How Higher Ed Can Help Libya Recover from War

November 10, 2011, 10:33 am

The following is a guest post from Sultan Barakat, director of the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit at the University of York, in Britain, and Sansom Milton, a doctoral student at the university studying higher education in countries affected by conflict.
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As the conflict in Libya draws to a close and the attention turns to rebuilding, it is worth considering the role that higher education can play. Years of experience in post-war situations has shown that higher education is far too often ignored when it comes to putting together reconstruction strategies. Higher education is either deemed an expensive luxury that war-torn societies can ill-afford or is increasingly viewed as something that is best left to the private sector.

All too often assistance in conflict-affected areas is dominated by short-term security and humanitarian relief while neglecting longer-term developmental work that is essential to getting individuals and communities back on their feet. Having studied the reconstruction of higher education in Iraq, our experience suggests a need to move away from this hand-to-mouth approach and towards developing sectors like higher education. If properly supported, universities can play a crucial role in empowering individuals and communities by providing the advanced capabilities necessary for societies to assume genuine ownership of the recovery process.

Unlike many recent war-torn states, Libya, with low debt and high economic output, is well poised to embark on an ambitious, yet potentially path-breaking, recovery strategy. In 2007 Libya started large-scale plans to become a leading knowledge-economy and pledged to invest $9-billion in domestic higher education with 25 new college campuses, advanced facilities, and branch campuses of foreign universities. While there may be a temptation to reject these plans due to their association with the rule of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, it would be wise not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The plans should be revised to ensure that they are transparent, accountable, and promote job creation for Libyans. However, the fundamental vision of investing in advanced education and knowledge, science, and technology is sound.

Yet this vision cannot flourish under the conditions created in Gaddafi’s Libya. Libyan society and higher education must move out from under the shadow of Gaddafi and the political philosophy espoused in his infamous Green Book. It is important, however, to avoid the ill-conceived approach in Iraq where thousands of faculty members associated with the Baath party were removed from their posts. Rather, a positive educational vision grounded in cultural respect, academic freedom, and social justice should prevail.

Many challenges to the success of post-conflict higher education are likely to emerge. Months of civil war had a damaging impact on higher education across the country. A university campus in Sirte was on the frontline of the fighting while other institutions were damaged or looted. Students were killed fighting on the frontlines with over 100 dead from Garyounis University alone. There are clearly great needs for the rebuilding of campus infrastructure and facilities. However, the needs of the sector are much more than physical; the psychological impact of conflict must be addressed. Students and professors who experienced traumatic events raise the need for university psycho-social services. Those who once fought on opposing sides may now sit together in the classroom. Divisions between supporters of the former regime and revolutionaries require universities to proactively promote campus-level reconciliation.

After four decades of Gaddafi’s repressive rule, Libyan local capacities, political culture, and civil society have been left decimated. Student unions and similar groups offer a unique space in which young people have the potential to learn skills vital to citizenship, including democratic governance, campaigning, networking, debating, and dialogue. Universities can provide the skills that are crucial to the development of vibrant civic life.
Across many countries, universities are places where many students meet “the other” for the first time and Libya is no exception. In diverse and divided societies recovering from conflict, interaction with people from different ethnic, racial, religious, or ideological backgrounds can help to foster new inclusive identities and ideas that transcend communal divisions. In Libya’s complex society of tribal and regional divisions the individual and collective changes brought about during higher education have the potential to contribute towards the transformation of conflict and the strengthening of social cohesion.

A major challenge in Libya is to encourage students who took up arms to pick up books. Participation in higher education can give purpose and hope to disaffected young people, particularly males. Expanded access to higher education can weaken the ability of violent groups to recruit young people because the opportunity cost of taking up arms is increased and students are given a stake in the maintenance of a peaceful society.

Economically, higher education has the potential to catalyze post-conflict recovery by contributing towards the emergence of a knowledge-economy by producing innovative research, strengthening links with industry, and supplying highly skilled graduates in critical disciplines. Rather than reconstructing old and ineffective economic models the post-conflict moment offers an opportunity to innovate, for example, through high-tech and sustainable industries.

Libya faces the immense challenge of building state institutions that have been hollowed out by the former regime. Higher education should play a central role in a bold new approach to capacity-development that is based on a long-term view and sustainability by supplying the human capital, knowledge, and skills necessary for rebuilding state institutions and recovering war-torn societies.

Finally, opportunities for rehabilitating higher education will arise in the months and years to come, yet offers of help also bring dangers. Partnerships with universities overseas are an important means of internationalizing Libyan universities yet must ensure that Libyan priorities and realities are made central. Scholarship programs can contribute to capacity-development but should be designed to prevent increased “brain drain.” Meanwhile, pressure to expand higher education through new private universities could lead to the unregulated proliferation of poor-quality institutions that has reshaped the educational landscape of several post-conflict countries in recent years. Such an uncoordinated approach cannot reap the potential benefits to recovery of higher education; rather higher education should be at the heart of reconstruction planning from the outset and not added as an after-thought years down the line.

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http://twitter.com/IsaacSweeney IsaacSweeney

I have a cousin who started at a community college and is now a Virginia judge. Good advice, I think. Community college is overlooked too often.
tuxthepenguin

As is so often the case, it depends.

If you want to get one of the very best jobs you have to come from a first-tier university, Ivy League or equivalent. Many of the top employers don’t even consider other graduates:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/Oracle-Aims-at-BrandName-Schools-for-Recruits/

“According to the e-mail, Oracle recruits “top candidates” for product
development from MIT, Stanford, CMU (likely Carnegie Mellon
University), Princeton, Wisconsin, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Caltech,
Berkeley, Harvard and Cornell”

“In addition, the e-mail continues, Oracle will consider “top
candidates” from the University of Texas Austin, Duke, Penn, Georgia
Institute of Technology (grad students) and “any top international
schools,” it reads.”

And we all know what graduate admissions committees at the top universities are looking for. I don’t know how easy it is to transfer from community college to a top university, but I think that if you can get into one right out of high school, you should probably go.

Of course I’m not trying to discourage anyone. The most important thing is to have your priorities in order, be smart, and work hard. I’m just saying that the only path to a lot of good jobs and graduate programs is to get into a first-tier university.
teachingprof

Let me shed some light on part of this problem: when my kids were in high school, we had to go in for the obligatory “Guidance Meeting” in their Junior year. I was working as a dean at the local community college, and that’s where my daughter was going to attend. When the counselor asked if she was going to attend college, I said

“Yes, she will be going to the CC right out of high school, since I work there and the tuition is a benefit.”

He pressed on, “does she intend to earn a 4-year degree?”

Well, at that time she was rebellious and the fact of the matter was that I was going to be grateful if she stayed enrolled at the CC long enough to earn a 2-year degree, but that was none of his business, so I said,

“Right now we’re going to focus on Community College and we’ll see what happens after that – one day at a time, you know…”

Later, I saw that he had written down “Student plans to attend a 4-year college / university”.

Not long afterward, I was browsing my borough/community web page and found a link where they bragged about the % of their graduating seniors who attend college right out of high school (>95%), and listed a veritable “Who’s Who” of elite, Ivy League schools but no mention of the local CC.

