After 42 Years, Columbia U. Will Reinstate Naval ROTC

April 22, 2011, 5:35 pm

The Naval ROTC program will return to Columbia University this year, after a 42-year absence, university officials said this afternoon. The announcement, seven weeks after a similar move at Harvard, followed the Columbia University Senate’s approval of a measure to enter talks with the Defense Department about reinstating the program, which the university had prevented from returning because of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which many in academe considered discriminatory toward gay service members. The program will officially return to Columbia when the repeal of the policy, signed into law in December, is officially carried out this year, officials said. The university originally banned ROTC in 1969, at the height of the antiwar movement, over concerns about new program rules that faculty members said hindered academic freedom.

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CU_Alum

The announcement says only that Columbia students will be able to join a nearby SUNY NROTC program, not that the program will actually operate at Columbia. Columbia students already participate in other nearby ROTC programs for the Army and Air Force, and have done so for decades. So far, at least, there is no indication Columbia will bring back an on-campus ROTC program for any of the services (though it is not clear any of the services want to add a Columbia corps to the others nearby). Today’s announcement is a quantitative change but not a qualitative one.
softshellcrab

I would ban any form of federal aid to any college or university, or its students, which school refuses to allow ROTC. Our brave soldiers fight for our freedom. These liberals enjoy the freedom provided by the very self-sacrificing heros that they then deride and shut out. Before you liberals yell “freedom” at me, look at Hillsdale College, which refused to accept affirmative action in the early 70′s (although it is absoultely non-discriminatory in its practices) and was banned from either it, or its students, receiving federal funding (and continues to be so banned).

Any and every goofball America-hater in the world is invited to speak at Columbia, but ROTC is banned? I am so sick of this.
bscmath78

The article states, “About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree-holders under
the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years.”

The source says in 2000 (the best of times), it was 41%. So 53.6% now is a strikingly LOW number given the definition, “underemployed in positions that don’t fully use their skills and knowledge.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/22/job-market-college-graduates_n_1443738.html

In the 70s, at least 80% were under-employed and most never ceased to be under-employed.

The state of under-employment showed up before the 70s in such popular culture forms as, “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,” “The Feminine Mystique” and “The Best of Everything” (in the typing test scene: Q: “Not bad. What college? Vassar?” A: “Radcliffe”).

Disappointment, disillusionment, lack of meaning, lack of purpose, a realization that Thoreau was right to write, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” has traditionally been the fate of most graduates outside the short periods of boom times.

In high school, in the 70s, the Ph.D. cab driver was already a cliche. So how was this a surprise? Even if one believes the numbers? How can this be an excuse for the Student Loan problem? Given only a shift from 41% to 53.7%. Did everyone forget about all those recessions since 1968?

It is almost a definition of entry level jobs that they are a form of under-employment. If you have been underemployed all through high school and college, it seems remarkably delusional to expect anything different after graduation.

If you couldn’t do better than minimum wage during the summer before graduation or during your graduating year, what makes anyone think they have good odds of doing better with a piece of paper. Hadn’t they noticed all those minimum wage adjuncts in college? What “skills and knowledge” is demonstrated by such lack of attention?

To talk about “under-employment” is to miss a key change from the 70s. The under-employed student/graduate was often paid much better, relative to the cost of college and the minimum wage.

It is also true that the proportion of college students (after the end of the draft and the quest for draft deferments) was much lower then, so 70s grads benefited from an aspect Supply and Demand, but suffered from the early Boomer deluge taking away opportunities.

The best paying summer jobs were obtained by the kids who got union jobs where their parents worked or who worked in the family business. In each case it was relatives, not education that counted. They were “under-employed” but comparatively well paid.