A Rant on Higher Education

“Higher education” is a topic that gets a lot of talk in the manosphere, and a lot of it in relation to how a college campus isn’t a great place to be a man these days. Fair enough, and I agree with a lot of that. Today I’m going to rant on something else though: how broken it is.

Through a completely bizarre set of circumstances that applies to almost nobody else in the US, I found myself in grad school at the beginning of 2010 (I entered mid-school year; like I said, bizarre circumstances). Initially, I was excited. I’m not really sure why. I hated my undergrad years. I guess I was hoping that being at a different (and bigger and better rated) university would be better. It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.

Despite my enthusiasm, just in the last year I’ve witnessed the following (keep in mind that this school is consistently scored in the top 50 US universities by US News & World Report):

• Professors who can’t work their own examples. I’m not talking about once or twice – I’ll forgive anybody a bad day. I mean any of them. This despite having taught the same class for 10 years.
• Professors who give lectures with details that are just plain wrong (demonstrably so). Again, not in isolated cases, but frequently.
• Professors who simply don’t give enough information for the students to do the assigned projects. This hasn’t hampered me; I’ve got a lot of experience in the field, and I’ve only had one project in my entire educational career that I’ve considered “non-trivial.” But I’ve watched it cause real problems for my fellow students, and even felt really bad that I haven’t had time to help them.
• Professors who don’t speak English well enough to write coherent test questions. I’m sorry, but that should be a basic minimum for the job.
• Professors passing off biased made-for-TV movies as if they’re historically accurate. Nevermind that this is a technical class and there’s really no good reason to be watching anything like this in the first place.

Yeah, my enthusiasm died pretty fast. If I dredge my memory of my undergrad days, the story gets even worse.

• Professors who more or less can’t speak English at all.
• Professors who can’t show up to class because they have job interviews.
• Professors who aren’t proficient enough in the programming language they’re supposed to be teaching to actually, you know, program – much less teach it.
• Professors who can’t even tell you what the title of the class means.

These are the gate keepers who hold all the power over the rest of us. They control what careers we can and can’t have, by virtue of their power to grant (or deny) us their stamp of authority and let us get the appropriate credentials. Supposedly they’re “educating” us.

I have had the occasional truly awesome professor, and with them, a few truly awesome classes. They are the exception, not the rule.

As I said above, I have a very bizarre set of circumstances for being back in school. Those circumstances include an offer for a pretty ridiculous (in a good way) salary after I finish my master’s degree. If I didn’t have that… dear god, I don’t think I could put up with this shit anymore. I’m not sure it’s possible to pay me enough to go back for a PhD once I’m done.