Obama is smooth...

[Stavros]

Universities are similar to most governments in being inherently wasteful. The recent GSA scandal reinforces this point in spades. The GSA is supposed to be the government’s watchdog agency and yet no one it seems is keeping an eye on the watchdog.

You didn’t respond to my main point that there is plenty on “educational fat” to be cut. Of what economic value are gay studies, or African studies or Dance departments?
None.

Save the money on the spurious programs and concentrate on teaching the basics of math, science, history. As I said I got my first college degree about 20 years ago, and I was shocked looking at the UCLA catalog how many frivolous departments there now are. The universities need to make some hard choices and eliminate some programs, eliminate administrative staff and thereby lower costs. Good God what is someone going to do with a bachelor’s degree in gay and lesbian studies? Believe me I made a similar mistake myself in originally getting a Sociology degree (the only thing it was good for was to get into graduate school).

I am surprised at the one-dimensional view you have of university education -some people do a degree in law or medicine because they want to practice it, but I used to work with someone who studied law and went into business; an undergraduate colleague of mine was destined to be a real estate agent because his dad owned the firm, he was doing a degree in Politics because he was a disciple of Margaret Thatcher and wanted to be a Conservative MP (he hasn't made it so far). In another department in another university I discovered in the 1990s that graduates in Geography were being recruited by financial services; as for Media studies, dance etc-these all have practical applications from being able to use to a camer in a TV studio to teaching dance in schools or ballet class. If universities did not have enough students enrolling for Medieval Embroidery the course would cease to exist: the growth of micro-history has, in its own way, written the history of those gay men and women, those Black American railroad workers, those women who kept the USA working in the darkest days of the 1940s, who would otherwise have been forgotten.

Perhaps most of of all, a university education is designed to give a student analytical skills, writing skills, and through a range of subjects, a broad intellect and an appreciation of issues that would otherwise be obscure. Finally, as a UK citizen, I did not pay a penny for my education; I received a grant from my local council and in the Summer and Christmas vacations I had my rent paid and welfare so I could spend those free times reading. I had already paid in taxes the cost of my education, and have since paid twice more, or more, in taxes -and it was my taxes that paid for the education of the man who, as my doctor prescribes the medicine I need, the dentist who fixed my teeth, and so on.

Education is a right, not a privilege.

[mildcigar_2001]

No, it doesn't. You haven't been to any academic conferences sponsored by state institutions if you think they are anything at all like the GSA affair. LOL You're all conjecture and opinion with nothing to back it up.

Yes I did. Read again. Go back and take a reading comprehension course. Pay twice the current interest rates.

Don't blame your own poor decisions on the availability of low interest student loans. You got a subsidized liberal arts education and now you want to deny others the opportunity you wasted.

I've worked directly for the military, a state government, and as a contract employee for the Vet. Admin., and a California county. Believe me there is plenty of waste to be cut. The government just has very little incentive to cut costs.

The last place I worked (as a contract employee) was for a public hospital in Los Angeles County, and it was almost impossible for the managers to manage anything. There was really no way to either reward good employees or to punish lazy employees (the place was unionized, think of a hospital that run like the Post Office).

I will not belabor the point further, but please relook at the least of UCLA departments and honestly tell me that a good number can't be done away with. I guess you think I'm joking, but we are doing kids no favors by letting them major in Chicano Studies. Perhaps we need to invest more in trade schools. I don't know the exact answer, but I'm pretty sure the answer is not more Woman's Studies type departments.

[trish]

we are doing kids no favors by letting them major in Chicano Studies.

