Air Force Football Helmets

Some lefties are so foul, you wonder how even their own kind can stomach them:

Leftists have gone on the attack against the U.S. Air Force Academy football team for honoring the WWII Doolittle Raid on Japan that occurred immediately after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

On Tuesday, Air Force Football revealed its new uniforms, which feature a tribute to the Doolittle Raid.

Left-wing trolls blasted the Air Force for celebrating the raid conducted by American heroes who showed Japan that the U.S. was not down for the count after taking such heavy losses at Pearl.

I just posted a comment on another post in which I had to quote John Stuart Mill, and that same quote applies in this case.  Maybe it's true of all lefties.  They are just like those milquetoast so-called men that Mill referred to, "a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

Doolittle and his men qualify as better men than those who disparage them.

University Priorities

West Virginia University is facing a budget shortfall and is forced to make some cuts:

West Virginia University leaders have recommended discontinuing 32 of its majors at its Morgantown campus as the school is feverishly working to make up for a multi-million budget shortfall. 

The preliminary recommendations, released Friday afternoon, said 12 of those programs are undergraduate majors and 20 are graduate-level majors. Other programs were told to reduce their faculty size — 169 faculty jobs are on the line for cuts...

The Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, which includes Spanish, Russian and Chinese studies, was marked to be completely dissolved...

The university is also reviewing plans to eliminate the language requirement for all majors. “Eliminating language instruction will close avenues of opportunity, career advancement, and personal fulfillment for current and future WVU students,” she added.

The cuts, if approved, will affect 147 undergraduate and 287 graduate students, which the university noted was less than 2% of total student enrollment. 

In addition to the World Languages department, the following programs will be eliminated:

• MA Higher Education Administration
• MA Multicategorical Special Education 
• PhD Higher Education
• EdD Higher Education Administration
• MM Collaborative Piano
• MM Composition
• MM Jazz Pedagogy
• MFA Acting
• PhD Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences
• MLS Legal Studies
• MPA Public Administration
• MS Mathematics
• PhD Mathematics
• MFA Creative Writing
• MS Energy Environments
• PhD Resource Management
• BSR Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Resources
• BS Environmental and Community Planning
• BSLA Landscape Architecture
• MSLA Landscape Architecture
• BA Agribusiness Management — This program will be discontinued and merged with the BS in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics resulting in a single new program and major.
• BS Environmental and Energy Resource Management This program will be discontinued and merge with the BS in Energy Land Management resulting in a single new program and major. 
• BS Environmental and Natural Resource Economics — This program will  be discontinued and merge with the BS in Agribusiness Management resulting in a single new program and major.

Additionally, several programs were marked for the development of a cooperative program, including:

• BS Energy Land Management
• BSF Forest Resource Management
• BSF Wood Science and Technology

Not being touched are Women's and Gender Studies and other Aggrieved Victims Studies.  No doubt the high standards and perceived status of such programs make them extremely popular with students.

He Gave Them A Booboo On Their Heart

Sometimes the truth hurts, no matter the feeeeelz:

Three students from David Solomon's alma mater, Hamilton College, have taken aim at the Goldman Sachs CEO after he allegedly referred to the movement to divest in fossil fuel as "stupid"...

Solomon's comments, according to the letter, came during a "Senior Networking with Trustees" event that he took part in at the college in March, when the students challenged him about divestment from fossil fuels.

Solomon, the letter stated at the time, was speaking to "a group of six or so people" who "were all non-male, and at least half were people of color."

Back in the day, the correctness of a comment didn't depend on the sex or skin color of the people being spoken to. 

The executive's comments, according to the students, were in a "patronizing and disrespectful manner" and came from a "position of power."

Gawd, the whining.  It's too much to bear sometimes. 

When it came to fossil fuel divestment, the students claimed Solomon told them that it was a "stupid movement" and suggested that they should live in other regions in the world to see how things "really work."

"He also claimed he did not know what we were talking about in reference to ‘legacy private investments.’ Solomon then indicated that he thought [fossil] fuel divestment was a stupid movement. He called us hypocritical for advocating for divestment when we still use electricity and drive cars — and said that if we traveled to countries like China, India, and Cambodia we would see how the world 'really works,' and then see if we want to live like that," the students claimed.

I agree with him. 