I was incensed that the high school would not acknowledge that my child (or obviously ANY child) would attend the local community college, and I think I understand why. It’s all about marketing the community, to which I want to say: “please report on how many of those students who wandered off to those elite-Ivies returned home in that first year? (a good number, and I know because I would either see them on the CC campus, or my kids would say “So-and-so came home and is taking classes at CC”)

Hmph, hmph HMPH!

Time for all of us to “get over it” on the name dropping. Time for a mass rebellion against paying tuition that is too high; time for more state and federal money to support the local, non-profit, community colleges and time for parents to “get over” the need to flutter their fake eyelashes and tell everyone in a stage whisper that “Byron got accepted into Brown/Yale/Vassar/Harvard…”

Sign me, “sick of all the Byrons and their mothers” !!
clarinetsarethebest

I went to a fairly prestigious university myself (although admittedly not one of the mentioned ones), and my junior year roommate had just transfered after doing an associate’s at the community college near her house. She saved a ton of money (six figures off sticker price, easily) and wound up graduating with honors. So it’s definitely possible.
robjenkins

Hey, Tux. You say, “I don’t know how easy it is to transfer from community college to a top university, but I think that if you can get into one right out of high school, you should probably go.”

Even if you had to borrow $100,000? I’m not trying to be a smart aleck. I’d honestly like to know what you think. If we’re talking about professional school–law, medicine, or business–I’d say go for it. But undergrad?

Rob
jesor

That e-mail is somewhat funny because my college is not on that list and I’m pretty sure we have alumni working at Oracle. Granted, most probably held positions at Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Boeing, Dreamworks, or another “top tier” company first (or completed a graduate program), but we are by far not one of the “prestigious” institutions and half of our students transfer from the community college. Big companies like to put out that sort of bunk in order to make themselves seem more attractive to both career centers at colleges – “look aren’t you special that we’re paying attention to you, we only hire the best so only send us your best students”, and colleges buy into it because it lets them borrow prestige from big companies. The reality is much different for most of these companies, particularly in technology fields. They’re fighting for talent as much as admissions offices are fighting for students.

Ultimately the other thing it comes down to for most students is the basic math. Let’s say your average 20,000 student “prestigious” undergrad institution places 200 students in positions with high end companies each year out of an initial entering class of 6,000. Just calculating that first year, would any truly rational individual pay a $34,000 + per year premium just to have a 3% chance at those top tier jobs? Multiply it out by 4 years and you’re up to over 130K for that chance, which by the way only exists and a benefit if those companies only hire from ”top flight” institutions. The reality of it is, most of our students are destined to be rank and file employees, even those from high cost colleges. We do them a disservice to convince them that a $200,000 undergraduate education is going to help them be more successful in the long run than one that costs a tenth as much, especially when all of the data I’ve seen indicates that 3 years out from graduation, where a student attended has no statistically significant difference in a student’s income with very few exceptions (primarily for African American and Hispanic students where the salary difference was slightly higher)
teachfordamasses

It’s probably not the “top-tier”-ness of the college per se that translates into top-tier entry jobs, but the fact that students at these very selective institutions are, by defiintion, themselves the top 1-2% in motivation and achievement (at the time of college admission.) As has been said elsewhere, top universities certify the excellence of their students; they don’t create it.

Sure, there are potentially excellent candidates coming from CCs/lesser colleges, but the baserate likelihood of superior prospects in pre-selected cohorts is so much higher that it’s not in companies’ interests to bother looking at them when they have hundreds of applications from the listed schools.

And seriously, with respect to this article as advice to students, how many students are deciding between an offer from Princeton/Caltech/Yale and attendance at their local junior college?
mindnbodybuilding

“And seriously, with respect to this article as advice to students, how many students are deciding between an offer from Princeton/Caltech/Yale and attendance at their local junior college?”

um…a lot? http://www.aacc.nche.edu/AboutCC/Pages/fastfacts.aspx
mbelvadi

Some people are brought up to believe that the answer to your 3% question is “yes”. This and tuxthepengin’s argument is yet another example of the mentality documented so well in the book, “The Winner-Take-All Society” which I highly recommend.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Michelle-McCrillis/1415266878 Michelle McCrillis

As an enrollment counselor for a community college, and a financial aid officer, I have seen our graduates transfer to some fairly elite four year schools and graduate from them, and earn advanced degrees from them. I have also seen my share of those whose parents were so proud of the sons and duaghters who were accepted at top flight schools only to have them on our campus after their third semester having become slackers and being bounced out. Given the partnerships we have with both public and private four year colleges and universities where our graduates transfer to, the education we provide is a tremendous jumping off point. One of the things we stress is that our costs for two years are far less than one year at these schools. I wholeheartedly agree, we need to see that the *glorified high school* mindset of those who knock community colleges needs to be lost. We are a viable, productive and less expensive option for those who cannot afford Harvard/Yale/Princeton/CalTech or choose to plan their futures with the savings of loan interest carefully and whose simple determination will make their futures their’s rather than drowning in debt.
rab60

I am very sympathetic with students who need to watch their budget since I had to do that as well working part-time jobs through much of my undergraduate years. However, I would caution students to be careful as to which courses at the community college they transfer as prerequisites for their studies at 4-year universities.

I have taught calculus for a few decades at a relatively large state-supported research university. I’ve seen many students who transferred credit for community college mathematics courses which were prerequisites for one of the courses Calculus I – IV at our university. Sadly, a much larger percentage of those students than usual did not pass the course. The prerequisite courses they took at the community college had the correct titles, but they simply were not prepared for some of the subsequent courses.
big_giant_head

Wish I could double-like this post.
tuxthepenguin

“Even if you had to borrow $100,000?”

It’s tough to discuss such a big topic in a blog comment, but yes, if it’s a choice between MIT and the local community college, borrowing $100,000 is a good idea. When I talk to high school students I tell them to not major in education, fine arts, humanities, and several other fields. In engineering you are likely to see a premium of more than $3000/year in salary from the MIT degree.

@chronicle-f9169c33f81d80618b124d7e72ad22d2:disqus : I’m not claiming you can’t get a good job or be successful if you don’t attend a first-tier university, but it does make your life easier. I am at a non-prestigious state university and have seen some pretty good students struggle on the job market. They are definitely at a disadvantage, particularly in a tough economy. The best grad schools won’t admit our applicants who have a 4.0 GPA, perfect recommendation letters, and good GRE scores.

@chronicle-ce72be14026228e6dd59f738615e2b24:disqus : We’ll have to agree to disagree about whether or not the school actually plays a role. Personally the level of our courses is a joke compared to the level at a first-tier school. We hold the students’ hands and tell them they’re doing well and do our best to provide an enjoyable experience. It’s fraud, and there’s no way we provide them with the same educational experience. Moreover, the best students at my university do not have much interaction with other highly talented students.

