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Bryan Caplan complaining on X that Mason U is introducing mandatory Just Society courses; https://twitter.com/bryan_caplan/status/1760048714847064146
It looks Conquest's Second Law is still strong as ever. And I guess Caplan's libertarianism will ask for some intervention against it that will never work.
It's a public university, which means there's one thing which has a chance of working -- elect DeSantis-equivalents to the governorship and legislature and pass a law banning this stuff, then appoint a Rufo-equivalent to make sure it happens. However, that won't happen because Virginia has gone blue.
I mean, we did. We literally did exactly that. But the schools have decided to just flagrantly ignore the governor and the AG, tie things up in friendly courts for 4 years, and run out the clock while they hold our children hostage.
And thank god for that. University is voluntary, you can go to whichever one you want, and the 'students' are adults.
The idea that the government should step into that voluntary contract between adults to tell teachers what they can and can't teach or require, especially as relating to partisan political topics, is insane and disgusting.
(before anyone asks, yes, this applies to a university wanting to teach whatever awfulthing you think of as a counter-example, I would like the school to be destroyed socially and economically by private citizens/companies and social sanctions in that situation)
Hahaha right except there's also admissions processes that very much filter for the exact types of people they want to attend. Let us ignore affirmative action putting its thumb on the scale.
And many colleges have removed the one requirement that at least tried to be objective.
And you can get your admission rescinded if they find your behavior as a youth undesirable
So yes, its always possible to take your student loans elsewhere, but let us not pretend that there is equal bargaining power on any level, where the market is relatively frictionless.
And that leaves aside that whatever remaining value there is in the universities mostly comes from the prestige attached to the credential or, perhaps, the social connections it allows you to make, so WHICH university you go to absolutely matters.
So really, you're hiding behind the fact that the decision to attend university is 'voluntary,' while ignoring that getting into a university is influenced by factors beyond individual students' control, that their funding is usually coming out of public coffers, and they don't need your consent to revoke your admissions, scholarships, or suspend you for behavior that is neither violent nor illegal.
So perhaps the issue isn't quite what you're suggesting it is.
I’ve yet to be convinced that college admissions are a problem for people who belong in college. Community colleges are open admit and north podunk tech- bumfuck nowhere campus, will admit anyone with a high school diploma and a correctly filled out application.
I think this is instead an argument about selective schools, but for a normal job track does it matter? I mean law schools do, but individually making the choice to go to Iowa A&M to become an accountant or a teacher or an engineer doesn’t matter a lot unless the alternative is, like, Stanford. And you can totally take your student loans from woke.EDU to go to podunk state. Whether it’ll do any good I don’t know, but it’s entirely doable.
It matters . They are competitive for a reason. But of course, it is possible to be successful graduating from a lesser ranked school.
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Maybe I don't want to ideologically concede all future lawyers (who also tend to become future lawmakers and judges). I think society as a whole suffers from this DEI bottleneck, even if some people for now can get decent jobs as nurses or plumbers from going to a community college.
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Unless your job requires some kind of accreditation, there's probably no serious reason to get a 4 year degree from ANYWHERE when you could just start working in your preferred field, get paid, earn accreditation and experience right off the bat.
None of this really excuses that requiring social justice courses for those attending a public university is very much aimed at ensuring that students who graduate hold the 'correct' set of beliefs, even if those beliefs do absolutely NOTHING to enhance their job prospects, education, or value to larger society.
It partially comes down to what, exactly, you think the role of the public universities actually is. And whether they're suited for that role. I think they very much function as 'gatekeepers' for elite society, to ensure the 'right sort of people' ascend to the soft aristocracy that runs things, and thus they want to filter very heavily who is even admitted.
Again, 'voluntary,' except you don't have any way to register actual dissent, and you're paying for it anyway.
Sort of. The number of jobs that de facto require degrees is pretty high. Basically anything not a “trade” is going to require college. Which is exactly why schools have gotten away with indoctrination for decades. If you want a PMC job, you need a 4 year degree. They can do anything they want because the alternatives are poverty wage jobs in the service industry or the trades.
Yeah, college is not that great, but the alternatives are even worse. 4 years and some debt is a small price to pay for a lifetime of extra earnings and low unemployment rate (plus additional $ from compounded returns by investing said earnings in stocks and real estate, lower insurance premiums, etc. )
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Largely because they're not allowed to filter by basic IQ and because degrees have become so ubiquitous that they CAN demand them.
See:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/
And for bonus points:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-19/thiel-s-unicorn-success-is-awkward-for-colleges
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