I'm reminded of this quote from Governor Reagan in response to rioting in Berkeley, CA, in the late 60s:

All of it began the first time some of you who know better, and are old enough to know better, let young people think that they had the right to choose the laws they would obey as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest.

Maybe it's time to return to in loco parentis, because too many of these kids are out of control.

Pay Back Your Student Loans

I can forgive the high school students a little bit.  Every teacher they've ever had has been a college graduate, and thus the mantra students hear from the first day of school is that they must go to college.  If they choose to do something else they're met with the consternation of screwing up the first adult decision they have to make.

College students, though?  They're supposed to be smart enough to figure this stuff out, and to be wise enough to look beyond just their nose:

According to Fidelity’s College Savings & Student Debt study, six in 10 high school students say they won’t be able to afford college without the help of student loans, and more than one-third (36%) don’t know how long it will take to pay them back.

Additionally, the study results reveal 65% of college students taking advantage of the current federal payment pause say they have no idea how they’re going to start repaying their loans once the emergency pause is lifted this fall.

"These findings are not as much a surprise as they are a concern," says Jesse Moore, head of student debt at Fidelity Investments. "This October will be the first time in over three years that most federal borrowers make a student loan payment, and a lot has changed in three years. These people have bought homes, started families, changed jobs and all have felt the impacts of inflation."

They bought homes without considering how they'd afford the homes in addition to their previous debts?  Are you serious?  I don't have a lot of sympathy for such people.

I applied to 4 universities back in the '82-'83 school year.  Two were military academies, two were public universities.  I got accepted into one of the military academies and both of the public universities, but couldn't afford UCLA or Purdue.  Before I got the acceptance documents from West Point, and being financially responsible even at that young age, I considered postponing college for a few years; the plan was to join the military, then get a degree using the GI Bill.  

Some might say that the GI Bill route and West Point both required someone else to pay for my schooling, and that would be correct.  It would also be irrelevant.  In both cases I agreed to work for the government in order to get my education.  There was an agreement, not an abdication of my own responsibility.  I worked within the system, I didn't expect the system to accommodate my whims as those mentioned above have done.

As for the high school students, I encounter too many for whom a community college is beneath them.  It costs a lot to be housed and fed--just ask any parent!--so yes, going off to college is going to be an expensive proposition.  I'm forced to ask:  what are you doing to mitigate this cost?  Anything?

Having a sense of personal responsibility can be a heavy burden in today's society, as we look in awe at those who have no such sense and wonder how they can be so shameless in their sense of entitlement.

Believe It Or Not...

Every toilet but one was installed before the work crews left last night.

The parking lot expansion isn't done, but as lot of kids haven't gotten their licenses yet so early in the school year, it didn't affect us.  It's supposed to be done next week.

We still don't have books.  Well, we have books, but there stacked floor to ceiling in our book room until we get someone in there to put them into our system and check them out to students.  Most of my classes' textbooks are available online after students complete a signup process, maybe I'll just start classes normally on Monday and just expect them to look up the books on the web site until we can get them issued.

My students who are dual-enrolled in a local community college class are largely clueless about what to do, they haven't heard from the college at all.  Even our counselors can't get through to the dual-enrollment office at the college, it seems they're a little behind schedule in enrolling our students.  Fortunately the college classes don't begin until a week from Monday, so there's still some time.

As is always the case on the first day of school, my students were friendly and respectful.  I'll do my part to keep them that way as long as possible!

I warned all of them, though:  do not mess with the freshmen.  The freshmen are a protected class, I am looking out for them.  After all, we have something in common--when they graduate, I graduate.  Only 4 years left for me!

Today was the first day of school for students.  Tomorrow is our first dance and first football game!  Only supposed to get to the low 90s tomorrow, but into the 100s starting Monday.  School should not start this early in August.

There's Hope In Math

I never thought the "woke" crap would hit the hard sciences, and boy was I naive.  At least there's a little bit of pushback:

Faculty members in the University of California (UC) system have begun to speak out against their campuses’ adoption of lower math standards in order to bolster diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

The controversy surrounds a policy enacted by a UC committee in 2020, which changed the admissions requirements for high school applicants in order "to expand course offerings beyond the traditional sequence of math courses that may lead students into the ‘race to calculus,’ to be more inclusive of new and innovative advanced math courses (e.g., data science), and to address equity issues.” 