I know this is going to rub a lot of people the wrong way, but as an academic, I will say it anyway. We get a fair number of CC transfer students who come in with a 4.0 GPA. The standards at some CC’s are obviously not very high. I feel bad because they are so far behind the other students in advanced undergraduate courses. Do they get less education in at least some CC’s? You better believe it.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5OEBRMVCIRNOIQ2RLAMBZFAF34 Nedi Goga

Ivy League should be excluded from this conversation as they are clearly at a different level. Their FA packages are generous and their students are super achievers. However, the rest of “B” and “C” level private independant schools just don’t provide the value they charge. There are several B-level schools in NJ whom charge 40-50K per year of tuition and board and their kids graduate with up to 150K in student loans.

Someone please show me how mathematically this students standard of living will be higher than if they had started off in CC and then transferred into this same exact school and graduated with half the debt.

Furthermore, in order for one to move into a managment position of any sort these days companies prefer a graduate degree, hence, the value of an undergraduate degree has diminished significantly over the past few decades while it’s cost is up 300%.

Current economic environment has only quicken this enivitable shift, it was going to happen anyway.
The “Chivas Regal” effect mindset if its expensive its better is quickly fading.
condiment

The author concludes: But perhaps as word continues to filter out that community colleges are economically viable options that won’t derail anyone’s career, we’ll see fewer of these student-debt horror stories.

Unfortunately, starting at the 2 year college 10 mins. from my town may derail your college career. The school has a 13% graduation rate (3 years). 20 mins away is the state university with a 65% graduation rate (6 years). My advice to the local high school kid who’s interested in earning a college degree and saving some money is to go to the state university and live at home.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5OEBRMVCIRNOIQ2RLAMBZFAF34 Nedi Goga

Those numbers are misleading as many students only attend CC for a few semesters and transfer to that state state school without graduating CC. In addition, 40% of CC students attend school part time as they have full time jobs.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1513621308 David Richard Wills

Even before my involvement with community colleges I have been mystified about the public stigma surrounding attending one…it’s such a no brainier option for the long run.
condiment

The graduation rate only reflects matriculated full-time students.
Of those, yes, we do not know how many students may transfer after one year or less.

But as someone who is very much involved in the life of the local high school, I can tell you that anecdotally very, very few kids are graduating in two years and transferring smoothly over to a four year college. Instead, many lose interest and drop out or down to part-time. This does not save money.

Sending the kid to the four year college straight out of high school would be the best bang for the money. Living at home for four years would save over $40,000. This is an option that some living in proximity to big state school should consider.
traneman

I have mentored a young woman who went to a community college and obtained two associate’s degrees. She graduated with honors and received a full scholarship to a top research university, where she just graduated with honors and was hired into a prestigious job. So, she didn’t pay anything for the college degree. Although I have only worked at what we still call “4-year” institutions, I still give advice to friends that it really pays to go to a community college for 2 years and then transfer. The diploma will still be the same as the one’s earned by the other students who spent 4 years at the institution.
http://www.facebook.com/rexchristos Chris King

One of the drawbacks for parents and students alike is the subject of credit transfer between community colleges and four-year universities, public or private. I agree with the writer of the article that it would be far cheaper and wiser to go via the CC route to the four-year university of your choice if that university will accept all of the previous work toward the degree in question. The universities in their own interests have put into practice incentives to draw students as entering freshmen, the result being mounting personal debt yet not having to worry about transfer credit problems. Sometimes it comes down to the question of which thing are you more willing to lose in your college career: hard-earned college credits or money through long-term interest payments?
jniehaus

If every student went to community college for two years and then transferred to a four-year institution for the last two years, the four-year institutions would have to increase their tuition substantially. There is a reason why community college costs less. Upper level courses are smaller and usually taught by full-time faculty members. The four-year institutions cannot offer the junior and senior year courses for the same price we now charge without balancing out the cost with freshman and sophomore students. Going to community college for the first two years will only save money as long as few students are opting for this route. Otherwise, the strategy is flawed. I have not heard this issue addressed, but the fiscal impact will be substantial.
lmg0407

As a CC graduate myself, I see both sides of the argument here. I attended a good community college with excellent faculty who cared about the education of the students attending there. This allowed me, as a returning adult student, to “pay as I went” for my first two years of college. I got a transfer scholarship to a solid state school, and my undergrad degree cost me far less than it would have if I’d even started at the state school. (I also completed a graduate degree at said state school.) On the flip side, there are CC’s in my region that do not offer the quality of education I received, and I did have some credit transfer problems. I am also not in a prestigious career by any means – I have a good job and make a decent buck, but I am far from among the elite. So, I agree with the poster who said “It depends” – on the CC in question, the student’s personal circumstances, and their aspirations. Context is nearly everything in this debate.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5OEBRMVCIRNOIQ2RLAMBZFAF34 Nedi Goga

If every student went to community college for two years and then transferred to a four-year institution for the last two years, the four-year institutions would have to increase their tuition substantially.

Interesting. If you lose your customers because your prices are too high then you must increase prices to stay alive. Have you ever considered that state of the art dorms built on debt, facilities with granite tiles, mohagony doors, should be the necessary in order to provide a quality education.

Take a look at the expensive “B” and “C” level schools and find out what their discount rate is. The shift tactonic plates is happening now. Their perceived value is diminishing quickly and CC is the only other alternative.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5OEBRMVCIRNOIQ2RLAMBZFAF34 Nedi Goga

The graduation rate only reflects matriculated full-time students.
You’re right. However, many of these students are ill prepapered and it takes them over a year to get out of remedial and developmental courses. Not to mention those who start off with a boatload of ESL courses. Not defending CC here just saying that the graduation rate is misleading.
missoularedhead

Some of my best students when I was a TA in the UC system were transfers from the local CC. They were all slightly older, true, but they had a work ethic that the students who got in straight from high school didn’t have.
nanprof

Community colleges vary enormously, at least in my area. (There are at least eleven that come to mind.) Some send many students to our most prominent state university; some are glorified high schools, and not very good ones.

CC’s are great for many students–they provide time to explore at minimal cost. Many of my state college students really belong there–they’re not yet committed to higher education. My transfer students swear by the CC experience. (And some of them picked up job training along the way.)

