A Professor Speaks Out: How Coddled, Hyper Sensitive Undergrads Are Ruining College Learning

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg

A Professor Speaks Out: How Coddled, Hyper Sensitive Undergrads Are Ruining College Learning

Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones.

 

I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to “offensive” texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response, that the texts were meant to be a little upsetting, only fueled the students’ ire and sealed his fate.  That was enough to get me to comb through my syllabi and cut out anything I could see upsetting a coddled undergrad, texts ranging from Upton Sinclair to Maureen Tkacik — and I wasn’t the only one who made adjustments, either.

 

The current student-teacher dynamic has been shaped by a large confluence of factors, and perhaps the most important of these is the manner in which cultural studies and social justice writers have comported themselves in popular media. I have a great deal of respect for both of these fields, but their manifestations online, their desire to democratize complex fields of study by making them as digestible as a TGIF sitcom, has led to adoption of a totalizing, simplistic, unworkable, and ultimately stifling conception of social justice. The simplicity and absolutism of this conception has combined with the precarity of academic jobs to create higher ed’s current climate of fear, a heavily policed discourse of semantic sensitivity in which safety and comfort have become the ends and the means of the college experience.

– From the Vox article: I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me

The article at the center of today’s piece is truly excellent and demands much thought and introspection. One of the main themes here at Liberty Blitzkrieg since inception, has been the contention that the American population has turned into a nation of coddled, fearful serfs.

It’s not quite clear to me when this transformation actually happened, but the first undeniable evidence within my lifetime was the public’s reaction to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. I’ve written about this before, most specifically in the post, How I Remember September 11, 2001. Here’s an excerpt:

In the days following the collapse, all I wanted was for the towers to be rebuilt just like before. I wanted the skyline back to what I had know since the day I came into this earth at a New York City hospital to be restored exactly as I had always known it. Career-wise, I felt I should leave Wall Street. I thought about going back to graduate school for political science, or maybe even join the newly created Department of Homeland Security (yes, the irony is not lost on me). I read a lengthy tome on Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. I was an emotional and psychological mess, and it was when I was in this state of heightened distress that my own government and the military-industrial complex took advantage of me.

 

It wasn’t just me of course. It was an entire nation that was callously manipulated in the aftermath of that tragedy. The courage and generosity exhibited by so many New Yorkers and others throughout the country and indeed the world was rapidly transformed into terrifying fear. Fear that was intentionally injected repeatedly into our daily lives. Fear that translated into pointless wars and countless deaths. Fear that was used to justify the destruction of our precious civil rights. Fear that was used to initiate a gigantic power grab and the source of tremendous profits for the corporate-statists and crony-capitalsits. Unfortunately, that is the greatest legacy of 9/11.

It was the American public’s fearful and panicked emotional response to the attacks that allowed authoritarians and corrupt politicians to seamlessly and expeditiously steamroll over the civil rights of the citizenry. Unsurprisingly, this act of cowed submissiveness sent a signal to the less ethically inclined amongst us, and in the decade and a half since the attacks, the U.S. has rapidly deteriorated into something barely distinct from a Banana Republic.

This infestation of cowardice, anti-intellectualism and fear has permeated almost every nook and crany of American life, including academics. So much so, that a college professor has just penned an article titled: I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me. Even more worrisome, he felt the need to write it under a pseudonym due to the fear of backlash.

This is not what makes a great nation. Here are some excerpts from Vox:

I’m a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards, studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my students.

 

Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones.

 

Not, like, in a person-by-person sense, but students in general. The student-teacher dynamic has been reenvisioned along a line that’s simultaneously consumerist and hyper-protective, giving each and every student the ability to claim Grievous Harm in nearly any circumstance, after any affront, and a teacher’s formal ability to respond to these claims is limited at best.

 

I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to “offensive” texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response, that the texts were meant to be a little upsetting, only fueled the students’ ire and sealed his fate.  That was enough to get me to comb through my syllabi and cut out anything I could see upsetting a coddled undergrad, texts ranging from Upton Sinclair to Maureen Tkacik — and I wasn’t the only one who made adjustments, either.

A bizarre form of censorship and anti-intellectualism, but a very dangerous one nonetheless.

I am frightened sometimes by the thought that a student would complain again like he did in 2009. Only this time it would be a student accusing me not of saying something too ideologically extreme — be it communism or racism or whatever — but of not being sensitive enough toward his feelings, of some simple act of indelicacy that’s considered tantamount to physical assault. As Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis writes, “Emotional discomfort is [now] regarded as equivalent to material injury, and all injuries have to be remediated.” Hurting a student’s feelings, even in the course of instruction that is absolutely appropriate and respectful, can now get a teacher into serious trouble.

