Somewhat mixed feelings
Influencer Julie Kelly, who is basically a standard Repooflican but has firmly taken the side of truth in the "virus" shit, wrote this nice one-liner:

Harvard is DeVry with a lower ROI.

She was talking about the report that Harvard will be entirely online next year, but will still charge $50K tuition.

Classic mixed feelings, Mother-in-law Cadillac Cliff.

On one hand, I'm HAPPY to see a standard Repooflican APPRECIATING the qualities of Experiential Education. Most of them hate training in all forms, and believe that education should consist of nothing but memorizing the Speeches Of Cicero in Latin. They have been slamming Common Core specifically because CC is experience-oriented.

Still on the same hand, I'm glad to see a specific mention of DeVry, where I taught for a few years. DeVry is sleazy in some ways, but it has always placed EXPERIENCE BEFORE THEORY.

On the other hand, the one-liner gets the math backwards. In fact the Return On Investment for Harvard is INFINITE, not zero.

Most students don't actually pay the $50K. For those who do pay, the $50K is a meaningless proportion of their income. So the investment is effectively zero, and the investment in effort is also effectively zero.

The return is MASSIVE, but it's not a Return On Investment. It's a Return On Inheritance, a return on BEING BORN to the correct Tribe. If you belong to The Tribe, you go to Harvard or Yale for a piece of paper that verifies your Tribal Membership. The piece of paper has nothing to do with the money your parents supposedly paid, which they didn't really pay anyway, and it has nothing to do with the effort you supposedly put into learning, which you didn't really put anyway.

Now that Harvard is all online, EVERYONE CAN SEE that the actual effort is zero.

This is another of those wonderful NOW I SEE moments.

Labels: Emersonian justice, Experiential education, NOW I SEE

  ¶ 5:42 AM