Columbus, OH – Conservative resurgence with no classes? That is the million-dollar question, and can we, as parents, play a role in this? Here is our thinking, without the daily pressures our children receive on campus or at their K-12 school, will we have an opportunity to counter the far-left narrative pushed by these institutions? The answer should be yes.
The scenario we want you to visualize is something that probably already happened this last semester. Your kids at home are doing on-line learning and classes versus being on campus. Even your wayward grad student racking up piles of debt was happy to come home during the semester. Free-rent and a full refrigerator is always a draw for our kids.
Now that they are at home, you can counter the liberal groupthink narrative. There will be no pressures from their peers every day, or their professors and teachers. We can now engage our kids in a constructive dialogue of why socialism does not work, Che Guevara was a murder of people in protected classes, and no all law enforcement is bad.
Conservative resurgence with no classes?
We can then talk about how capitalism and the free market gave them such things as their laptops, Netflix, Apple Watch, IPad, and their prized Che Guevara shirt. Not to mention the full fridge, they empty every two to three days.
Will there be a conservative resurgence with no classes?
That is up to us as the adults who are now in the room. Are we willing to engage? This is great since these tenured unionized professors and teachers refuse to come back to work. We may see these liberal institutions fail and replaced with a more cost-efficient system that delivers the knowledge our what our kids need to survive in the real world. This will finally be the death of college majors, such as Underwater Basket Weaving, that was a lot of resources and drive up tuition costs.
Now that we here at the Citizen’s Press have gone on our rant, we should cover the article that spurred this conversation. Scott Galloway and New York University marketing professor, author, and entrepreneur (yes, he isn’t just an academic) writes a blog called No Mercy/No Malice. It covers some fresh topics, and you should check it out.
His July 17, 2020 entry entitled “USS University” (in reference to a sinking ship) analyzes what universities may go under because of COVID and their precarious economic models. The Ivy League schools are in good shape with their large, heavily managed financial endowments, but many universities may go under without a bailout (a few alma maters of our staff are on the list).
He opines about the business as usual mentality of many universities, that are adverse to change. Now it may be forced upon them:
There is a dangerous conflation of the discussion about K-12 and university reopenings. The two are starkly different. There are strong reasons to reopen K-12, and there are stronger reasons to keep universities shuttered. University leadership needs to evolve from denial (“It’s business as usual”) past bargaining (“We’ll have a hybrid model with some classes in person”) to citizenship (“We are the warriors against this virus, not its enablers”).
Scott Galloway, USS University, July 17, 2020
What makes this article interesting and worth a read (although we don’t entirely agree with his conclusions) is how he calls out his tenured professor brethren. This blog lives up to its “No Mercy” title:
The ugly truth is many college presidents believe they have no choice. College is an expensive operation with a relatively inflexible cost structure. Tenure and union contracts render the largest significant cost (faculty and administrator salaries) near immovable objects. The average salary of a full professor (before benefits and admin support costs) is $104,820, though some make much more, and roughly 50% of full-time faculty have tenure.
Scott Galloway, USS University, July 17, 2020
Yes, institutionally, academics have the ultimate job-protection system with tenure. They claim it’s for academic freedom, but this allows professors from dying majors to remain on the payroll. It also allows these liberal professors who probably didn’t make it in the real world, a job for life. How does the saying go, “Those who can’t do, teach…”. Disclaimer here, there are probably the vast majority of teachers and professors who do a good job. However, we all have to admit there are plenty who should have moved on many years ago.
Galloway, predicts that many universities and college will “perish” because of their institutional problems, and COVID…without a bailout. He also calls upon universities to not waste this crisis to be better and cut some of the dead weight and retool. We agree with this.
We also want to point out the supply and demand aspect of higher education. Why is a college degree worth less than it was 30 years ago? That’s because everyone seems to get one; its value has diminished. Yes, we understand the argument for having an “educated” society, but you don’t need a degree and a tsunami of student debt. I mean, my pizza delivery guy has a Ph.D. in English Lit (we had some great conversations over the years), but he doesn’t need a Ph.D. to deliver pizzas, and what can you do with a Ph.D. in English Lit except teaching.
Conservative resurgence with no classes?
But we digress, and back to our point. With your children at home and not on campus or at school, now is the opportunity to challenge the far-left indoctrination. Take this opportunity to engage your kids. Maybe we will see a conservative resurgence. If we don’t, our country is lost.
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