 

The academic job market is brutal. Teachers who are not tenured or tenure-track faculty members have no right to due process before being dismissed, and there’s a mile-long line of applicants eager to take their place. And as writer and academic Freddie DeBoer writes, they don’t even have to be formally fired — they can just not get rehired. In this type of environment, boat-rocking isn’t just dangerous, it’s suicidal, and so teachers limit their lessons to things they know won’t upset anybody.

 

This shift in student-teacher dynamic placed many of the traditional goals of higher education — such as having students challenge their beliefs — off limits. While I used to pride myself on getting students to question themselves and engage with difficult concepts and texts, I now hesitate. What if this hurts my evaluations and I don’t get tenure? How many complaints will it take before chairs and administrators begin to worry that I’m not giving our customers — er, students, pardon me — the positive experience they’re paying for? Ten? Half a dozen? Two or three?

 

The current student-teacher dynamic has been shaped by a large confluence of factors, and perhaps the most important of these is the manner in which cultural studies and social justice writers have comported themselves in popular media. I have a great deal of respect for both of these fields, but their manifestations online, their desire to democratize complex fields of study by making them as digestible as a TGIF sitcom, has led to adoption of a totalizing, simplistic, unworkable, and ultimately stifling conception of social justice. The simplicity and absolutism of this conception has combined with the precarity of academic jobs to create higher ed’s current climate of fear, a heavily policed discourse of semantic sensitivity in which safety and comfort have become the ends and the means of the college experience.

 

This new understanding of social justice politics resembles what University of Pennsylvania political science professor Adolph Reed Jr. calls a politics of personal testimony, in which the feelings of individuals are the primary or even exclusive means through which social issues are understood and discussed. Reed derides this sort of political approach as essentially being a non-politics, a discourse that “is focused much more on taxonomy than politics [which] emphasizes the names by which we should call some strains of inequality [ … ] over specifying the mechanisms that produce them or even the steps that can be taken to combat them.” Under such a conception, people become more concerned with signaling goodness, usually through semantics and empty gestures, than with actually working to effect change.

This is more or less how politics functions in the U.S. today. Fake and superficial narratives take position at center stage, while the really big existential issues are never addressed, or merely brushed under the rug.

The press for actionability, or even for comprehensive analyses that go beyond personal testimony, is hereby considered redundant, since all we need to do to fix the world’s problems is adjust the feelings attached to them and open up the floor for various identity groups to have their say. All the old, enlightened means of discussion and analysis —from due process to scientific method — are dismissed as being blind to emotional concerns and therefore unfairly skewed toward the interest of straight white males. All that matters is that people are allowed to speak, that their narratives are accepted without question, and that the bad feelings go away.

 

In a New York Magazine piece, Jonathan Chait described the chilling effect this type of discourse has upon classrooms. Chait’s piece generated seismic backlash, and while I disagree with much of his diagnosis, I have to admit he does a decent job of describing the symptoms. He cites an anonymous professor who says that “she and her fellow faculty members are terrified of facing accusations of triggering trauma.” Internet liberals pooh-poohed this comment, likening the professor to one of Tom Friedman’s imaginary cab drivers.  But I’ve seen what’s being described here. I’ve lived it. It’s real, and it affects liberal, socially conscious teachers much more than conservative ones.

This is how civilizations die. Slowly, and by a thousand small cuts.

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bb

Those sensitive students should come here for six weeks of TBP boot camp. I wonder what would happen to their feelings?

Admin ,are you terrified of the students where you administrate ?

bruce
bruce

We always seem to think things were better once upon a time. Maybe things were better for you back then. Maybe because you were a kid and the world was a big happy amazing bottomless box of mystery any joy. Yes things might have been better for you but they were really fucked up for someone else.

There never were any good old days. Not in a general sense.They might have been different or perceived by an individual as better but the old days were never really any good at all. The times we live in and the days to come in the future aren’t any good either.

The sheeple people have always been lied to, exploited and manipulated by TPTB. The vast masses have always lived in the worst of times. They were even coddled, fed and entertained. when politically expedient. With a flat screen in every home pumping out violence, gore, debauchery, perversion and cooking competitions the operators of the coliseums, arenas, brothels and food markets of ancient Rome would be so proud of us. The main difference between an ancient Roman citizen and a US Citizen is that the Romans didn’t wear pants and there weren’t as many fat ones.

