College, the Great Unequaliser

[bedstuy]

As for the column, it's hitting on a favourite theme of Douthat's; that social liberalism promotes inequality. He goes into much more detail in Grand New Party, but the gist is that the wealthy have the structures in place to absorb the effects of the poor decisions while the poor do not.

I really agree in some ways, but I take exception to the term "social liberalism."  What are the main tenets of US political "social liberalism?"  Abortion and reproductive rights, gay rights, free speech and drug law liberalization, off the top of my head come to mind.  

Do you think that if abortion was illegal, TV had less swear words, gay people were thrown in jail and drug offenders were punished more harshly that would cure the underlying social problems in this country?  Come on.

That's a bit of a straw man... talking head social conservatism if you will. Social conservatism as politics includes issues like divorce, and gambling. If you extend it to the philosophy as a whole, sobriety, chastity etc would be included, things that have a dramatic effect on the economic well being of the working class.

If you use words like "chastity" and identify yourself as conservative, thus injecting politics into non-political issues, nobody will pay attention to you.  That's the problem with GOP social conservatism.  It's not about living in 2014, it's about dragging our society back to the Victorian era.  That's a fools errand.  

Meh, once you crack a 3.6 it's all filler.

I hope you're not planning on graduate school.

[traininthedistance]

I've always operated under the assumption that classes and learning were completely irrelevant to business school and it was always just about shelling out 100K+ for networking opportunities.

Which, to be fair, makes it a good approximation of most fields, just more extreme.  

Nope, not bitter and regretful, nope not at all.

...

Undergrad seemed fine, of course.  I was still stupid/idealistic enough to consider a PhD as a viable career choice, and my school didn't give a flip about the frat scene (it did technically have two frats, but they were actually pretty marginalized in the overall campus culture).

[MurrayBannerman]

Meh, once you crack a 3.6 it's all filler.

I hope you're not planning on graduate school.
[/quote]
Maybe, but I'm working first, which will enhance my resume to get my MBA.

Plus, I get to take 4 GPA boosters next semester with an internship and my last two major classes. I'll end up over a 3.7 and that'll get me into where I want.

[Vosem]

That article was a rare waste of ten minutes of my time. It's not everyday a text is so far to the left that comes full circle and begins advocating social conservatism:

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'Class privilege' and 'libertinism' in the same sentence!

[pbrower2a]

I speak to you right now with a better than 3.5 GPA at a top 25 business school. I have only attended one of my classes regularly this semester and only because it was compulsory. I really don't think that justifies the $12,000 or so I have to pay back (I have about half of my tuition covered in grants and scholarships).

Way to ruin America with your licentious disregard for the standards of comportment and prissy conservative rectitude embodied by Ross Douthat and David Brooks.  If you don't attend class, you're short-changing your education.  You'll never become the type of person who can afford a New York Times conservative lifestyle complete with style section clothes and a $2.4 million dollar real estate section home.

But, seriously, go to class dummy.

Not all class attendance is useful. I once had a teacher which was reading word-to-word the material of the course, without any explanation, in a very slow and boring voice.

Is that worth 1000$?

I don't remember that from my time in college forty years ago. The textbook  was for a student to read, with questions from the textbook to be answered. 

[MaxQue]

I speak to you right now with a better than 3.5 GPA at a top 25 business school. I have only attended one of my classes regularly this semester and only because it was compulsory. I really don't think that justifies the $12,000 or so I have to pay back (I have about half of my tuition covered in grants and scholarships).

Way to ruin America with your licentious disregard for the standards of comportment and prissy conservative rectitude embodied by Ross Douthat and David Brooks.  If you don't attend class, you're short-changing your education.  You'll never become the type of person who can afford a New York Times conservative lifestyle complete with style section clothes and a $2.4 million dollar real estate section home.

But, seriously, go to class dummy.

Not all class attendance is useful. I once had a teacher which was reading word-to-word the material of the course, without any explanation, in a very slow and boring voice.

Is that worth 1000$?

I don't remember that from my time in college forty years ago. The textbook  was for a student to read, with questions from the textbook to be answered. 