UC faculty have initiated “staging a behind-the-scenes protest” over the data science classes now being permitted, claiming that they do not prepare students for the rigor of STEM fields, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

“Giving high-school students the idea that it is OK to skimp on their math education is very dangerous,” read a letter from the UC Santa Barbara physics department earlier this year. “Such students will have their career choices severely curtailed, at an early age, and perhaps without even realizing it.”

Hear hear.

Is Diversity Good For Higher Education Students, Or Not?

link

Higher Education Priority

Seen on Instagram today:

Controversial thesis:  If the highest paid person in your university or college is the basketball coach or the football coach, then it is not a university, it is a sporting franchise with a side hustle in tertiary education.

Not a controversial thesis here at RotLC.  As I've said plenty of times, let the NFL and NBA fund their own farm teams.

So-called Data Science Classes in High School

I couldn't even decide what to excerpt; Joanne did such an amazing job on this post, just read the whole thing.

BLUF:  high school "data science" classes will not prepare students to succeed in STEM courses at a university.

My commentary:  it's just another way to lower standards, no doubt in the name of racial "equity" or some crap.

College Admissions

The Supremes have ruled, in the Students For Fair Admissions case, that Harvard and UNC (and probably every other school in the country except Hillsdale) used race in admissions decisions in an unconstitutional manner.  Hallelujah, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!

The lefties are howling that the decision is raaaaaaaacist, that it perpetuates white supreeeeeeeeeeeemacy, and that in order to strike back at the evil white people, so-called legacy admissions at universities should be scrapped:

The next big fight over college admissions already has taken hold, and it centers on a different kind of minority group that gets a boost: children of alumni.

In the wake of a Supreme Court decision that strikes down affirmative action in admissions, colleges are coming under renewed pressure to put an end to legacy preferences — the practice of favoring applicants with family ties to alumni. Long seen as a perk for the white and wealthy, opponents say it’s no longer defensible in a world with no counterbalance in affirmative action.

It's a stupid argument, like most leftie arguments.  We didn't fight a civil war over legacy admissions.

However bad their argument, I agree with their solution.  As a taxpayer, I want public universities as well as private universities that get government money to be focused on education.  I want admissions based on merit and academic achievement.  I don't care who your parents are, I don't care if you worked at the soup kitchen, I want my tax dollars to support academic excellence.  

So I'm all for getting rid of legacy admissions, especially for marginally-qualified students.  I also support getting rid of athletic scholarships, especially for people who have no academic chance of graduating; let the major sports leagues create their own minor leagues.  Let's get our schools back in the business of educating.

Update, 7/2/23:  I think the left missed its target, as I don't think you'll find a tremendous amount of support for legacy admissions outside of those who fund or receive them.  It's not the "bullseye on the right's chest" that the left hoped it would be:

In reaction to the Supreme Court ruling that race-based affirmative action violates the Equal Protection Clause, there has been a lot of what-about-ism.

The biggest what about is college legacy and donor preferential treatment, meaning applicants who have an alumni family connection or who were related to a major donor received preference. As if those preferences somehow excuse the illegal racial preferences that permeate higher education...

Lower and middle income white students also are disadvantaged because they receive zero preference: Not race, not legacy, not donor. The legacy and donor preference may benefit wealthy whites, but they also increasing benefit wealthy college-graduate blacks and other non-white groups.

So it’s a mixed bag, and a what-about-ism that really doesn’t even answer the question of whether racial preferences are unconstitutional.

But to the extent “eliminate legacy and donor preferences” is a dare, I accept it and agree. By all means eliminate the corrupting influence of legacy and donor admissions preferences.

I'm glad we can find this common ground with our friends on the left. 

This comment on that post was 100% correct:

The court will never rule on legacy admissions because there is nothing unconstitutional about it.

If the whiners in Congress really wanted to do away with legacy admissions though they could simply pass a law that states that any college that accepts any Federal money must not have a legacy system.

But they’d rather whine about it for political points.

Update #2, 7/8/23:

Pay Your Own Damn Debts

There is no logic at all behind the "pay off my student loans for me" argument, especially since I have no doubt that there is significant overlap between the "I didn't understand what I was getting into when I took out loans as an adult and now can't pay off my debts" crowd and the "12-year olds are mature enough to decide what sex they want to be" crowd.

