Universities are failing students. Let's talk about why.

[@_jared]

Get UPDF Pro with limited offer: bit.ly/3Y2osVZ And let me know what you think we can do to fix universities down below! (And to be clear: The views expressed in this video are solely mine and not reflective of the views that UPDF has about universities.)

[@WhirledPublishing]

To fix universities, fire all the idiot professors - you think I'm kidding? Since the 85 to 115 IQ's of geologists are uploaded online by Psychologists - while the average IQ is 100 - which is the intellectual equivalent of a typical ten-year-old who can't do fourth-grade division, can't do Algebra and who's reading comprehension, vocabulary, spatial skills and emotional maturity are also adolescent, you should begin to realize the truth about " science ". Since forecasts from the IPCC have been wrong - every year - since its inception, that is another resounding fail among the Earth Scientists. Do they have the correct timeline for our Earth? No Do they have the correct timeline for the eruption of Yellowstone? No Do they have the correct timeline for the history of North America? No Was North America crushed beneath the giant glacier of the Ice Ages? No Shall I go on? No If you want the true timeline for all of the above - and the true timeline for the Grand Canyon, the Yucatan Peninsula, Mammoth Cave, etc., you can find all of that clearly documented - by our ancestors - in hundreds of historic records - the same is true - worldwide - or you can believe those with the mind of a child. On and on the imbeciles go with their unsubstantiated theories - you're free to believe the lunacy from those with the mind of a child - or you can smarten up, throw off their lies and see the conspicuous truth.

[@darillus1]

you don't reply, why r u asking?

[@petersaccocia4510]

I am a University professor. I agree with you that "woke" isn't a primary problem in terms of the quality of education on the ground for most students. I would even say that most students do not have any issues being exposed to "woke" ideology as long as they feel free to express themselves without being attacked. However, it is a fact today that there are professors who behave like activists instead of scholars. I don't know the percentage and I would argue it is small, certainly not the majority. But these activists are very outspoken, both on campus and on social media. When the say something nutty it goes viral. So they get outsized attention from the public--and politicians--and this ends up creating a backlash against higher education in general and all the other faculty, and students, pay the price. I blame us, the rest of the faculty, who have allowed the nuttiest voices amongst us to control narratives while we cower in silence because we don't want to be put on blast and be "cancelled". So again, while I agree that "woke" isn't damaging the granular education for most students (like what you experience in a particular philosophy class taught by a great professor), it is damaging the reputation of higher education more broadly and that damage will have consequences.

[@Nightman-eb8mj]

It's the Jews. Simple as. Every single Ivy league college has a Jewish president. Every single one. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE! WTF

[@inlikeflynn7238]

You're right about the word wokeness being imprecise, but the main point often mentioned when using the word is, as you said, identity politics. What you didn't mention is hiring practices based on race-based quotas rather than qualifications, students chosen on the basis of a racial quota rather than their SAT scores (an Asian student needs about 25 extra SAT points more than a white student, and about 50 more than a black and Hawaiian to get into Harvard), and scholarships that are provided to certain students based upon whether they are a racial minority rather than based upon merit. I don't know why people in education don't see this as a problem.

[@mhdkhd9168]

Well, everything is a business in the US. I am a professor at a high ranked uni, and I am seen as a coffee shop owner who serves my "customers" rather than an actual teacher. I always get good course evals, but the reason is that I am not able to teach the correct way, and must teach the way my clients love. Teaching the correct way equals bad evals and getting fired tbh. In my hometown (in the middleeast), I believe the edu system is more effective since the students are not customers, and the financial aspect is not emphasized as much as what I see in the US.

[@Yatukih_001]

In the US. and here in Iceland the universities seem to treat students as if they are characters in Greek mythology like Sisyphus.

[@uskinanthi]

What course do you teach and what do you mean by the "correct" and "loved by students" ways of teaching?

[@misterkefir]

I'm pretty sure that this model is used everywhere around the World now. Capitalist Realism.

[@camgere]

Wrong. The students ARE your customers. The purpose of universities is student learning. Not professor employment. Students want things easy? Everyone wants things easy. Even professors. They want big salaries, nice offices, expense accounts, teaching assistants, light workloads. By all means use your brilliant analytical skills to improve student learning. Backward-Integrated-design for teaching. First you identify your goals for student learning, Second, you figure out how you’d assess whether students had hit those goals (luckily testing is traditional). Third, you design activities that would prepare student to excel at those assessments. Testing tests the teacher as well as the student. Leadership involves motivating students. Good dog! I knew you could do it!

[@LisaOfTroy]

One thing that I was disappointed about in my college education is that I wasn't fully challenged. Even if a professor had said, "Hey. I'm not allowed to assign a 10 page paper to you. But I think it is important for you to develop skills. Here is a list of topics I think would be worthy of a 10 page paper. If you write it, I would be happy to provide feedback to you. Of course, you won't be formally graded, but if you want to stretch yourself here is an opporunity." I would have taken up the challenge (depending on the course). But too often I was in a 300 person lecture hall filling out bubble sheets, answering questions that someone in elementary school should be able to answer.