Most teachers are the way you describe, but not all. There is always a few teachers who only read the textbook, without any explanation.

[Cassius]

Debauchery is such an awful thing.

[Person Man]

Maybe I'm late to the party but throwing a bunch of people in jail won't make $40,000 a year jobs that can afford a 3 bedroom house and a new car more plentiful. I guess, if you throw enough people in jail, the only people left out will be those smart and "normal" enough to succeed.
 

As for the column, it's hitting on a favourite theme of Douthat's; that social liberalism promotes inequality. He goes into much more detail in Grand New Party, but the gist is that the wealthy have the structures in place to absorb the effects of the poor decisions while the poor do not.

I really agree in some ways, but I take exception to the term "social liberalism."  What are the main tenets of US political "social liberalism?"  Abortion and reproductive rights, gay rights, free speech and drug law liberalization, off the top of my head come to mind. 

Do you think that if abortion was illegal, TV had less swear words, gay people were thrown in jail and drug offenders were punished more harshly that would cure the underlying social problems in this country?  Come on.

That's a bit of a straw man... talking head social conservatism if you will. Social conservatism as politics includes issues like divorce, and gambling. If you extend it to the philosophy as a whole, sobriety, chastity etc would be included, things that have a dramatic effect on the economic well being of the working class.

If you use words like "chastity" and identify yourself as conservative, thus injecting politics into non-political issues, nobody will pay attention to you.  That's the problem with GOP social conservatism.  It's not about living in 2014, it's about dragging our society back to the Victorian era.  That's a fools errand. 

Meh, once you crack a 3.6 it's all filler.

I hope you're not planning on graduate school.

A 3.5 is enough for most things. Then again, if you are in Healthcare major, you probably need AT LEAST, AS A BARE MINIMIUM w/high test scores that to go far.

[AggregateDemand]

I really agree in some ways, but I take exception to the term "social liberalism."  What are the main tenets of US political "social liberalism?"  Abortion and reproductive rights, gay rights, free speech and drug law liberalization, off the top of my head come to mind. 

Social issues are rhetorical totem. Observing and influencing the personal lifestyle decisions of US citizens is not an endeavor for public governance. Socioeconomics, on the other hand, is critical for setting policy objectives.

Social liberalism pays lip service to gay rights, abortion, and so forth; but what the liberal bureaucracy protects with every fiber of its being is the worst entitlement system in the developed world, as laid out during the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

Health insurance companies, AARP, healthcare service providers, 401k managers, IRA managers, medical device companies, AMA, Rx drug manufacturers, food stamp farm lobbies. These people win every battle they fight with Congress by using simple divide-and-conquer. Non-cash benefits increase. Healthcare cost per capita rises. Means testing for secure Social Security recipients is thwarted. Tax-subsidies for private retirement increase. Funding for everything else is frozen or cut. Our wealth is squandered.

It's only a Democrat vs. Republican issue because Democrats refuse to admit they've lost control of entitlement spending, and Republicans refuse to admit corporations are behind it.

[Simfan34]

Debauchery is such an awful thing.

There is a reaction coming, I can feel it in my bones. And I see it on campus as an eyewitness. Hopefully we can actually get the inter-Ivy League Conservative Conference actually to happen and it will be the start of a movement.

[Linus Van Pelt]

The American undergraduate experience in general strikes me as pretty weird. The combination of: huge stratification and differentiation among colleges, a widespread custom among middle class students of leaving one's home region and living in on-campus dorms, and alcohol laws that prevent students from drinking in a normal legal setting, raises lots of issues that aren't really replicated anywhere else. I'm not sorry I didn't have to live in the culture that this creates.