1) What happened to freedom, liberty and individual choice? You really don't want to LET them major Chicano Studies?? 2) You don't have to major in Chicano Studies, but I would claim a liberal arts student can benefit from taking a course Chicano Studies. 3) If your goal was to use college as vocational prep, if it was your mind-set to use college as a springboard to a job, then it was pretty stupid of you major in sociology and not simultaneously prepare yourself in a related field where jobs are more plentiful and appealing to your personal palate. It was your inefficiency, your waste, not the university's or the government that aids it. Speaking of efficiency, what is it universities are inefficient doing? Are they inefficient at finding new relationships between projective geometries and quantum field theory? Are they inefficient at discovering genealogical connections between modern and ancient languages? Are they inefficient at training the best hard working minds and guiding them to the forefront of modern frontiers? Schools have a multitude of goals. Each student has their own goals. Some students apply themselves. Some get distracted. Sometimes the fit is good. In your case it evidently wasn't. So you want to double the interest rates on all student loans. Grow up and face your own failures and stop blaming them on others.

[trish]

The Barackness Monster is smooth.

[mildcigar_2001]

The Barackness Monster is smooth.

Can you say unpresidential?





If you are elected President you should uphold the digninty of the office. He certainly has not grown with the office. It is no wonder Bo looks nervous around him.

Here is how a President should act:



It is interesting that he is not pushing handouts as being a solution to all our problems. I'm sure he must have been a racist if he was not offering everyone in the country an EBT card.

[mildcigar_2001]

1) What happened to freedom, liberty and individual choice? You really don't want to LET them major Chicano Studies?? 2) You don't have to major in Chicano Studies, but I would claim a liberal arts student can benefit from taking a course Chicano Studies. 3) If your goal was to use college as vocational prep, if it was your mind-set to use college as a springboard to a job, then it was pretty stupid of you major in sociology and not simultaneously prepare yourself in a related field where jobs are more plentiful and appealing to your personal palate. It was your inefficiency, your waste, not the university's or the government that aids it. Speaking of efficiency, what is it universities are inefficient doing? Are they inefficient at finding new relationships between projective geometries and quantum field theory? Are they inefficient at discovering genealogical connections between modern and ancient languages? Are they inefficient at training the best hard working minds and guiding them to the forefront of modern frontiers? Schools have a multitude of goals. Each student has their own goals. Some students apply themselves. Some get distracted. Sometimes the fit is good. In your case it evidently wasn't. So you want to double the interest rates on all student loans. Grow up and face your own failures and stop blaming them on others.

The Sociology degree more or less did its job of getting me into law school, but other than that almost totally worthless. As far as Chicano Studies goes who in the world is going to hire you with a bachelors degree in that field. Not to pick on Chicano Studies there are plenty of college degrees that you can't do anything with unless you go on to graduate school. Unless one is independently wealthy one of the main points of going to college is to get a good job. My bet is that with a degree in Sociology, Women's Studies, etc. you can get the same job at Denny's both before and after graduation. Don't have people go deep in debt for degrees that have no practical use. P.S. Thankfully I was able to get the Sociology degree without debt, however the same thing can't be said of law school.

[mildcigar_2001]

An example of a talk show appearance that doesn't make one gag:

[trish]

The Sociology degree more or less did its job of getting me into law school, but other than that almost totally worthless. As far as Chicano Studies goes who in the world is going to hire you with a bachelors degree in that field. Not to pick on Chicano Studies there are plenty of college degrees that you can't do anything with unless you go on to graduate school.

So if you're job oriented don't go for a degree in those disciplines. Simple right? You don't have to double the interest on student loans to do that. Sheesh! Just how stupid are you? Or should I ask, how racist?

[trish]

If you are elected President you should uphold the digninty of the office.

This from the people who seriously considered Herman Cain. LOL Nixon, Reagan and W all appeared on comedy shows. Not only that, they humiliated themselves. Obama was smooth as ice.

[onmyknees]

Sheesh! Just how stupid are you? Or should I ask, how racist?

There is is...we have a winner !!!! ding ding ding...Come on down !!! I knew if I stuck with this thread long enough, one of you all would invoke the obligatory "racist" label. I had you as odds on favorite, but there were others close in the competition. It did take longer than I thought, but it was ultimately inevitable, as it always is. Job well done.