Deal with it or not. Have a great day, week, month and year or not. Bitch and moan or make some good shit happen. Good times? Bad Times? It’s up to you not your era, not George Bush not Obama and not the academics or educational system.

Doom has arrived. We are all triple dog doomed. These are interesting and exciting times. Get excited. Embrace the doom. Her dark kiss is truth, reality and clarity. What more could a guy ask for when the whole world is full of morons from top to bottom who are coddled, hyper sensitive, confused, upset, ignorant or delusional? And lots of em are old, sick or fat fuckers too.

The few people with their eyes open and shit together have a big advantage right now. People with their eyes open, shit together that have some balls have an even bigger advantage. Just think about how enormous that advantage might be when things get really rough. After the shit quits hitting the fan where do you think the new .01 % will come from? Hint…..it won’t be the coddled and hyper sensitive because they will be dead.

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer

“People with their eyes open, shit together that have some balls have an even bigger advantage.”

That’s a insightful takeaway.

Since schools like MIT offer their entire course load for free online (sans diploma), you’d have to have something seriously wrong with you to actually pay for college these days- that is if it was an education you were after rather than a credential.

overthecliff

Control of any activity or organization goes to the group that is most willing to use force. Revolutionaries on campus started using force at Berkley in the 60’s and have been using force ever since to silence opposing views. Those who are willing to use force and take it to its logical conclusion(killing the opposition) win. It is not right but that is the way it is.

Billy
Billy

The French Revolution ultimately grew to consume the very ones who created it…

And just like those lined up to get “a little off the top” from Mssr. Guillotine, clinically insane Liberal fuckhead retard douchebags (but I repeat myself) who created this monster are now scared of it…

Boo hoo, poor you.

Suck it.

Bostonbob

HSF,
While I agree that most any information, ie MIT courses, are available for free, there is still value in college at least for some. I do not think my son would have finished his degree in Chemical Engineering without attending college. My daughter is studying to become a Physicians Assistant, I do not think this can be done on line. That being said, if 1/3 to 1/2 of all of the students in college stopped going the only ones hurt would be the people working at the colleges. The vast majority of what is being taught is a politically correct, pre-digested crap that only serves to indoctrinate. God forbid they enlighten young minds to think on their own, then they would not be able to serve as “social justice warriors.”

I read the compete article this weekend, without commentary. All I could think is that they are now eating their own, good for them. I sent it to my kids, I always tell them to take what they are taught in any school with a grain of salt. My daughter is off to EMT training this summer, I hope this cannot be taught in some “special” politically correct fashion. I will let you know.

Bob.

Overthecliff
Overthecliff

Here’s to them eating their own. Great insight Bob.

Archie

As far as I am concerned, contemporary academia deserves to be beheaded so to speak, the head being cultural Marxism, a disease brought to these shores by German Jews, mainly. They got kicked out of, or fled Germany for subversive ideas. They came here and did the same thing. Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, Lukacs, et al. along with their co-ethnics Freud, Boas, and of course Marx have poisoned the well from which all the humanities drink.

This does not even take into consideration all the cockeyed offshoots of Marxism, radical feminism being the most prominent. Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag, Judy Blume, Andrea Dworkin, Erica Jong, Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem, Ellen Willis, Shulamith firestone, Eve ensler, Naomi Wolff, Jill Nagle, the list goes on and on, all jewesses.

When the debt bubble bursts, the country and all these universities will be cracked in two. The obscene indulgence of Judaic academia, it’s tortured logic and perverse consequences, endured over the last 70 years will be swept away thankfully. I hope all the good liberals in academia choke on it. Fuck every last one of you.

llpoh
llpoh

With all due respect to HSF, while I agree that for many folks he is correct, but not for all.

For instance, what is the great benefit of MIT, Cal Tech, Harvard, Princeton? It is not the material. The same material taught at those schools is available on line, or elsewhere.

The great benefit of attending schools like that lies in the fact that by so attending, the student is surrounded by the world’s finest minds. Everyone around you is brilliant. The profs are absolutely world’s best. The students are all top .5%. The facilities are world class – the equipment and tech at those places are outstanding. The drive that many of those people have is astonishing. It can create exceptional results. Those results simply cannot be replicated by one’s self, for the most part.

The material may be available on line. But to say that you can get as good an education that way is like saying that looking at a picture of the grand canyon is as good as seeing it in person. It is not the same.

One further benefit, at least it has been for me, is simply knowing the extent of the human mind – being exposed to individuals that transcend smart as most folks understand it. I have met and been exposed to people who are so brilliant that it is breathtaking – I do not believe their ability to see and understand abstract things can be imagined and understood unless it is seen in person. To see it conveys a kind of perspective that is, in my opinion, otherwise unobtainable.

