Mr O,

As long as you're focused and passionate about
what you do and that makes you happy.
Who am I to question it? It would be sad if
you were unhappy.

Academics & their institutions have earned every bit of condemnation they are getting. Too many know very little, but arrogantly assume they know it all. James Cook is a perfect example.

I started to realise this way back in the late 60s, when I ran into my favorite professor from my engineering. A mate & I built the most successful racing car Australia had ever seen on an old Brabham chassis. It finished second in it's first race, breaking the existing lap record on the way, then won outright, or it's class in Formula 1 races, at every start for the next 20 months.

These results earned me a professional Formula 1 drive.

I excitedly started telling my professor about this, & how we had built the engine. He quickly cut me off, telling me my ideas were all wrong, & would not work.

I wondered how he had missed that this was past tense, & the results were in the record book. It held the class lap record at every circuit I had raced it at in the dry.

This judgement was confirmed when I had considerable interaction with AIMS, James Cook, & the Marine Park authority, when running a large marine tourist operation in the Whitsundays. The area was not, but was about to become an extension of the marine Park.

I was building an outer reef facility to handle 225 tourists a day, & would have liked their input in design & instillation. I wanted their advice if anything I was planning was possibly detrimental. They all ran a mile rather than commit to anything.

The continual utter garbage some academics come up with trying to support the global warming scam, proves how naive & childish so many of them really are.

The days of automatic respect for academics have long been obliterated by the actions of many of them & their institutions.

Foxy,

Being a generalist is not recommended for those wanting a career, especially in academia. But then I would never have been happy doing a bachelor honours, masters and PhD all in the one discipline with each thesis being just an extension of the other(s).

No thanks! I have a passion for knowing everything. But I also wanted to qualify as well by formal study otherwise one runs the risk of having no credibility and ending up being referred to as a know-all-know-nothing; and as we both know, there are a lot of those to be found on OLO.

One might say that I did engineering to make money but did the Arts degrees because I wanted to be smart as well.

Dear Hassie,

I remember well the golden years of universities.
When they were so much a part of Australian
culture.

Today, critiques have often been expressed as
complaints about academia in general, but more
often than not the target have been the humanities, and
"softer"social sciences like anthropology, and sociology,
as opposed to sciences like physics, chemistry, biology
or "harder" sciences like economics and some areas of
Psychology.

We've all heard the complaints, and as you point out
many are quite valid. I'm sorry that your experiences
have been so negative. But you can be proud of your
achievements which no one can take from you.

Mr O,

Your family must be so proud of you and your passion
for learning.

That's wonderful!

There are some on this medium who would be quite pleased and disappointed to know that I nearly did not stop to respond or comment on this topic.
But I thought given that it is a complete fallacy and even an enigma, I had to stop and give it a consideration, even though it is a futile and even irrelevant question or heading, because there is no benefit or actual purpose to the question in the first place.
The forum will not change pending the comments and response given here.
So knowing this fact, I know that responding to it is akin to futile.
But here goes nothing.
What I like about this forum is it's ease of access.
What I dislike about it, I have said before, is that it is not what it purports to be.
It is a lie.
It does not allow one to comment freely.
It does not give clear guidelines as to what is acceptable or more importantly, what is not.
It is inconsistent in it's terms of reference on what you can say and the language used to say it.
I speak Australian, but apparently this forum bans the use of such a language.
We must talk in PC, which as we all know, is a very restrictive language, but more importantly, is a very dishonest and untruthful language.
Then there is the inconsistencies of the adjudicators.
Erratic at best and biased at worst.
Being told by a very flowery group that certain comments have "consequences", is patronising to say the least.
But worst of all is that not being able to speak freely and frankly, renders the comments and the forum moot and irrelevant.
Given that it is a forum I am free to choose to stay, but only if I can speak the truth, and along the way try to highlight the flaws that exist and make this forum biased and restrictive in it's effectiveness and credibility not only for the status and relevance of this medium itself, but more importantly those who comment in it.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH, NOT PC.

Universities should be more than places of academic learning. They should be progressive institutions that promote positive change in society. University students supported by their mentors are, as the leaders of tomorrow, tasked with the obligation of being in the forefront of the fight for equality, social justice, and many other of the confronting issues of today.

Without the unpopular protests of the past, led by students and workers, many of the rights we take for granted today would never have come about. I'm glade to see universities as hot beds of radicalism and dissension, for later on it those very radicals who will mellow into the political leaders whose focus will be to enact the very changes needed to make for a better society.