Ridiculous Item

The want ads of the last Chronicle of Higher Education in August feature 15 pages of faculty jobs, 9 pages of administrative positions and another 3 of “executive positions.” Aren’t we getting a bit bureaucratic?

“Educational establishments have been making promises to students they cannot keep.” –Aaron Barlow, New York City College of Technology (CUNY).

“With the exception of a few areas — specifically, climate and the environment, certain fields within biology and medicine, history of science and the interaction between science and public policy — the rot that infects the rest of academia has been averted in science and engineering schools.”— Ron Lipsman, professor emeritus of mathematics and former senior associate dean of the College of Computer, Math & Physical Sciences, University of Maryland.

“College student loan debt now surpasses $1 trillion.”—Vicki Alger, Independent Women’s Forum

“The Los Angeles Unified School District is being sued by 14 mothers whose children were allegedly sexually abused by a former district elementary school teacher, who is being held on a $23-milion-bond and has been charged with 23 counts of lewd acts on children.”—CNN by way of the American School Board Journal

In a jaw-dropping story in the  New York Times, the Association of American Medical Colleges warns that ObamaCare is squeezing doctors out of practice–just in time for the swell in Baby Boomer patients.—the Family Research Council

Georgetown suspends student who would not attend sensitivity training.

“In the surreal world of student loans, the brilliant student completing an electrical engineering degree at M.I.T. pays the same interest rate as the student majoring in ethnic studies at a state university who has a GPA below 2.0.”—Ohio University economist Richard Vedder

“The Air Force suspended a 20-year-old class on ‘Just War Theory’ because it included scriptural references”—Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council.

“So the question is, Can the ideas stand on their own merit regardless of who said them? It could be Kaczynski, it could be Mother Teresa, it could be Mr. Anonymous—the ideas are what they are, and the arguments are what they are. So I think from a rational standpoint we should say we can treat the ideas in abstraction from the circumstances in which they appear.”—David F. Skrbina, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Michigan

Mitt Romney also went to Harvard, though he spent most of his time on what the intellectuals consider to be the wrong side of the Charles, where the business school is found.—UVA historian James Ceaser

Student cell phones and cars are indistinguishable from those of the faculty.—Victor Davis Hansen