Destroying Public Education: College Edition

What happens when you turn public colleges and universities into online vocational school the same way you turned K-12 education into test-taking automation is you get an electorate who think the only difference between Elizabeth Warren and Sarah Palin is political party affiliation.

Wonder how anencephalic monsters like Trent Franks get elected? The voters in his district are criminally stupid, thanks to the moronification of the American education system.

Richard D. Kahlenberg at the Washington Monthly:

Over time, community colleges have become increasingly the province of the poor. Whereas wealthy students outnumber low-income students by fourteen to one at selective four-year colleges, low-income students outnumber wealthy students by two to one at community colleges. In our stratified system, students who have on average the least preparation are the most vulnerable and need the greatest attention—and they receive the fewest resources.

Online learning is coming to higher education one way or the other, and, like community colleges, has the exciting potential to expand opportunities. Bowen provides some important cautions: online learning needs to be coupled with face-to-face encounters, and certain disciplines may never fully lend themselves to the digital revolution. But with all the hype, there is a danger that his caveats will be forgotten and that online learning will become a tempting way to educate low-income students on the cheap. In the coming years, one worries whether cyberspace will become the new place where the students who need the most once again get the least.

Daniel Luzer at the Monthly:

The best American innovations in education were the Land-Grant College Act of 1862, which helped create a system of public universities, and the GI Bill of 1944, which ensured that an entire generation had the money to attend college. This widespread access to the college experience enabled people from working-class backgrounds to advance en masse into professional jobs that required reasoning and logic and extensive knowledge of the world. The question is whether or not we will continue this trend or simply give up and say that a few online classes and specialized training are good enough for the majority of Americans.

Nobody who did not get an elite education available only to the rich - or did not luck into a family that encouraged intellectual curiosity - knows how to think.

Everybody knows what to think, but as soon as you try to get below the surface of an expressed opinion, you quickly find either a yawning void of ignorance or a steel-reinforced wall of stupidity.

People who do not know how to think cannot begin to perform the duties of citizenship in a democracy.