But do your research. And sometimes it pays to enroll concurrently in two CC’s for different courses, especially when those are impacted (prereqs for nursing, etc.)
condiment

I agree with you: many of the best students are older. Maybe the answer is to advocate for a gap year as it is a tradition in many countries.
But the question posed on this blog is: is it better financially to invest in a 4 year college from the getgo or to start at a CC. Answer: it depends on the quality of the CC and its graduation rate and the likelihood that the individual student will feel engaged on the CC campus, engaged enough to continue for 2 years and successfully graduate.
It depends on what he/she wants to study at the 4 year college level and if courses like bio 101 are comparable on both campuses. In terms of saving money, I still say start at a good state college and live at home, if it is at all feasible. You’ll have a much better chance of earning a degree in four years.
smcdonald999

Why do we have to play this game of going to community college for two years and then transferring into a prestigious in order to get the stamp of approval? Exceptionally bright and motivated people can accomplish amazing things no matter where they go to school. The only obstacle to their success is the insidious prejudice that most people who attended elite institutions continue to perpetuate in order to feed a narcissistic self interest, i.e. they want to maintain their sense of specialness.
missoularedhead

Of course the quality of the CC counts, and I’ve taught at several, some of which were no better than adult day care, and some (including the one I teach at now) rival 4 year schools in terms of what the students learn and can take with them. It is truly a mixed bag, one that I think has a lot to do with the various state structures governing CCs (in some places, they are part of the state university system, in others, they are their own thing, and in still others, they fall under k-12).
And I agree that a 4 year state school (and even living at home) is a viable alternative. Or at least it used to be, when state schools were subsidized by states. With the incredible tuition increases in the last several years, even that option is becoming less affordable without taking on at least some debt. Maybe not as much as, say, MIT or Harvard (or any other ‘name’ school), but still out of reach for many students. Why not go to the local CC for 2 years, get the gen eds out of the way, and then do 2 years at the state school (all while living at home)? That, to me, seems like the most viable option.
And yes, I completely agree about a gap year…or two or three. Sometimes, not knowing what you want to do works out (my college major hopping means I can teach in multiple areas), but it most often leads to late graduation and extra expense.
condiment

I went to a CUNY school and lived at home, graduated in 1978. It was the best option for me, no specialness about me or my education.
I’m concerned that too many high school graduates who are trying to save money with the 2 year college first will be side-tracked and never complete their associates degree. I see it happen often. Again, the local CC has a 13 % graduation rate.
I also believe that a college degree is an investment, not unlike buying a house. Some debt is good debt. The difference between starting at the local state college while living at home and starting at the CC and living at home over the first two years is about $3,000 a year where I live. $6,000 seems like good debt to me when the state school has a 65% graduation rate and the CC has a 13% graduation rate. I think students and parents need to be wise consumers and look into the facts.
tolbertbynum

SMCDonald,
You’re so on-target. Let me chime in by stating that I am a very proud administrator at a community college with two Ivy League degrees under my belt. After receiving my doctorate from the “top-tier” and then working there for a year, I consider myself blessed beyond comprehension to be where I am. How one defines the “best jobs” is certainly subjective, and prestige is not – and has never been – a determinant for one’s quality of life or daily happiness. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have graduated from a community college before transferring on for my bachelor’s, saved myself thousands of dollars, and then matriculated to the graduate school of my choice. And I do state “of my choice” for I have always been motivated, focused, and intelligent, and I did attend the schools I chose to attend. However, let me state emphatically that the Ivies didn’t make me this way; they simply acknowledged my drive.
rrizzo

Very interesting article. The “top jobs” in some very elite industries represent a tiny fraction of the good jobs that a graduate can find. To take on an enormous debt with the hopes of landing one of these elite jobs seems to be a very risky gamble. Racking up a six-figure debt from a big name school is no guarantee of employment at all, much less one of the top jobs.

Before selecting a graduate school, I made an appointment with one of the local headhunter agencies. The staff there was kind enough to devote some time to discussing my options. Their opinion of where an MBA was earned was this: there were several elite schools such as Harvard and Stanford that could make a difference in my future job search, but otherwise any accredited university would do. As these people had first-hand knowledge of the qualifications it took to get hired in upper management, I considered it expert advice.

I think the same is true for the community college question. When it comes to being hired in the vast majority of professional positions, the Bachelor’s degree from the state university (with the first two years at a cc) meets the qualifications. I have served as the Human Resources Director in several organizations, and the search committees rarely discussed where a candidate had earned their degree. It was a simple matter of they had one from an accredited institution or they did not. Certainly in the case of getting an undergraduate degree, the huge debt is not worth the questionable advantage gained.
fbear0143

Community colleges are generally a great bargain. Often some of their adjuncts are some tenured professors at nearby universities, who are dedicated to teaching but who can’t do much at their day jobs. Thus they moonlight at a CC to fill their need to teach.

The problem with education at nearly every 4-year school in the USA is that they have become addicted to government money and have invented their own corollary to Parkinson’s Law: The cost of education rises in direct proportion to the amount of government funding available to students. To this, they add their own poor-mouthing increases, particularly at many privates. There are plenty of obscenely overpriced but mediocre institutions in this country., charging well over $100 thousand for a four-year education. In fact there are a couple in my area that will rack up that much in three semesters, maybe fewer. I think I’m a good instructor, but I quarrel with the notion that a class taught by anyone would be of a better quality simply because it cost $2000 per credit hour.

Of course, there is alsy the problem that big names get big salaries, but that name doesn’t necessarily mean bigtime teaching.

Until the recent spikes in oil prices, the largest rate of inflation was that for higher education. I imagine it still is second only to oil. Frankly, I believe higher education is terribly overpriced, and the immorally high cost at universities with massive endowments (and there are still some) is just not right.

Still, this just goes back to the concept that higher education is not fully integrated into the capitalist/industrialist culture of our country. Nothing wrong with that, except when it is a culture run amok as at present.
robjenkins

“In engineering you are likely to see a premium of more than $3000/year in salary from the MIT degree.”

At that rate, it would still take more than 30 years–an entire career–to break even. Unless that’s a typo, and you meant $30,000/year, which I suppose with an MIT degree could be possible. THAT would be well worth the debt.
Rob
lucyndisguise

Having worked with Fortune 500 companies over the years, most of those companies only want to hire from the top tier or Ivy League schools. As a parent, I’m already experiencing the lack of interest from employers who refuse to consider students from non-top tier schools, one my own child is attending. It’s unfortunate that a young person has to wrack up $100K in debt to attend the Ivy League/Top Tier school but the reality is if you don’t attend one of those schools, it will be incredibly difficult to get an employer’s attention. I’d be interested in hearing of others’ experience with the non-top tier sector colleges. Yes, it does make a difference where one goes to school.
robjenkins

Most of Fortune 500 companies only want to hire from Ivy schools? Surely that’s an exaggeration. There are several Fortune 500 companies headquartered here in Atlanta, and I know they hire all the time from UGA, Georgia Tech, and even the regional universities.

I could relate several anecdotes, but here’s one: My nephew worked his way through a relatively small, non-prestigious regional university–a school that actually started as a two-year college and had only completed the transition to four-year a short time before he enrolled. He graduated with a degree in accounting and not a dime of debt. He then landed a job with one of the Big Four firm, at the same time they hired a number of other recent grads from much more prestigious schools, including several Ivy. Fifteen years later, he’s a partner and most of them have washed out. And he tells me that one of his firm’s favorite places to recruit is Brigham Young–a good enough school, and a private school, true, but hardly Ivy.

Rob
texasmusic

I liked it for you. So did a few others…
lucyndisguise

The hiring patterns have changed greatly over the last 10 – 15 years, with companies tightening their recruiting efforts and focusing more on the top tier and Ivy League graduates. In talking with recruiters at Fortune 500 companies, they’ve been directed to focus on the top tier schools and Ivys. The decisions as to where to recruit from are in many cases based on curriculum, focus area and the success of past graduates. Having done recruiting myself, I saw many candidates passed over due to the school they came from. It is unfortunate because there are many strong candidates from outside the top tier schools that will never get the chance to demonstrate their skills because their pedigrees were not from Ivy Leagues or top tier schools.
margaretbartley

I’m a boomer, and I remember when I was young, the purpose of a college education was to improve the quality of life, and to become a better citizen. The idea of education as job training was somewhat derisive. That’s because traditionally, education has only been available to the upper elite of society.