That does not mean that those people should be allowed to lead or decide everything – far from it. They commonly become so lost in their own egos and sense of infallibility as to make them incapable of seeing other viewpoints. A la Krugman.

Billy
Billy

Hey Llpoh,

If “Haah-vahd” is so great and filled with such brilliant minds, then why are they constantly getting busted for awarding higher grades than what was earned, grades for tests taken by other people, grades for work not completed, etc?

It’s pretty much common knowledge that Haah-vahd does this sort of fraudulent shit… mostly for “disadvantaged” and diversity students…

Anything to put them on an equal playing field with their white counterparts… including fraud.

“More than 90 percent of the class of 2001 had earned grade-point averages of B-minus or higher. Half of all the grades given the year before were As or A-minuses; only six percent were C-pluses or lower. By way of comparison, in 1940 C-minus was the most common GPA at Harvard, and in 1955 just 15 percent of undergraduates had a GPA of B-plus or higher.

Then this…

“Grade inflation got started … when professors raised the grades of students protesting the war in Vietnam,” he argued. “At that time, too, white professors, imbibing the spirit of the new policies of affirmative action, stopped giving low grades to black students, and to justify or conceal this, also stopped giving low grades to white students.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/03/the-truth-about-harvard/303726/

In October 2001, the Boston Globe published an article entitled “Harvard’s Quiet Secret: Rampant Grade Inflation.” The article reported that a record 91 percent of Harvard University students were awarded honors during the spring graduation. The newspaper called Harvard’s grading practices “the laughing stock of the Ivy League.”

http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2009/10/14/a_minority_view_academic_dishonesty/page/full

Brilliant? Some are, probably… but eh…

Just sayin’….

llpoh
llpoh

Billy – one has nothing to do with the other.

Brilliant? Some are you say, but eh?

You have no fucking idea.

There is no larger accumulated group of brilliant minds anywhere in the world than those that are accumulated at Harvard.

Harvard has long been known to essentially give all A grades. Why? they decided to stop grading on a curve, and instead give grades according to whether the student has mastered the material, and to what degree.

I understand their point. Dartmouth used to grade on the curve, but not sure about now.

At Dartmouth you could be an outstanding student and get 95% on your test, and get a fucking D in the course because everyone else got 98s. Because the fucking competition is outrageous, because every fucker there is in the top 0.5%.

Is it fair that you get 95% in a course and get a fucking D? Hell no – your grade was in comparison to others, not in relationship to whether you learned the material or not.

Harvard decided that they would not do it that way. That kid with the 95 gets an A too, they decided.

I know all about Havard grade inflation, as it were. Yes, grades were different, as you said in previous years. Because they graded on a fucking bell curve, and the top of the bell was at B- or C+. So half the kids – brilliant as they are, and as exceptionally as they might have performed – got below B-/C+.

I believe that the grade should reflect the actual performance, not the relative performance.

You do not understand what Harvard grade inflation was all about – changing from a system where people expertly learned the material and got C or D grades – to one where they now get an A for expertly learning the material.

And that seems perfectly reasonable to me.

How would you like it if your kid got 85% on a math test and fucking failed, because everyone else got 86%? That was how Harvard used to be. Fuck that. People at Dartmouth got Ds and even failed, and you could not slide a piece of paper between them and the guys getting As. It was total horseshit.

And by the way, no truly dumb blacks, or any other race, at Harvard – you can forget that shit. Smart bastards, one and all. Maybe a slight allowance for them, and perhaps instead of being top 0.5 percent they are top 2%. But no dummies.

Stephanie Shepard

“There is no larger accumulated group of brilliant minds anywhere in the world than those that are accumulated at Harvard.”

Maybe true, but it doesn’t stop them from being vulnerable to group think. This how whole the Harvard academic elite were “shocked” about their Obamacare premiums. They didn’t think they would be included with the riff raff of the country. They were above it all.

It is entirely possible for the most brilliant minds in the country to be secluded from the rest of the country to the point they all become morons. As for my generation at the currently ivy league I would be not want anything to do with them. There were 8 students this year who were accepted into all 8 ivy league schools. Only 1 turned them down and opted to go to University of Alabama. His reasoning was because he wanted to go to medical school later and wanted to pace himself so he didn’t end up with quarter of a million in debt by the time he graduated medical school. I applaud this kid immensely because he actually was taught to think for himself.

llpoh
llpoh

By the way, that quote you posted:

““Grade inflation got started … when professors raised the grades of students protesting the war in Vietnam,” he argued. “At that time, too, white professors, imbibing the spirit of the new policies of affirmative action, stopped giving low grades to black students, and to justify or conceal this, also stopped giving low grades to white students.”

is one professor’s opinion. It is not a fact, it is hotly contested and continuously refuted. Mansfield – the person being quoted, is a noted “troll” in academics, known to overstate things so as to provoke debate.

