite socialist too? Even when the Muslims kill your own, you trendies and yuppies still stick up for them. Fortunately, some lefties today are starting to think twice, especially the homosexual ones who don't like being thrown off buildings. But you probably think that sticking up for a warmongering and terrorist endorsing religion shows how virtuous you are?

And I have offended you, have I? Poor little darling. We don't call you lefties "snowflakes" for nothing. Thank you for conforming to your stereotype.

One wonders if you also conform to the stereotype of an educated elitist? You can see racism everywhere, except when directed at white people. You think that there are 147 genders, you use non gender specific pronouns, and you have a degree. You just can't read, write, spell, recite your multiplication tables, or do bloody sums.
Posted by LEGO, Thursday, 10 June 2021 12:07:18 PM
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