Education has been replaced by job training, but educators haven’t gotten used to the new language, and people have a fuzziness about how education improves social position.

I met a professional education adviser who told me that higher education for the wealthy elite was about meeting people – making connections that would serve them well in the future. Those connections are a main reason why large corporations will only consider graduates from top tier institutions for their executive track programs.

For the middle class, college was about job training, and for the lower classes, not on the radar screen.

Until this issue of student loans became so bad, education was a correlative factor, not a causative factor. People with degrees from expensive colleges didn’t get good jobs because of the degree, they got good jobs for the same reason they got into the college -because they had the right background and family connections.

We need to quit thinking the simplistic bumper-sticker slogans equating college with good jobs, and pay attention to the excellent advice some of the people posting here have given, about making sure the student knows why they are going to college, and whether that school is a good fit.

Traditionally, for upper- and managerial/professional class kids, college has been an intermediary transition between childhood and adulthood – an opportunity to have more responsibility and freedom (and fun) while still in a protected environment that will hopefully not take advantage of the young persons’ naivete. That is still a good thing, if you can afford it, but not really an option for working-class and poor kids.

For working class and poor kids, apprenticeship programs, designed strictly for job training, have been the ticket to a better life.

What’s been going on in the past decades is that we’ve been trying to figure out how to form apprenticeship programs for a highly technical society, and also how to integrate people who come from cultures that are traditionally hostile to education into a work force that requires more literacy.

Trying to fit all these different goals and requirements in the same package results in mixed messages and confusion among consumers, who don’t do their own research, but just blindly follow whatever self-serving “advice” they get from TV commercials and college pitchmen and uninformed high school career counselors.
finaidmaverick

It’s false to assume that students who attend community colleges will rack up less debt. I work at a community college and we have a lot of students with $20,000 up to the maximum of $57,500 and not even an associates to show for it. And this isn’t the college’s fault its the federal regulations which allow students to borrow up to $57,500 for an undergraduate degree. The problem with this is 2 year schools have the same maximum ($57,500) as the 4 year schools and schools can’t prohibit students from taking out loans if they participate in the direct loan program. (The only exception is if a school can prove a student won’t pay back the loan, which is obviously difficult.) All schools can do is educate students. But when students are disillusioned by the media and society that they must get a degree at all costs it becomes a problem. Most of the student body at many Community Colleges is made up of students that didn’t do well in high school, didn’t graduate from high school, went to prison and are now trying to better themselves, or are non-traditional working students from all back grounds and ages. Admission is open it anyone. When you have an open admission policy like most community college you’re going to have all types including many of those trying to just live off the system or that are not prepared for college. This is not surprising given the ease at which students can take out loans – no credit check and no waiting period to prove themselves first. We have thousands of students where I work that take out loans while taking remedial coursework. By the time they start taking college coursework they already have over $20,000 in student loan debt. I think before we assume community colleges are a great bargain we need to look at real problem and the whole picture. The truth is students get themselves into debt and they do this because they’ve been told to get a degree as fast as they can and at all costs and the federal government doesn’t do students any favors by allowing students to borrow freely while the media points fingers at financial aid administrators for “not educating these students in borrowing wisely.” In my experience you can tell students all the dangers in borrowing till you’re blue in the face and they don’t listen especially the ones have low placement scores or come from broken homes. And those are the ones that NEED to have restrictions. But the feds won’t do it.
anonytrans

“I don’t know how easy it is to transfer from community college to a top
university, but I think that if you can get into one right out of high
school, you should probably go.”

It is often quite easy to transfer, and I know many people who, after 2 years at a CC, ended up attending schools much better than the ones they would have been accepted to right out of high school (and at much less cost). Actually, I attended a community college in California that had agreements with the UC system to accept a large portion of students who completed 2 years at the CC with a high GPA – it actually seemed easier to get into these schools as a transfer student than an incoming freshman.

My own experience involved attending a community college after dropping out of high school, transferring to a flagship state school for my BA, being accepted by several top departments at R1 universities for my PhD, and receiving job offers from top departments in my field. I have been surprised at how much consistency there has been across these schools, with my own students doing similar work to what I did as a community college student just over 10 years ago.
anonytrans

The fact that students attending a CC are less likely to graduate does not at all mean that the same student will graduate if they attend a 4 year but won’t graduate if they attend a CC. Even aside from the point Nedi Goga made about transferring (in my experience most students who transfer do not get the AA), if different types of students are attending the two types of schools we can expect to see different graduation rates without concluding that it’s the institutions themselves causing students to graduate or not.
finaidmaverick

It’s false to assume that students who attend community colleges will rack up less debt. I work at a community college and we have a lot of students with $20,000 up to the maximum of $57,500 and not even an associates to show for it. And this isn’t the college’s fault its the federal regulations which allow students to borrow up to $57,500 for an undergraduate degree. The problem with this is 2 year schools have the same maximum ($57,500) as the 4 year schools and schools can’t prohibit students from taking out loans if they participate in the direct loan program. (The only exception is if a school can prove a student won’t pay back the loan, which is obviously difficult.) All schools can do is educate students. But when students are disillusioned by the media and society that they must get a degree at all costs it becomes a problem. Most of the student body at many Community Colleges is made up of students that didn’t do well in high school, didn’t graduate from high school, went to prison and are now trying to better themselves, or are non-traditional working students from all back grounds and ages. Admission is open it anyone. When you have an open admission policy like most community college you’re going to have all types including many of those trying to just live off the system or that are not prepared for college. This is not surprising given the ease at which students can take out loans – no credit check and no waiting period to prove themselves first. We have thousands of students where I work that take out loans while taking remedial coursework. By the time they start taking college coursework they already have over $20,000 in student loan debt. I think before we assume community colleges are a great bargain we need to look at real problem and the whole picture. The truth is students get themselves into debt and they do this because they’ve been told to get a degree as fast as they can and at all costs and the federal government doesn’t do students any favors by allowing students to borrow freely while the media points fingers at financial aid administrators for “not educating these students in borrowing wisely.” In my experience you can tell students all the dangers in borrowing till you’re blue in the face and they don’t listen especially the ones have low placement scores or come from broken homes. And those are the ones that NEED to have restrictions. But the feds won’t do it.
dasamgcc

Germanna Community just transferred a young lady to Amherst. While we don’t send many from Virginia to New England, this is not a rare occurence. And her diploma froim Amherst will not say “Amherst but.”
juliewhite

I agree with your points; however, what I find different at the community college is the broad range of diversity of students, which encompass vastly different demographics from those I generally saw in my previous 15 years of working at four-year institutions. Community colleges are not perfect by any means, but I do believe that they can be transformative institutions for students who would otherwise not have access to postsecondary education.