Billy
Billy

Billy – one has nothing to do with the other.

Brilliant? Some are you say, but eh?

You have no fucking idea.

Of course one has something to do with the other…

You say brilliant. I counter with rampant grade inflation and institutionalized fraud going back to at least Viet Nam, and backstop with reasonable sources…

I have no fucking idea? That’s more true than not. Why else would I have asked you for your opinion?

Get the wild hair out of your ass, Chief and calm your tits… no war today. I genuinely am looking for your opinion…

There is no larger accumulated group of brilliant minds anywhere in the world than those that are accumulated at Harvard.

Which begs the question: If they’re so brilliant, why the grade inflation and institutionalized fraud?

I know all about Havard grade inflation, as it were. Yes, grades were different, as you said in previous years. Because they graded on a fucking bell curve, and the top of the bell was at B- or C+. So half the kids – brilliant as they are, and as exceptionally as they might have performed – got below B-/C+.

I know all about grading on a curve… but you flat-out state that the grade inflation is due to not grading on a curve and has nothing to do with the above cited “affirmative action/Viet Nam” thing?

Well, I backstopped my point with two sources… waiting on you to backstop your rebuttal with something more than opinion…

llpoh
llpoh

Steph – the majority of students at Harvard are very bright indeed. But they are not the why I see those schools as so important.

But the real benefit of Harvard, MIT, etc, in my humble opinion, is to find the remarkably brilliant – the modern equivalent of Einstein, Oppenheimer, Newton, and such. Those folks need the top schools, in my opinion, to bloom and be discovered and nurtured, and it takes the world’s best minds to do that. And the world needs those folks to be discovered.

Billy
Billy

is one professor’s opinion. It is not a fact, it is hotly contested and continuously refuted. Mansfield – the person being quoted, is a noted “troll” in academics, known to overstate things so as to provoke debate.

Impeach the material by attacking the person?

Oh, Llpoh… I had more respect for you than that… You are completely capable of backstopping a rebuttal without having to resort to tactics like this…

But, to play along for the moment: Of course what he says is going to be “hotly contested”… the guy just straight up accused his fellow Academics of fraud… institutionalized, widespread fraud…

What, you think those accused Academics are all gonna go “Okay, you got me… I’m busted. I’ve been inflating grades my entire career, and fuck you because I got tenure”..?

Stephanie Shepard

I am heavily critical at the students coming out of the ivy leagues. For one, they do not think for themselves. Being an A student only means they know how to follow directions. Look at the wave of ultra-liberal social justice going around the internet. This shit is being churned out of the ivy leagues as well. I saw a video not too recently of students from harvard who couldn’t complete the old voter tests from the south prior to the civil rights movement. Now, the answers were contradictory intentionally. But they could not wrap their minds around simple logic questions because of social justice bruhaha that had been shoved down their throats.

Zarathustra

Llpoh,

I agree with you about grading. At my school it was up to the discretion of the individual professor; some graded to a curve and some didn’t.

As for Harvard having the “best of the best,” I am not so sure. A lot of idiots from that school and eventually achieve high places, Bernanke for one. Or maybe they are just corrupt and adopt conventional attitudes because it will be better for their career, or are never exposed to alternative thought. Certainly Mises or Rothbard could never have received professorships there.

llpoh
llpoh

Billy –

I am not trying to shitstorm.

I addressed the quote you put up. The article you sourced the quote from says that it is a hotly debated subject and is not a fact as such – it is one man’s opinion – immediately after the quote.

I was at Dartmouth while it was happening at Harvard. The belief at Dartmouth, as our grades were way lower than at Harvard, was that Harvard had decided that their students worked hard, learned the material, and would be graded accordingly – in effect that the grades of the students would reflect the grades that they would receive at say University of Alabama. That they would not be grade punished because they were at Harvard. It was the common belief and understanding. Whether it is bullshit I cannot tell you.

Another reason bandied about is that Harvard found its graduates disadvantaged in applications to graduate school when its average was a C or whatever. They believed that by giving the nation’s best and brightest C’s, while University of Alabama was giving its kids A’s, Harvard grads were missing out on graduate school places to less well educated and less able students. So they upped the grades. That was certainly happening at times.