But I'm not sure this is a straightforwardly liberal or conservative issue. One can imagine alternatives to it that take some inspiration from political conservatism, but one can equally imagine alternatives to it that don't at all - as actually exist in many places in Europe where students attending their free or almost free universities live and drink in normal bars and apartments among their fellow city-dwellers.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

This book showcases great social science research and really illuminates aspects of state school life that I'd never considered. Don't let this inane op-ed deter you: Paying For the Party exposes the many academic inequities generated by a higher ed system founded upon self-serving, upper class institutions like fraternities and sororities. More than that, it serves as a reminder that class division creates nearly impenetrable barriers that serve as impediments to academic success. No amount of educational reformism can eradicate the tremendous social advantages that render universities mere zones of social reproduction.

[Lief 🗽]

Debauchery is such an awful thing.

Yes, that's why sensible folk support wealth redistribution.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

it's about dragging our society back to the Victorian era.

But presumably without the gin palaces.

[pbrower2a]

The American undergraduate experience in general strikes me as pretty weird. The combination of: huge stratification and differentiation among colleges, a widespread custom among middle class students of leaving one's home region and living in on-campus dorms, and alcohol laws that prevent students from drinking in a normal legal setting, raises lots of issues that aren't really replicated anywhere else. I'm not sorry I didn't have to live in the culture that this creates.

But I'm not sure this is a straightforwardly liberal or conservative issue. One can imagine alternatives to it that take some inspiration from political conservatism, but one can equally imagine alternatives to it that don't at all - as actually exist in many places in Europe where students attending their free or almost free universities live and drink in normal bars and apartments among their fellow city-dwellers.

We have some great colleges and universities -- and some worthless diploma mills. That itself ensures economic stratification, even after the gross disparities in economic result that heavily relate to economic disparity. Bad colleges are worse than worthless because they are still costly to Americans. No, I am not talking about community colleges that have no pretense of making a scholar out of someone trained to be a technician.

We have a 21-year-old drinking age because we have a car culture rare elsewhere in the world. We accommodate the car, and if we didn't there would be so many DUI accidents exacting great losses on the highway. The car is part of attending a college in Austin if one has been living in Dallas or Houston.   

[Torie]

Managing to ignore and laugh off the affectations of privilege, be it sartorial or otherwise, is a learned skill, and the sooner it is learned, the better off one will be. Thank you. Btw, I got a part time job to finance my party and drug habits. I didn't think it right for my parents to pay for that. They were paying an embarrassingly large amount as it was.

[Person Man]

Managing to ignore and laugh off the affectations of privilege, be it sartorial or otherwise, is a learned skill, and the sooner it is learned, the better off one will be. Thank you. Btw, I got a part time job to finance my party and drug habits. I didn't think it right for my parents to pay for that. They were paying an embarrassingly large amount as it was.

There you go. The only way to be successful is to have self-ownership. Self-ownership is a skill, not something that is gained by concern trolling.

[pbrower2a]

Managing to ignore and laugh off the affectations of privilege, be it sartorial or otherwise, is a learned skill, and the sooner it is learned, the better off one will be. Thank you. Btw, I got a part time job to finance my party and drug habits. I didn't think it right for my parents to pay for that. They were paying an embarrassingly large amount as it was.

The real trick is to know when it is appropriate and when it isn't, to adopt it without complaint when necessary and to avoid it when it is inappropriate. 

[Cassius]

Debauchery is such an awful thing.

Yes, that's why sensible folk support wealth redistribution.

Well, I do support wealth redistribution. I mean, hell, the state would not exist were it not for some redistribution of wealth. However, I do not support redistributing wealth as a means of deliberately attempting to level out society. To me that is anathema. But, anyway, more to the point, how will 'wealth redistribution' stop people from being debauched. Surely if it was successful (an unlikely prospect) it would simply enable more debauchery on the part of more people. What angle are you coming from?

[MaxQue]

Debauchery is such an awful thing.

Yes, that's why sensible folk support wealth redistribution.

Well, I do support wealth redistribution. I mean, hell, the state would not exist were it not for some redistribution of wealth. However, I do not support redistributing wealth as a means of deliberately attempting to level out society. To me that is anathema. But, anyway, more to the point, how will 'wealth redistribution' stop people from being debauched. Surely if it was successful (an unlikely prospect) it would simply enable more debauchery on the part of more people. What angle are you coming from?

What debauchery means for you?