And yes, those things can be listed and counted, but the qualitative characteristics of such examples are not completely captured by data alone.
lamack01

I work at a community college and I heartily recommend them, not only for their lower cost, but for the smaller class sizes, the excellent teaching, the accessibility of faculty and more. However, I will have to say that I was very fortunate to live in a town with a flagship university. I lived at home and had a scholarship that paid half of my tuition. Attending a community college would have made it impossible to pursue my desired major (Greek and Latin.) Few community classes offer those languages, and at any rate, I was ready for junior level classes my freshman year. If I had attended a community college, undoubtedly I would have chosen a more practical major but I am grateful for the opportunity I was given.

It is also my understanding that there are often research opportunities available to upper-class STEM students. That might also be a factor in making a decision.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Kathleen-Flacy/1721996494 Kathleen Flacy

It would also be wonderful to see community colleges as viable, productive, and less expensive without having to use adjuncts/part-timers/contract labor to teach 50%-70% of their core courses to do it. Not only is the practice exploitative for the instructors, it cheats the students by denying them the contact time and attention they would get if most of their instructors were full-time and degrades the value of what education the students are receiving by forcing the colleges and instructors to deliver a standardized content rather than educate. It is definitely time to reverse the neoliberal marketplace ideology of education-as-job-training that has been creeping through education like kudzu, before the system chokes on its own “efficiency and accountability” compulsions.
ychumanities

You assume that it is the act of attending the community college that creates a lose of interest or shift to part-time, and that the same student attending the four-year institution would remain on track. But how do you know that the students choosing the community college aren’t more challenged with finances, family concerns or educational deficits to begin with?
ychumanities

And again, completing an associates degree is often NOT the goal of CC students transferring to a four-year institution. They don’t need the degree to transfer.
Unemployed_Northeastern

Selected quotes from The Education of Henry Adams (A Harvard Man):

p. 54: “The next logical step was Harvard College. He was more than glad to go. For generation after generation, Adamses and Brookses and Boylstons and Gorhams had gone to Harvard College, and although none of them, as far as known, had ever done any good there, or thought himself the better for it, custom, social ties, convenience, and, above all, economy, kept each generation in the track. Any other education would have required a serious effort, but no one took Harvard College seriously.”

p. 55: “It taught little, and that little ill, but it left the mind open, free from bias, ignorant of facts, but docile. He knew little, but his mind remained supple, ready to receive knowledge.”

p. 65: “The Harvard graduate was neither American nor European, nor even wholly Yankee; his admirers were few, and his critics many; perhaps his worst weakness was his self-criticism and self-consciousness; but his ambitions, social or intellectual, were not necessarily cheap even though they might be negative. Afraid of serious risks, and still more afraid of personal ridicule, he seldom made a great failure of life, and nearly always led a life more or less worth living.
p. 300: “if their new professor had asked what idea was in their minds, they must have replied that nothing at all was in their minds, since their professor had nothing in his, and down to the moment he took his chair and looked his scholars in the face, he had given, as far as he could remember, an hour, more or less, to the Middle Ages.
“Not that his ignorance troubled him! He knew enough to be ignorant. His course had led him through oceans of ignorance; he had tumbled from one ocean into another till he had learned to swim; but even to him education was a serious thing.”

p. 302: “The number of students whose minds were of an order above the average was, in his experience, barely one in ten; the rest could not be much stimulated by any inducements a teacher could suggest.”
wattssal

These are all great! Then there’s the one about “a university being a collection of feudal (or is it ‘futile?’) kingdoms connected by a central heating system.”
rbirnbau

You can see view over 1,600 quotations about higher education – many, but not all, immortal – in the book Speaking of Higher Education: The Academic’s Book of Quotations, co-published by ACE in 2004 and now available from Rowman & Littlefield. One of my favorites, from, John Masefield, is: “There are few earthly things more splendid than a university. In these days of broken frontiers and collapsing values, when the dams are down and the floods are making misery, when every future looks somewhat grim and every ancient foothold has become something of a quagmire, wherever a university stands it stands and shines; wherever it exists, the free minds of men, urged on to full and fair inquiry, may still bring wisdom into human affairs.”
gauche

“Of
course there’s a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a
little in; the seniors don’t take much away, so knowledge sort of
accumulates.” —Abbott Lawrence Lowell
jthelin

This column is intriguing and interesting — but readers who want the real deal should read Bob Birnbaum’s 2004 book. A little acknowledgement of Birnbaum would have be appropriate and appreciated, I think.
dtroop

Mr. Birnbaum just chimed in above. Frankly I didn’t know of his book, which sounds like a good read. I’ve collected these piecemeal over the past couple of years.
11301218

Two of my favorites concerning research activity –

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it
would not be called research, would it?”
— Albert Einstein

“Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t
know what I am doing.”
— Wernher von Braun

So much more healthy than how research is thought of now.
willismg

Not so fast… No less a source than Richard Feynman (sp?) has stated categorically that light is not a wave.
dank48

Because the object is laughter not tears.
shushufindi

Follow the link for more pieces that stink. It’s well worth the effort.
Socratease2

You are missing something.
Socratease2

That was an awesome sentence, it hurt to read it but felt good afterward.
unlvlaw

Professor Fondrie’s sentence is truly wretched. A job well done.

That said, I’ve never understood why (other than that it subsequently became a cliche) Bulwer-Lytton’s opening sentence has been widely savaged, while Hardy’s opening sentence of The Return of the Native (“A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Edgon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment.”), which Monty Python poked fun at a few decades ago, has largely escaped unscoffed. I guess that’s why I teach law and not English literature or composition.
609zr

“In 2007 Libya started large-scale plans to become a leading knowledge-economy and pledged to invest $9-billion in domestic higher education with 25 new college campuses, advanced facilities, and branch campuses of foreign universities.” This was an excellent plan cut short. Now it sounds like someone wants a piece of the financial pie. Perhaps the Libyans have had more than enough help from outsiders.
blowback

I could not help reading these remarks by these 2 scholars and wonder if they could actually be so devoid of any self-reflection or insight. I am not sure if I should point to their irony or hypocrisy. Tell me did either of you object to the the imperial, unlawful, and raw abuse of power by the UK, France, and US that resulted in the most bloody display of inhumanity that has been so publicly on display in recent memory. Now the western powers most responsible for this most unlawful of recent conflicts now want to clean up the bloody mess they have made. No doubt there is a word to be used to decribe such arrogance but I would rather not repeat it. I think the West has done enough harm to Libya and what has all our bombing and bloodlust achieve: that those the CIA and US have put in power are already engaged in actions that are far worse than those they have replaced Women are likely to have fewer rights and the civil war is likely to linger for many years. Both of you need an ethics reality check or maybe you just need to start using them for the first time because there seem little compassion or understanding in anything you have written here. Or is self-promotion the only reason for your comments.
jluchok

Several thoughts arose from reading about this. My first is that this is not 1990 and academics can no longer discuss issues only among themselves. On one hand the internet gets their writing to a larger audience while on the other the jungle outside the walls of academia is a wild place. This thought arose from the defense of the article saying it went beyond the intended audience.