I went to a top grad school. A lot of the students there were straight A students from say the University of Tennessee. Phi Beta Kappa, etc. Their GPAs were mile better than mine, yet they were blitherig idiots compared to the average Dartmouth student. They had never seen anything but multiple choice questions in their entire undergrad years. Many of those Phi Beta Kappas flunked out by the end of the first semester. No one who graduated from Harvard, Dartmouth, etc. struggled in the least. The caliber of education they had received was miles in front of those receiving straight As at a state school. As was their work ethic.

I do not have a definitive answer.

Maybe Mansfield was correct. But I suspect it is more “all of the above”. And do not discount the impact of liberal professors – I knew some who thought competition was wrong, and so gave everyone A’s. I, of course, sought out those classes.

Zarathustra

Llpoh, that’s really it isn’t it. The Ivy League schools and especially Harvard, are training the next generation of elites, so they only are educated in dogma that the ruling class approves of. Very smart, yes. Well educated? Perhaps not so much (technical disciplines aside). Maybe you don’t care much for engineers, but at least their curriculum is based on reality and not ideology.

Stephanie Shepard

Ha, I found the video. The most startling point of this video isn’t whether they could answer the questions or if they understood how the literacy tests were designed. What is striking is how defeated they were because of how “unfair” the test were. I am sure had not of them been told to purpose of the test the results would’ve been drastically different. Again, watch their ultra-liberal minds go on the fritz because of social injustice.

llpoh
llpoh

Billy – not intending to have attacked Mansfield. He is well respected, by all accounts. He is a “philosopher”. He stirs up shit to drive debate. He would do great on TBP. But word about him is that you have to take some of what he says with a grain of salt – that he generally believes what he says, but overstates it to incite the debate. Sounds like an interesting fellow. One thing to remember about all of these top academics – once they have created a position, they will not change, and will defend it to the death. It is their legacy. Right or wrong.

I am sure he – Mansfield – has at least moderate belief that what he said about grade inflation to be true. Be he would simply not have had access to enough professors to know how/why the inflation took place. He is “guessing”, based on his personal observations. Maybe he is partially right, but I do not think he is entirely right. I think it would have been a combination of things: “this is Harvard, our kids deserve As; I do not believe in competition; hey, those black kids need a break; damn it, my student got rejected from grad school and that should not happen”, etc etc etc.

Billy
Billy

Thanks for the honest answer.

My post wasn’t an indictment of Dartmouth or you personally, by the way.

I’m a skeptic. And a pessimist. And a snarky bastard. I know I can grate on folks, so no harm no foul…

It’s just that we’re so willing to believe a Snowy when he blows the whistle on the NSA, but when an Academic blows the whistle on grade inflation and academic fraud, everyone is suddenly doubtful?

We tell cops that shiny badges don’t grant extra rights, but somehow a couple of extra letters after someone’s name makes their character unimpeachable and somehow grants special morals, ethics and also special dispensation? Eh…

I would think that they would even be more motivated to cover for each other, given that the school’s rep is on the line and those big, fat-cat donors won’t be writing any big fat checks to the school if their rep is tarnished or torpedoed… No big fat checks? Not looking too good for the home team…

Of course those accused are going to renounce the accuser along with his accusations. And, predictably, Academics will cover for their fellow academics, no matter the institution – tenure or no.

I don’t buy off on the “disadvantaged because of a C” argument, mostly because it’s freakin’ Harvard. If you graduated Harvard and made it out alive, what your GPA was shouldn’t really matter, since Harvard is such a high-speed school. Someone graduating the University of Dirtville – even with a perfect 4.0 – isn’t going to carry the same weight as someone graduating from Harvard…

So, “disadvantaged because of a C”? Eh.. nope. Not buying it. I might not have graduated an Ivy League school, but I can recognize bullshit a mile away… not that it’s you spewing bullshit – you’re just relaying the excuse being bandied around, you didn’t invent said bullshit…

Grade inflation due to AA nonsense makes way more sense than anything else… Occam’s Razor.

llpoh
llpoh

Steph – I remember seeing some of those “tests”. I remember they were set up so that no one could pass, if the marker did not want them to. Every question could be interpreted such that whatever answer given could be marked wrong.