You'd think FoxNews would be the last place you'd hear sympathy for the "pay off my loans for me" crowd, but you'd be wrong:

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration's $400 billion student loan bailout in response to a legal challenge by Job Creators Network Foundation. This ruling sets the stage for long-overdue bipartisan action to address the underlying reason for this debt crisis: unaccountable colleges that have raised tuition by more than double the inflation rate over the last generation...

Broader reforms such as requiring colleges to take over some responsibility for making student loans will incentivize them to ensure students don't take on too much debt and graduate with skills to succeed. Talk about a win-win.

Win-win?  Uh, no. 

Universities are not job training sites, they're institutions of higher learning.  No one is going to make a lot of money with a degree in Medieval Uzbeki Film Studies, but if someone wants to study it and a university is capable of teaching it, why not?  

There are plenty of degrees out there that don't lead to many high-paying jobs, Aggrieved Victim Studies being one such field.  Still, that doesn't mean that the courses shouldn't be offered if they're academically rigorous and someone wants to take them.  It's not a university's place to determine what any individual might earn or to say "no, you can't afford that course/major."

Yes, tuition has increased much faster than inflation over the last couple decades.  But let's be honest, a good part of that happens at public universities--in other words, government institutions.  And who do most people get student loans from?  Government!  Notice a similarity there?

Perhaps government should get out of the student loan business, and put lending money back in the hands of institutions that know about lending money.  If that means a poor black kid can't get a loan to go to USC to study art, well, a poor white kid won't be able to get a loan to go to USC to study art, either!  No one has a right to go to USC, any more than they have a right to fly first class or a right to own a Tesla.  I have to believe that my proposed policy would exert a downward pressure on tuition, as I can't see at all how it could possibly be inflationary.

I do think that incoming students should better understand loans and interest, and should probably have some idea of how much they'll earn to determine how much they'll be able to pay.  I can't understand how any adult could take out such loans without that information, but apparently many have done so!

Under the status quo, where the federal government backs all student loans, there's little check on such college profligacy. Yet smart reforms can reverse runaway college tuition and spending.  

Recent legislation introduced by Senate Republicans helps get to the root of the problem by imposing student loan transparency and eliminating inflationary Graduate PLUS loans, but more needs to be done.

That seems far more reasonable than holding colleges and universities "accountable" for loans they aren't even making:

Biden can’t forgive student loan debt, so it’s time for Congress to hold colleges accountable

What, exactly, are they to be held accountable for?  Why aren't the adults who took out the loans held accountable?

Let's now take a trip to the other side of the media's ideological spectrum, to CNN:

For my whole adult life, debt and financial hardship has dictated my path, first through a cycle of generational poverty and now in the form of student debt. With Friday’s Supreme Court decision, it looks as if I have many years ahead of student loan repayment. It could take, quite literally, the rest of my working life before my student loans are paid off. 

Why did you assume such loans?  Why is it my responsibility, along with the 2/3 of Americans who don't even have a degree, to pay off loans that you voluntary took out?  There is no logic in such an appeal, only emotion--which is what most leftie arguments are based on.  Note the title of this article:

Opinion: It’s hard to break free of generational poverty. The Supreme Court just made it harder

Why is it the Supreme Court's responsibility to make your life easier?  Answer:  it's not.  It's their job to determine what is constitutional and lawful, regardless of who the decision helps or hurts.

 

The author, Rachel, opens with her family story and about how she got loans to enter college.  She made some poor choices (imnsho) and didn't understand financial aid, but she made good economic decisions once she graduated, right?

After college, I took a position as a teacher at a non-profit preschool in my community, where I was employed for the first decade of my working life. I then got a job as a classroom teacher and eventually moved into the role of studio arts teacher at the same school.

The school where I worked was an incredible community of dedicated and innovative educators, hardworking, curious children and committed families. I felt lucky to be working with them. As a community, we came together to problem-solve around societal issues like the abysmally low pay for teachers, the lack of government support for early childhood education and insufficient health care options for school staff.

Attitudes about early childhood education are such that most workers in the field know they will never be paid what they truly deserve.

So she took on debt she didn't understand (but should have), and instead of prioritizing paying off that debt, she went to work in a "non-profit preschool" knowing about the low pay.  Sorry, Rachel, you can follow your bliss, but you're not entitled to do so on my dime.