As for the issue, where is line? A child can become a burden at any time so if a 5 year old becomes an economic burden can the parent have the child killed? What about a 4 year old, a 10 year old, a 2 year old?

I agree that threatening to kill someone when you believe in sanctity of life is contradictory.
mmullins

Male philosophers discussing women’s reproductive issues. Where are the female philosophers? Why do males always insert themselves into this conversation? Pun intended.
randalllott

“Well, in all my years I ain’t never heard, seen nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about” – Stephen Hopkins in 1776 (1972).
but Mr Hopkins was not engaging in a debate regarding the ethics of murdering children. The dehumanization of children and the disabled is an abuse of academic freedom. Like most eugenists, these nacissists never include themselves in the lower group. Kevorkian himself clung to life despite having “assisted” so many others out of theirs.
erikfast

I suggest that one pro-life argument that argues this point, based on reason, can be found here:
http://180movie.com/
boiler

Why is this a women’s reproductive issue? They’re talking about infants of both sexes who have already been born, and who presumably have both mothers and fathers. Surely both genders have a claim on this question.
boiler

I think Singer’s being disingenuous here. He characterizes the reactions to this article as the work of anti-abortion activists, ignoring the fact that the article is about infanticide. Many people who support abortion rights would find the argument presented in the article appalling — I certainly do, and I’ve voted Democratic for 40 years. For many of us, the idea that “merely existing as an innocent living human being is enough to give a being a right to life” is a basic premise of our ethical thinking. To dismiss the horror evoked by this article as an irrational reaction by unthinking conservatives is an act of deliberate ethical blindness.
drj50

The response by attack rather than argument shows that we in higher education have work to do — teaching critical thinking, respect for other points of view, etc. That does not mean that some ideas are not horrifying — it is about how we talk about those ideas and the people who hold them.
maxbini

Be careful of context – Singer was not arguing for this position (nor would he), rather he was merely pointing out the point of contention.
maxbini

Should not such “basic premise(s) of our ethical thinking” be questioned? And who are the “us” and “our” that you are referring to?
nullo

Singer is right to point out that the article in question is possibly more interesting as an attempted reductio of certain arguments in favour of abortion rather than as an actual argument for infanticide on grounds of parental interests. That is also the line I take in my response to the article:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2016772

I do think it is a shame though that Singer has not taken this opportunity to at least sketch his own position on the issue: I would guess that Singer would think that, even though general parental interests such as the one discussed by Giubilini and Minerva may not be enough to justify killing a healthy newborn, killing an healthy newborn is morally preferable, other things being equal, to killing an heathly child or adult.
jenevastone

The following is a reflection that pertains to both of Mr. Bartlett’s posts on the JME infanticide article. While I cannot get myself (yet) to read the entire Journal of Medical Ethics article, the conclusions show how naive the writers really are about science, even medical science, and especially genetics. They write: “we do not think that in fact more than a few days would be necessary for doctors to detect any abnormality in the child.”

This is ridiculous. My own son was perfectly normal at birth, and had a normal development up until the age of 13 months. He then had a profound crash that presented as a classic onset of a metabolic disease. He was left profoundly disabled–wheelchair bound, tube fed, nonverbal, and with motoric impairments in his arms and hands that prevent him from successfully accessing a touch screen communication device. He is, his doctors think now, nearly 14 years later, locked in. We are looking into eye gaze communication systems in an attempt to reach him. He is, however, a lively, social child with a great sense of humor, despite his terrific impairments. In the ensuing 14 years, we have never been able to find the cause for his profound medical collapse, and he remains undiagnosed.

Most neurometabolic disorders with implications for severe disability do not present at birth. In fact, many genetic illnesses are undiagnosed or they present months and years after birth. Autism typically presents around 18-24 months. In fact, much that can “go wrong” with a child is not visible within a few days after birth, including some types of severe epilepsy, which can have profound physical and cognitive effects on a child.

I love my son, but I have to acknowledge how his disabilities have limited our lives, including and most importantly his, at every level: emotionally, socially, financially. Would he be better off if he were euthanized? Would the authors of this article suggest it morally OK to euthanize someone who turns 15 in June? I find those untenable moral questions–and I don’t know how the JME authors would address those within the framework of ethics.

We are currently sequencing my son’s genome, looking for answers, especially answers that might provide clues to palliative care and treatments. While the costs of this are coming down rapidly, we had to raise $7,500 to do this. Even at such point in the future as insurance companies might pay for whole genome sequencing during pregnancy, it is naive to believe that that will enable parents to detect ALL possible genetic defects. For example, we are sequencing my son’s exome (the exons), which are the active genes, but the introns, which have been thought for decades to contain inactive genetic material, have now been shown to contain defects and transcription errors that cause disease and/or disability. And, besides, even when we get the list of defects, duplications and deletions for my son, we may not be able to successfully interpret them at this point in time. It will be information to keep on hand as we keep tabs on genetic research. Even should full genome sequencing be available in future years, parents will not be able to fully understand what every little hiccup in the genome means–each of us as individuals have individual genomes filled with such little blips, and most of us turn out perfectly normal. So how to decide to abort? In addition, these blips in our genetics are a simple byproduct of evolution–in 100 years, the human genome template will look significantly different than it does now.

The other problem with articles like this is that disability will always be with us–it doesn’t matter what we do. There will continue to be children with odd genetic defects, birth defects, accidents, etc. When typical people make it clear that people with disabilities are not valuable and deserve to be euthanized on the basis of how their disabilities affect those around them, not on the basis of whether the person with disabilities enjoys or appreciates his or her own life, that is setting a cultural context that supports the abuse and neglect of persons with disabilities, let alone public funding for their medical care and education, all of which is (trust me) too expensive for any individual to bear.

I’m working on a memoir about my son and blog frequently about these issues at http://jgirl3.blogspot.com. I am not a trained academic ethicist, but I do have a doctorate in another discipline, and I feel my experiences are valid points of discussion.
blog21

You will find out otherwise eventually.
Re_Actor

Their problem, apparently, is that most of them do not know how to argue against anyone who agrees with them that the fetus and newborn infant have the same moral status, but then denies that merely existing as an innocent living human being is enough to give a being a right to life.

I’m not sure I would know how to argue against such a person, or indeed whether argument would be the most appropriate response.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

Read it again — Singer does acknowledge that the unborn and newborn infants he’s discussing are “human.” The question is, do they, or should they, have rights?

Children under 18 are human — indeed, we call them “persons” — but we deny them many rights. They may even be subjected to force and painful physical punishment, within limits, without due process or legal recourse. Few people argue against denying rights to children, despite the lack of evidence that reaching the age of 18 (or 21) brings about a significant change in a person, either. I might argue that this demonstrates our “hatred” toward children, but would most people? Would you?