Stephanie Shepard

llpoh- I know how the tests works. Please watch the video to see these students reactions towards the tests. Some can’t answer logic questions and some don’t even try. The outrage factor completely inhibits them from thinking.

starfcker
starfcker

Zara, llpohs recent commenting on engineers wasn’t not caring for them. He was pointing out the difference in timeline mindset between an engineer and a businessman. To an engineer, a problem is a puzzle and the elegance of the solution is the reward. In the meantime, a business guy just went broke, waiting. Whenever legally possible, I try to engineer my own solutions, as I am very quick, and pretty good.

starfcker
starfcker

My father, on the other hand, is excellent. He never had time for pretty good. He designed all the installation systems for the instrumentation on the NOAA aircraft that fly into hurricanes. When he retired, I thought he could do great things in my organization. It was a disaster. He second guessed everything, put the brakes on everything else, he just wasn’t capable of any other priority than his own

Zarathustra

starfcker says:

Zara, llpohs recent commenting on engineers wasn’t not caring for them. He was pointing out the difference in timeline mindset between an engineer and a businessman. To an engineer, a problem is a puzzle and the elegance of the solution is the reward. In the meantime, a business guy just went broke, waiting. Whenever legally possible, I try to engineer my own solutions, as I am very quick, and pretty good.
___________________________

A good engineer is business minded. His often difficult job is to convince a client that a better solution often exists, which may be out of their comfort zone. Regardless, his job is to create a practical, advanced solution that makes economic and technical sense, can be justified by objective means and enhances the client relationship, at least with the decision makers (plant operators are usually the most resistant to change, for a multitude of reasons). What I have learned after 30 years of engineering is that you can never please everyone and sometimes the more correct you solutions prove to be, the more some dislike you, which sometimes includes your colleagues.

Zarathustra

Put differently, the easiest path is simply to copy what everyone else does, or what the traditional practices are. The engineering cost is reduced, the schedule can be advanced, the risk is much reduced and nobody is the wiser except for the competent engineer who knows he has not done anyone a favor. At that point your company is competing on price only. I would walk away from any job that required me to do that. I never have (but I have been fired for refusing to do so).

starfcker
starfcker

The mechanic I use has fallen on hard times (for him) in the last few years due to divorce. Brilliant guy, been using him for twenty years. But I have severe clashes with him now, because he wants to save me money, when all that matters to me is avoiding down time. He just can’t understand that all the money he just saved me on a repair wasn’t anywhere close to the hourly cost of having that machine down.

Zarathustra

tarfcker says:

The mechanic I use has fallen on hard times (for him) in the last few years due to divorce. Brilliant guy, been using him for twenty years. But I have severe clashes with him now, because he wants to save me money, when all that matters to me is avoiding down time. He just can’t understand that all the money he just saved me on a repair wasn’t anywhere close to the hourly cost of having that machine down.
__________________________________

That is either a lack of communication on your part, or ego on his.

starfcker
starfcker

Zara, I believe to be a great engineer, you have to have a certain conceit. My dad has it, you probably do, at times I might. Your statement above regarding the easiest path nails it. What llpoh was saying, and he can correct me if I’m wrong, is in business, there are times you have to have another gear, another priority, like it or not. I have to make decisions every day that, in isolation, wouldn’t be my first choice

Zarathustra

starfcker says:

Zara, I believe to be a great engineer, you have to have a certain conceit. My dad has it, you probably do, at times I might. Your statement above regarding the easiest path nails it. What llpoh was saying, and he can correct me if I’m wrong, is in business, there are times you have to have another gear, another priority, like it or not. I have to make decisions every day that, in isolation, wouldn’t be my first choice
_______________________________

It’s one thing when your task is to fix a machine that is worth a few thousand or a maybe a few hundred thousand. Of course schedule will be the most important. I have worked with mechanics such as yours and I know they can be royal pain in the asses because their avenue to creative greatness is to make modifications, which might be completely correct in abstract terms, but not useful given present circumstances.

It is entirely another matter when you are designing a 50 to 100 million dollar (or more) plant that will exist for decades. In such a case the greatest value an engineer can provide to the client is in preliminary engineering, where ideas are debated. Yes it costs, but in the long run it enhances value and profitability.

starfcker
starfcker

Listen zara, I live in awe of great engineers, large or small project. As my dad used to point out to me, he did not consider his ability to repair or modify anything that significant. His gods were the guys who invented something out of thin air.

Llpoh

Star is correct, re my position.

Manufacturing is about when, about now. My company costs thousands an hour to run. Downtime is not an option. Delay getting to market is not an option as an engineer agonizes over whether it should be a 1/4″ hole or 5/16th.

Believe it or not, manufacturing is most often about when. In manufacturing, good enough is good enough when time is of the essence. Plants cannot wait for perfect, generally speaking.