The rest of her article is in the same vein--no logic or principle to what she says, just "pay off my loans so I can envision a better financial future for myself in spite of my choices".  I'm not as hard-hearted as I sound, I do have sympathy for her plight, but I don't accept any moral or financial responsibility for that plight.

Let me share with you my own experience from 40 years ago.  I was estranged from my mother, and my dad made just enough to support his family but not enough to put me through college even at the relative bargain it was compared to today.  I was accepted into three of the four schools I applied to (I never received a nomination to the Air Force Academy), but in 1983 there were no scholarships for a poor, smart, white kid.  I was arrogant and hadn't even applied for an ROTC scholarship.  I had to give up on UCLA and Purdue.  West Point offered me early admission in November but I turned it down because it was my last choice and I was still counting on Air Force; come March, West Point was the only school I had any chance of attending.  Doors were closing fast in the spring and I ended up with only 2 options:  either West Point offers me regular admission, or I enlist in the Army and go to school later on the GI Bill.  It was a big day, in Mrs. Gordon's 4th period class, when I got a note from the office:  "Call home, thick envelope from West Point."

As you can see, I made some bad decisions, too.  But nowhere in those decisions was there a thought that someone owed me anything I hadn't earned, I made plans that would allow me to get an education despite my financial situation.  Of course, no one should have to join the military in order to go to college, but it's certainly one option.  Going to a community college would be another.  Getting a job that has higher education benefits (a la Starbucks and the University of Arizona) is another.  My point is this:  take responsibility for yourself.  Make good decisions.  Accept the consequences of your actions.

Mine is the dad-like, toughlove approach that conservatives tend to favor.  Anyone want to guess Rachel's political leanings?

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

Chief Justice Roberts penned those words in his majority opinion in the Parents Involved v. Seattle School District school desegregation case back in 2007.  Today the Supreme Court applied those words to higher education in the Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard case.  The newest member of the Court, Justice Jackson, isn't a fan of the ruling, and Justice Thomas is having none of her silliness:

"Though Justice Jackson seems to think that her race-based theory can somehow benefit everyone, it is an immutable fact that ‘every time the government uses racial criteria to ‘bring the races together,’ someone gets excluded, and the person excluded suffers an injury solely because of his or her race,'" Thomas wrote. 

"Justice Jackson seems to have no response—no explanation at all—for the people who will shoulder that burden. How, for example, would Justice Jackson explain the need for race-based preferences to the Chinese student who has worked hard his whole life, only to be denied college admission in part because of his skin color?" Thomas questioned.

I once read, but as yet have not found evidence supporting, that Governor Reagan was once told that if affirmative action were not applied, UC Berkeley would have too many Asians.  His response was along the lines of "so what?"  Even if the story is apocryphal, I still like it.

An Interesting View of Affirmative Action In College Admissions

I don't recall hearing it put this way before:

Affirmative action in college admissions has failed to help disadvantaged black students, writes Bertrand Cooper in The Atlantic. If the U.S. Supreme Court rules against racial preferences, low-income students will lose nothing. 

In 2020, 15 percent of Harvard's incoming class was black, equal to the percentage of young blacks in the U.S. population, he writes. But many came from high-earning immigrant or biracial families...

The wealth disparity -- and the likelihood of incarceration -- between the black upper class and the black poor is huge, writes Cooper. Class matters.

After affirmative action, he hopes for a system that treats gives (sic) disadvantaged students a better shot at upward mobility. 

I haven't thought this through yet so I'll just brainstorm a bit.  In general I'm against considering race at all; to me it's like considering eye color or height, an immutable characteristic that doesn't say anything about who the person is.  If changing from race-based admissions to class-based admissions is merely a way to get around the hoped-for end of affirmative action (the ruling will come down any day now), what would be the point?  If the hoped-for end of affirmative action brings about a class-based/income-based admissions regime, it could be a more honest and moral method as long as the admitted students still meet academic requirements.  I'm big on meeting standards.

Update, 6/29/23:  Now I guess we'll see what happens.

Affirmative Action

"Reverse" discrimination is still discrimination, and the government has no business playing racial favorites.  As Thurgood Marshall once said, "Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society. They are contrary to our constitution and laws."  Those of us who believe in justice and equality hope that the Supreme Court will strike down so-called affirmative action, at least in university admissions, next year:

An Asian-American teenager who could help end affirmative action has been pictured for the first time, as he spoke out against racist discrimination he says he suffered.  