So there is certainly a precedent for choosing an essentially arbitrary age at which we grant people certain particular human rights.
mamazee

Thanks, Antsy
That makes sense, that children have less rights until they reach the age where the majority of them can be responsible for themselves. But in these cases, we are balancing The loss of their rights with their protection. We limit their ability to drink to protect them from a vehicular manslaughter charge. We deny them the right to sex to protect them from pedophiles.
In abortion, though, all their rights are negated with no protection to balance that loss. It’s pure aggression, and the negation of any rights they might be able to claim.
In any case where humans have less rights (mentally ill, developmentally disabled, children), the burden of proof must be on the one who wants to limit the rights to prove that it only done to protect, not to punish, discriminate or kill wholesale.
Slavery did not meet the burden of proof required and eventually it was abolished. History will judge us just as harshly for the genocide of 1/3 of our children (and rising).

The world is a comedy to those who think; a tragedy to those who feel.

- Horace Walpole
http://www.facebook.com/people/Antsy-Kuhnwisse/100002159499682 Antsy Kuhnwisse

It’s hard to say or do anything much, lately, that (once it gets around on the web) WON’T inspire some death threats. A mom painting her son’s nails pink, or entering her toddler in a beauty pageant? A dad shooting his daughter’s laptop? A young woman arguing for contraception to be covered by insurance …. ? They should be killed! Die horribly! Rot in hell! Wish I were there, I’d kill ‘em!

Which, like the overused “F-word,” kinda waters down the impact of death threats.
livefreeordie2

Lawrence Summers was run out of Harvard on a rail for mentioning – not supporting, just
mentioning – that genetic difference between men and women might account for female under-representation in some scientific fields.

A decade or so before that, Charles Murray was excoriated as a racist simply for publishing
research about genetic influences on racial differences with regard to intelligence, despite the fact that he clearly said environmental factors were probably more significant.

When it comes to Global warming, more research is unnecessary and anyone who disagrees
is a “denier” – a clear attempt to make anyone who disagrees seem as foolish as someone who claims the holocaust didn’t happen.

And yet here we have allegedly intelligent people arguing that post-partum abortion is actually a pretty good idea and other allegedly intelligent people supporting this as legitimate scientific inquiry. It’s not legitimate to even ask questions about potential genetic differences between races or sexes, but we really do need to have a cultural discussion about the benefits of killing
babies?

Who are these people? Well, I’ll tell you. These are the same types of people that used Jews for experiment in Nazi Germany and for the same reason. What is that reason? It supports the viewpoint of those “in charge of” the culture. In the ’30s and ’40s, Jews were made out to be vermin that should be exterminated. Experimenting on them was no different than using lab rats. In the US over the last nearly 40 years, liberals have been busy selling the notion that abortion is a good thing and a woman’s “right.” Anything that furthers that notion is good and anything that argues against it is immediately labeled misogynistic.

Allow young girls to get abortions without even notifying the parents? Good. Putting even the most minor cautions and restrictions in place? Bad. So. . . if liberals can merely start the discussion that killing babies is the moral thing to do, then who the hell will be worrying about abortion?

You know? I completely, totally, and utterly support free speech. But only the most depraved and morally degenerate person could ever think that this type of “scientific inquiry” is something that has any benefit and in which we should engage.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Warwick-Wakefield/611516650 Warwick Wakefield

The authors of this controvrsal paper (I’ll refer to them as G and M) claim that a newborn has no “right to life” because she is “not capable of attributing to her existence a basic value such that being deprived of it represents a loss.” I consider this to be a rubbish kind of statement but let’s evaluate it on its own terms.
If a child (or anyone) is deprived of her existence she experiences no loss, she doesn’t experience anything.( I assume that G is not including in his deliberations a rosy existence in a heavenly afterlife. )

So what does it mean, “To be deprived of your existence represents a loss?” Does he mean that you would approach the bodies of people killed in a terrorist explosion and ask, “What’s it like to be dead; is it better than being alive or worse?”
Perhaps he means, “If an individual thinks about the oblivion of non-existence, would he prefer existence?”This seems to be the only possible meaning, and it is a real meaning – people who suicide are seeking that oblivion as a release from the horror that their existence has become.
But how how do you apply this meaning to children? Does a child become a “person” with a right to life, only after he has contemplated the oblivion following death and then decided that his life is preferable? Children don’t form too much of an idea of death untill they are four years old or so. I know one very bright child, almost four years old, who asked his grandfather, ” “What is death?”His grandfather replied, “Well, when someone dies it’s as if they go away and never come back.”The boy thought about this and then replied, “Then why don’t we give them a cell phone before they go?” Most children don’t form much of an idea about death, (in order to prefer existence to death) til they
are four or five, so to say that they don’t become persons, with a right to life, untill they can consciously prefer living to death, means that you can kill them, (in order to harvest and sell their organs, for example) right up untill they have become little philosophers, and you can do so without guilt.If someone has to become consciously aware of his preference for life, against oblivion, he would have to be able to answer a question like, “Explain, in 500 words, the reason that you prefer life, with all its difficulties, uncertainties and tragedies, to the oblivion of death. Refer to the words that Shakespeare put into the mouth of the Hamlet character; “To be or not to be, that is the question.”How old is a child going to be before he can do this? Twenty? Twenty five?We’ve gone a long way from newborns. We’ve gone through primary school and through high school. And in all that time our youngsters are not “persons” and have no right to life.OK, maybe a child can understand life and non-life without being consciously able to explain it in words. In that case, babies demonstrate a hunger for life right from the beginning.When they aren’t physically able to do much more than suck and make a few noises they suck vigorously, cry for food and make noises of contentment when their hunger is satisfied.When they are cold or wet they cry in distress untill they are made warm or dry. Many pediatricians have identified the different types of crying that babies use right from the beginning, the hunger crying, the cold or wet kind of crying, the crying that says, “I am lonely and unhappy and want to be picked up, rocked and cuddled” and the crying that says “I am alarmed because of some frightening noise or other disturbance.”So, even by G’s silly definition of who is a “person with a right to life,” a baby exhibits this value for his existence, in fact a hunger for life, right from the very begining, right from day one.

G and M go on at length that a baby “cannot be harmed” because he has not formed any “aims” so he cannot experience the suffering that comes from not having fulfilled his aims.Firstly, when you kill someone of any age they do not experience any suffering, no matter how obsessively they wanted to be rich and famous. After death there is no suffering.But you don’t harm a baby when you kill him? If you kill a baby you change him from being a small human with a rich life in the world, and a rich experiential life, into a piece of decaying meat – no harm? You have destroyed all his ongoing physical and experiential processes, his hungers and his satisfactions, his need for love and his being given love, and his withdrawal into himself where he experiences just the kind of bliss that the Buddha spoke about. (This is not speculation, you can see it on the faces of still babies in dreamless sleep. And sensitive parents readily talk about it.)And you say you have caused no harm? This is just plain stupidity.

There is a lot more I could add; that the concept of “rights” dosn’t explain why we know that murder is horrible; that there are huge differences between newborn and unborn babies; and that these two persons, Guibilini and Minerva, make crazy mistakes in logic, simple and elementary mistakes, that reveal that they are not fit to practice, let alone teach, philosophy. And finally, the vice chancellors and professors of philosophy at their universities have poured contempt on their philosophy schools by employing these obvious incomptents.