And a lot of engineers want perfect. Waiting for perfect would send me broke.

“Put some fucking duct tape on it and get out of my way!” Is a motto I should have on a plaque above my desk.

Re customers, I have made a career of not giving customers what they want, but rather what they need but did not know it.

“you say you want that doodad with squiggles, lines, and the cool multipiece thingamajigger. No, what you need is this plain old vanilla one piece, impossible to break, light, and cheap gizmo. I can, of course make the thingamajigger, and will make lots of money selling it to you, but take the cheap and functional thing instead of the complex and easily broken. Ok?”

In the end, the cheap, simple, functional gizmo trumps the flashy expensive gizmo. My customers know I will not let them fuck up. Except now they do not ask me very often. Now they take the ridiculous gizmo to the Chinese, who offer no service or advice, they just supply the piece of shit as the engineers design. But it is cheap! Oh well.

starfcker
starfcker

Where I’m going with all this, was to expand on llpoh above, a little. Great resources used to be expended in our country, in identifying, and training the absolute best minds we as a country could produce. It was a big accomplishment to get an advanced degree from a top school.

Llpoh

Z – I have done many plant layouts in my life.

Standard situation is this: the project goes to the engineers who agonize over every detail for weeks, months, years.

Ultimately I crack the shits and do the new layout over the weekend while no one is looking.

You see, maybe my layouts are not perfect. I do them on the fly. But I get 80% of the benefit of a perfect layout, and I get it fucking today. Not tomorrow, or months down the track. I pocket the benefits today, before the engineers have decided where the toilets are going to be located.

What I have done in a long weekend when no one was looking would blow the minds of the engineers. But, but, but….

Bah. Humbug. Waiting is for patient people.

starfcker
starfcker

Llpoh, when I was in college, I drove a 1973 porsche 914. Great little car. In great condition, except when I bought it, it had a hole rusted through the panel right under the roof vinyl, maybe an inch square. I didn’t want anyone to see it, so I stuck a piece of duct tape over it. I never fixed it. Nobody ever asked why the duct tape was there. When I sold t, the buyer never asked, either

Zarathustra

Llpoh says:

Z – I have done many plant layouts in my life.

Standard situation is this: the project goes to the engineers who agonize over every detail for weeks, months, years.

Ultimately I crack the shits and do the new layout over the weekend while no one is looking.

You see, maybe my layouts are not perfect. I do them on the fly. But I get 80% of the benefit of a perfect layout, and I get it fucking today. Not tomorrow, or months down the track. I pocket the benefits today, before the engineers have decided where the toilets are going to be located.

What I have done in a long weekend when no one was looking would blow the minds of the engineers. But, but, but….

Bah. Humbug. Waiting is for patient people.
_____________________________________

Architects decide where the toilets are located. Hopefully they finish the design before the engineers have even decided what the rooms will be used for.

Your world is very different from mine. In mine the fundamental document is the mass balance flowchart. This is simply inputs and outputs and has nothing to do with design. The second is the process flow diagram, which is a preliminary look at unit processes. This where where process optimization phase begins. The most important document, after what various studies have been performed is the process and instrument diagram (P and ID). This is a construction diagram and is the LAW. The last one is a 24 hour design day gantt chart that shows all functions to a very detailed degree (sometimes to the minute). I have had such charts, when plotted, cover a wall from floor to ceiling for twenty feet. Of course there are others such as detailed plan and elevation views and isometrics, but they are designed for the execution phase; if you have thousands of feet of steam, product, water, glycol and other piping, isometric drawings are very useful for contractor bidding and planning between contractors…so that they know what spaces are available to them. They are expensive up front, but pay for themselves during construction. They also save money by allowing things such as valve clusters to be made in advance by the vendor.

Zarathustra

Architects decide where the toilets are located. Hopefully they haven’t finished the design before the engineers have even decided what the rooms will be used for, or what the space requirements are.

Corrected

Llpoh

Z – i have committed to, and implemented, and executed, delivery schedules that required flow charts roughly that size. Giant MRP charts, in effect.

My world has revolved around timing for a long time. Generally, engineers have no understanding of timing, getting things done to a schedule. Nine to five was their life. Mine was deliver the part on the day promised, no matter what effort was required.

Anyone fucking with my plans got persecuted.

One of my favorite sayings – poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

I plan very well, and go apeshit if folks miss deadlines, as that then fucks with my plan. Everyone does their bit, and things run smooth as silk.

Always seemed to be the engineers missing the deadlines.

But you are right – nothing beats a well designed plant.

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