« The Best Thing to Come Out of Wyoming Since Dick Cheney | Main | 49 States Have Snow on the Ground »
February 13, 2010
Caturday Essay: Mind the Perpetual Intercourse
Posted by Gregory of Yardale at February 13, 2010 6:53 AM
An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education exposes academia's cynical scam of graduate degrees in the humanities. The whole thing should be read by all of you (says Moonbattery kitteh), but here's a slice.
The myth of the academic meritocracy powerfully affects students from families that believe in education, that may or may not have attained a few undergraduate degrees, but do not have a lot of experience with how access to the professions is controlled. Their daughter goes to graduate school, earns a doctorate in comparative literature from an Ivy League university, everyone is proud of her, and then they are shocked when she struggles for years to earn more than the minimum wage. (Meanwhile, her brother--who was never very good at school--makes a decent living fixing HVAC systems with a six-month certificate from a for-profit school near the Interstate.)
This goes on for years: sleepless nights, anxiety, escalating and increasingly paralyzing self-doubt, and a host of stress-induced ailments. She has even removed the Ph.D. from her résumé, with some pain, but she lives in dread that interviewers will ask what she has been doing for the last 12 years. (All her old friends are well established by now, some with families, some with what seem to be high-powered careers. She lives in a tiny apartment and struggles to pay off her student loans.) What's left now but entry-level clerical work with her immediate supervisor just three years out of high school?
So, in essence, a group of elite academics brainwash naive young people into an idealistic vision of the world, and convince them that it is the path to true happiness. In truth, only a small number of well-connected people and a few token minorities will ever achieve elite status under this system, but those who have need to perpetuate the lie in order to maintain their status.
What an excellent metaphor for progressive liberal socialism.
