Generally I agree with you about “greening” a building. I’m in the building trade, I know people in the Green Building Council, and LEED. There are quantifiable affects of those investments. Most pay themselves off within ten years. the other investments are mostly for face value. I think most places could do well by saying LEED equivalent. That way you don’t have to pick up the 1% additional costs. The overall additional cost for a LEED building is approximately 10%. Of which 5% or so will pay itself back within a relatively short period of time.

Thanks for the last couple of posts. I wasn’t aware that people were still under the impression that dead white guys need defending.

Hmm… Just like many of my students, you need to work on your reading comprehension skills.

For most 4 year state university a classical liberal education simply no longer exists. They don’t read Hobbes, Locke or the Federalists Papers anymore. The classical liberal arts have been replace with the retardation of “cultural studies” departments.

Look, I know there is a lot of nonsense out there, but it isn’t all that way. Were you to take my “Political Theory from the Renaissance to Marx” course this spring you would be reading Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, etc., and not taught from a eco-animal rights-queer theory-post modernist-cultural relativist perspective. I know there are the nut jobs who feel their intro english composition class is the perfect opportunity to indoctrinate impressionable freshmen to be their ideological minions…but there are not hat many of them. Really. That doesnt mean we have to accept such garbage when it occurs, but we shouldn’t lose perspective either.

Exactly. For most 4 year state university a classical liberal education simply no longer exists. They don’t read Hobbes, Locke or the Federalists Papers anymore. The classical liberal arts have been replace with the retardation of “cultural studies” departments. They read Cornell West, Edward Said and anything written on the back of a napkin by a latin american lesbian poet. Most liberal arts departments need to have the doors padlocked and the building fumigated.

“I wrote my thesis on the Transgendered Lebanese Folk-rock Movement in Greenwich Village in the early 60’s.”

My goodness. What do you think we are doing to our undergrads? I just want them to be remember the difference between Hobbes and Locke, or be able to relate Federalist #10 to the idea of pluralism.

They can get warped on their own time. (They don’t usually need my help for that anyway.)

The primary purpose of the government is to defend its citizens, not to provide higher education to adults, unless of course its for the purpose of national defense.

Actually I think this is at the heart of the question for me. What is the role of government? Conservatives argue for a hands-off government–let the free market work. That’s the only fair way: those who work hard (including in school) get more. Seems fair, right?

I agree with them almost always, but on certain key issues the argument breaks down: education and health care. The way some people defend the free market makes it seem like a religion–they fail to see anything wrong with it. But, in fact, the flaw of the free-market is that it is fundamentally unfair. It is not fair that whether a kid can afford college, and what college he can go to, depends on his parent’s economic status. And the inequality begins far before college. Our entire system of education is weighted heavily against the poor, creating a viscous cycle.

The free market ideology fails to consider that there may be circumstances beyond our control (in this case, parent’s economic status) that affect our success. It is not even close to entirely dependent on our own hard work and wise decisions. I’ll spare you the obligatory exceptions which are often brought up, except that I’ll say that I don’t consider Barack Obama an exception to the general rule.

So the question you raise I think is important: what is the role of government? Is it to give us all a level playing field (which some consider a supposed benefit of the free market), or is it to let us all be free to succeed and fail, even when through no credit or fault of our own. I don’t believe it can do both. Our current system is sort of a hybrid of the two–sort of like we can’t make up our mind what kind of country we want to be.

With that rant aside, even if you fall on the side that the government should try to make things fair (equal opportunity), pouring more money into a flawed system isn’t necessarily going to fix things. So what’s my answer to fix the education system? You didn’t actually think I was going to come up with some brilliant solution at the end of this long comment, did you? Sorry to disappoint.

A poli-sci, history, english or art history degree is good for one thing: Writing a blog.

Hey, wait just a minute. I have a poli sci degree and I … oh hell.

But, really, I think my education gave me a pretty solid base for acquiring and using knowledge. Universities shouldn’t be technical schools. There is value in learning subjects that don’t have an obvious “real world” use.

It’ll just be another way for the feds to shit on poor kids. You and I both know that we would pay a slew of money to get our children out of the country before they were forced to go to work for the State. I would sooner be imprisoned than live in country where my daughters were **forced** to work for the government. We have the financial means to side-step any such attempt. So what will Her Emanuel (you’d think a Jewish person would be tentative about a national youth program!) end up with: further socio-eco stratisfication brought on by twisted social engineering.

1. How long before this “agreement” becomes mandatory ? Not long I suspect. Rahm Emanuel for one has long been an advocate of mandatory community service.

2. So the government makes college education unaffordable, and then forces you to do it’s bidding when you try to get money to pay for it ? Yea, that’s fair.

Voluntary or not, it’s wrong and I’ll oppose it.

The 2-4 years of community service is a proposal on the table that is an agreement between the student and the government. Currently a grant of $4k per year (at a state school) is given in trade for community service upon graduation- that’s what I was referring to – it isn’t mandatory it’s an agreement.

the best retail managers I ever knew were History and Poli Sci undergrads.

“I wrote my thesis on the Transgendered Lebanese Folk-rock Movement in Greenwich Village in the early 60′s.”

“Okay, but do you have these jeans in a 36 waist.”

“Yeah, let me go check in back.”

A poli-sci, history, english or art history degree is good for one thing: Writing a blog.

I resent this. The implication is if you have a Poli Sci degree you do not contribute to the benefit of society. Many Poli Sci majors go on to law school….. oh…never mind.

Actually….the best retail managers I ever knew were History and Poli Sci undergrads. The absolute worst were Business majors.

Just saying…

Agreed on the first point.

On the second — actually, a poly sci degree is good for two things, blogging and going to law school. What relevance law school has to actually being a lawyer is another question