Jon Wang, 18, got a 1590 on his SAT and a 4.65 high school grade point average but was rejected by six top schools.

He is one of the plaintiffs in a Supreme Court case seeking to end the practice over claims it unfairly discriminates against high-performing Asian Americans.

In January, the high court said it will take up lawsuits from anti-affirmative action group Students For Fair Admission claiming that Harvard University, a private institution, and the University of North Carolina, a state school, discriminate against Asian American applicants. 

The suits claim that affirmative action - policies meant to favor members of historically disadvantaged groups - gives an edge to African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans over Asian students. 

A decision against the schools could mean the end of that practice and disregard race altogether in college admissions. Wang has sued a public and private college in the hopes of having the practice struck down at all universities nationwide.

He said despite his terrific scores - and a perfect score on his math SAT - he was rejected by Harvard, as well as MIT, CalTech, Princeton, Carnegie-Mellon and UC Berkeley.

Wang, who has come forward to speak for the first time alleges he was warned in advance that it's 'gospel' that it's 'tougher to get in, especially as an Asian American' by friends and guidance counselors...

The affirmative action case probably will be argued in the fall. 

I'm rooting for you, Jon.

Update, 6/29/23:  Congratulations, Jon:

 The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action admissions policies used by Harvard College and the University of North Carolina to diversify their campuses, a decision with enormous consequences not only for higher education but also the American workplace.

In one of its most closely watched cases this year, the court ruled along ideological lines that the way the two nationally recognized colleges approached race violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The decision drew a sharp rebuke from the court's liberal wing, who said it rolled "decades of precedent and momentous progress."

Chief Justice John Roberts, long a skeptic of race-based policies, wrote that too many universities "have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin." The nation's constitutional history, he wrote, "does not tolerate that choice."

California Community Colleges Are In The News Lately

A couple weeks ago I posted about how California's incoming community colleges chancellor thinks all 9th graders should be enrolled in a community college course.  Now we learn that the community colleges might perhaps consider doing a better job keeping scam artists from enrolling before they try to enroll high school freshmen:

Months after a mysterious check for $1,400 landed in Richard Valicenti’s mailbox last summer, the U.S. Department of Education notified him that the money was a mistake — an overpayment of the $3,000 Pell grant he had used to attend Saddleback College in Orange County.

“I told them I never applied for a Pell,” said Valicenti, a 64-year-old radiation oncologist at UC Davis who had never even heard of Saddleback.

Valicenti’s name is among the stolen identities used in thousands of fraudulent attempts to enroll in community colleges in California and across the country since classes shifted online during the pandemic. The aim is to steal financial aid. 

Fake enrollments also crowd out legitimate students and create hours of work for colleges trying to eliminate “ghost students.” Colleges that disburse grants to fraudsters are on the hook to repay the feds.

Today, about 20% of California’s community college applications are scams: more than 460,000 of the 2.3 million requests to the state’s online application system since July alone, says the state Chancellor’s Office, which oversees the 116 campuses. Community colleges are required to accept any student in the state with a high school diploma, and a Social Security number is not required to apply.

There's much more at the link, and none of it is reassuring.

If A 9th Grader Can Take A College Course

Are there not enough community college students?

California’s incoming community colleges chancellor, Sonya Christians, doesn’t officially step into her new role until June 1, but she has an urgent agenda: enrolling every ninth grader in a college course.

Right now, just 6% of California students take a college course through dual enrollment in their first year of high school. The time is now, Christian said, to make sure that all 436,192 of the state’s eighth graders will be automatically enrolled in a college course next fall.

“Can we do this? We must. We must,” Christian said. “We can’t wait for tomorrow.”

Christian made this urgent call to action earlier this month at the first Dual Enrollment Equity Conference, an event that brought 450 dual enrollment advocates and educators from California’s K-12 and college systems to Bakersfield. What she calls her “ninth grade strategy” is emblematic of the type of work she expects to push during her tenure as the next chancellor.

If a 9th grader can take and pass a college course, the course is probably too easy to be considered a college-level course.  Of course, those who preach equity equity equity don't think black and brown skinned kids can compete academically with white and Asian kids, which is why they want standards lowered.

Grading By Race

To be honest, I've been expecting this for quite some time:

The ongoing efforts to implement diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education might soon include naming and shaming professors who tend to give lower grades to minority students, one scholar warned.

