They were already doing it!
I've been wondering why the Cancelled profs and scholars didn't get together and form a new university devoted to non-cancellation.

Turns out they've been working on it for a year, and waited until it was solid to announce it publicly.

Now it's solid. The Univ of Austin includes ALL the famous Cancelled profs plus quite a few others who have been disgusted by the wokesters.

Some of the recent quits like Boghossian knew where they were going.

Looks like they're immediately aiming to train leaders and entrepreneurs. Physical subjects are several years down the timeline, and not definite yet.

The president is moving directly from the presidency of St Johns College in Maryland, so he knows the job. Presidents of small colleges have exactly ONE job: bringing in money. In the article announcing the founding, he gets right down to dollars and cents...

At our most prestigious schools, the primary incentive is to function as finishing school for the national and global elite. Amidst the brick and ivy, these students entertain ever-more-inaccessible theories while often just blocks away their neighbors figure out how to scratch out a living.

The priority at most other institutions is simply to avoid financial collapse. They are in a desperate contest to attract a dwindling number of students, who are less and less capable of paying skyrocketing tuition. Over the last three decades, the cost of a degree from a four-year private college has nearly doubled; the cost of a degree from a public university has nearly tripled. The nation’s students owe $1.7 trillion in loans.

And to what end? Nearly 40% of those who pursue a college degree do not attain one. We should let that sink in. Higher education fails 4 in 10 of its students. A system that so brazenly extracts so much from so many without delivering on its basic promises is overdue for a reckoning.

ON THE FUCKING DOT. This is the main problem, vastly larger and older than the Wokesters. Entirely aside from politics, tenure has steered academia into narrower and narrower bands of subspecialties, with less and less substantial learning and more bizarre delusional theories. Only a few professions actually benefit from the process, and even those professions would be better off with less orthodoxy.

I see three inadequate points in their FAQ.

1. They're seeking accreditation, which is a powerful force toward orthodoxy. The accrediting agencies expect maximum Wokitude.

2. I don't see a commitment to avoid tenure. After tenure gets up and running, there's no escape from ever-narrowing orthodoxy.

3. I don't see a Trinity House motivation loop. If they simply invite the right kind of students, the wrong kind of students WILL get in and ruin the setup. Stings and APs have plenty of Deepstate money, and know how to manipulate the system.

Maintaining an unorthodox purpose against the headwinds of Parkinson bureaucracy and accrediting agencies requires a more specific feedback loop of money for value. Trinity House, working for safe navigation, has been funded by ships safely reaching port, and it has maintained its purpose for 500 years. Funding for this university needs to depend on students safely reaching the port of independent thinking. How? I don't know, but I'm sure the TWO-WAY OBLIGATION is necessary.

Later, after looking at more details... there are some pure Deepstaters in the founding crowd, like Peter Singer and Larry Summers and Strossen of ACLU. The whole thing could be just another fake front.

Labels: Equipoise, Parkinson, Trinity House

  ¶ 5:28 AM