Roy Baumeister, a psychology professor at University of Queensland and professor emeritus at Florida State University, published an op-ed titled “Fighting Systemic Racism on Campus” on May 10 in Psychology Today.

“Make sure your current grading practices are consistent with prevailing social justice expectations at your institution. Once a university algorithm labels you a racist, it will be difficult to shed that label,” Baumeister wrote.

Baumeister argued grade disparities between black students and their peers could be the result of racial bias on the part of professors, or simply be construed as such; with that, should grading data be made public, black students may “avoid” professors who give lower grades to minorities and scholars may be labeled racists.

“Supremely valuable to them would be information about how to avoid the worst traps and pitfalls, such as apparently racist professors who may mark them down based simply on their race,” Baumeister wrote.

Baumeister also asserted it appears “hypocritical” for professors to claim that disparities in outcome between races are the result of discrimination, while issuing disparate grades to racial groups.

All this would do is condemn an entire race of students to academic, and perhaps career, mediocrity.  If you wanted to convince people that black and brown people aren't smart enough to compete against Asians and whites, you could do no better than to advocate for such a policy as this.

And if you think that this isn't coming to K-12 in the very near future, you're being somewhat struthious.

Felonies

There's a push under way to "ban the box", to prohibit employers, and now colleges, from asking if an applicant has committed a felony:

In an April 28 post on "Homeroom," the official blog of the Department of Education (ED), ED called on schools to remove the criminal background question from admissions.

"This Second Chance Month ... ED calls upon institutions across the country to re-examine their admissions and student service policies and holistically determine how they can better serve and support current and formerly incarcerated students. We call on you to ban the box," ED urged.

The “ban the box" slogan alluded to a campaign started by the civil rights group All of Us or None in 2004 which aims to remove questions asking about prior criminal convictions from employment application materials.

I understand the sentiment, but let's not be simpleminded about this.  Employers and schools would be negligent if they didn't prevent certain types of people from being on site.  Should a financial firm hire a white collar criminal?  Should universities have violent sex offenders on campus?  Should grand theft not be a consideration for certain types of jobs?  Drug trafficking offenses?

The people pushing this silliness would not deign to work around convicted felons, but they expect us to.  They're the worst type of hypocrites.

Update, 5/20/23:  Another view:

Asking college applicants about their criminal history can have mixed results for colleges looking to reduce racial bias, experts say.

Though higher education experts recommend colleges refrain from asking applicants about their criminal history to avoid bias, some scholars suggest the policy may backfire because admissions officials might falsely assume applicants of color have a criminal record.

What?  All those DIE-loving university administrators might assume dark-skinned students are bad?  Perish the thought! 

Economists Jennifer Doleac of Texas A&M University and Benjamin Hansen of the University of Oregon made similar point in a July 2016 paper titled “The Unintended Consequences of ‘Ban the Box’: Statistical Discrimination and Employment Outcomes When Criminal Histories Are Hidden.”

“Their goal is to improve employment outcomes for those with criminal records, with a secondary goal of reducing racial disparities in employment,” the paper argued. “However, removing criminal history information could increase statistical discrimination against demographic groups that include more ex-offenders.”

Personal Responsibiliity

How is it that lefties think that a 12-year-old can decide his/her own gender, independent of anatomy, but an adult doesn’t understand enough to enter into a legally-binding loan agreement?

The Supreme Court decision on whether or not it allows the Biden administration to move forward with the plan to cancel $400 billion in student debt will have life-changing financial consequences for tens of millions of Americans.

Unfortunately for borrowers, legal experts remain skeptical that the justices will greenlight the relief.

“I expect the court will rule against the Biden administration,” said Paul Collins, Jr., professor of legal studies and political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Collins predicts the six conservative justices will vote down President Joe Biden’s program, and that the three liberal justices will be in favor of it. “The Supreme Court is an incredibly ideological and partisan institution in 2023 — perhaps more so than at any other point in American history,” he said.

Do you think a professor of political science in Massachusetts might be just a teeny bit biased in his opinions?  I do. 

Anyway, I can find no legal or moral justification for having taxpayers pick up the bill for people who, having graduated high school and being on their way to college, were supposed to have been smart enough to know what they were doing.

Female Share of BA Degrees by College Major, 1971-2021

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