[@maxlemuz868]

Adjunct here. I really appreciated your points and I'd just want to add that it's not just the universities that are failing students, but the surrounding system of student loans and high schools that are frankly bringing in far too many students into the university system that would be better off going to other school programs or straight into the workforce.

[@CoronaryArteryDisease.]

Very good point.

[@TheresaReichley]

That and it’s absolutely driving them to (by necessity) see college only in terms of economic returns. If you’re spending 100K over a lifetime for an education, you don’t have the luxury of thinking in anything other than economic terms. If they don’t get a better job after graduation, they’ll still owe the money and feel cheated.

[@sowercookie]

One of the reasons I quit uni was I got so frustrated and disheartened that it was "high school+". Frankly I didn't have the money to spend to get to the masters level where (so I've been told) "all the interesting stuff is".

[@TheresaReichley]

@@sowercookie honestly, I think for most ordinary Americans college is going to be job training anyway. For the rest, I think it’s probably more fruitful to simply learn how to learn and do the reading and study as a hobby rather than trying to spend tens of thousands on courses at a university. You can find old textbooks to teach anything. You can read and write about philosophy.

[@kemunto_]

@@TheresaReichley great point

[@LTRand]

If a 4 year degree only costs 10k, then any major is justified. If a 4 year degree costs 400k, it better be economically relevant. That is the major shift on the consumer side.

[@fredwelf8650]

The Bachelors degree is a first step to a teaching position - the most common job in America! If the tuition is too high, look for a state college; usually has a much lower tuition for the same credits.

[@alfredhitchcock45]

Take Medicine it's a highly paid job

[@cryora]

@@fredwelf8650 Not very well-paid though. Average pay, in fact.

[@drmadjdsadjadi]

@@cryoraThe most common job will never be well-paid simply because we are pumping out too many people who can do the job.

[@cryora]

@@drmadjdsadjadi Plus it's an existential crisis. Go to school just to end up going back and teaching students. Who then will become the doers? What then is the purpose of teaching? Just to make sure every American knows their basic math and English, while the elites advance their knowledge in business, manufacturing and controlling the world?

[@angelal8829]

I have so many friends who wanted to go into academia and couldn’t swing it financially but then work at these same jobs institutions as admin and it’s maddening that the system will not pay them to teach or research but will pay them to continue expanding the bureaucracy.

[@hypothalapotamus5293]

Cancerous cells don't understand that they die when the body dies...

[@elainealibrandi6364]

I went to college at a time (late 1970s) when a college education was supposed to make students into well-read, well-rounded people. This meant that no matter what you studied for a major, the humanities classes were taught to ensure that you didn't graduate as an expert in your field but ignorant in everything else. This was also a time when, if you had a degree in fine arts and art history as I did, a lot of jobs were open to you outside of your field, simply because you had a degree. Now graduates need a plethora of finely tuned qualifications and ultra-specific credentials and skills that used to be taught on the job, but which are now obsolete by the time they do graduate. College is ridiculously expensive as it focuses on water slides and luxury cafeterias. Future employers aren't going to care how cool your school was. It's time to get back to bare bones, intensive, quality education taught by well-paid professors, without all the unnecessary amenities and perks that end up costing more than the professors' salaries.

[@friendlyfire7861]

The Core Curriculum at Harvard was a strong part of the education, at least toward the end of the last century, and to me the courses from them proved the most valuable through life as far as being well-rounded, thoughtful, etc. is concerned. It should never be that a doctor has never read Shakespeare or a humanities professor never taken economics (real economics, not just Marxism, which despite what many say is what most professors consider a study in economics). You are right that more and more companies want someone ready to do specific tasks from day one and don't think much of a humanities degree. They are often right, because in spite of what Jared says, the Leftist bent that graduates have been inculcated in are a hindrance to being flexible, hard-working, learn-on-the-job type people. Years ago, humanities degrees were fine because it had established that you were capable of deep thought, hard intellectual work, and focused, independent, creative work. 😃

[@elainealibrandi6364]

@@friendlyfire7861 That's quite true about having a humanities degree; it opened many doors for me.

[@friendlyfire7861]

@@elainealibrandi6364 🙂

[@longiusaescius2537]

@friendlyfire7861 Chad they live enjoyer

[@friendlyfire7861]

@@longiusaescius2537 😂👍

[@DJTS1991Yes]

When I did my Masters a few years ago, my University professors did very little (if anything) to have relationships with their students. They went in the opposite direction. They infantilised their students, treated them like children, and didn't recognise that some students were there to learn. I was nearly expelled one day when I didn't show up for a university organised practicum because I had to attend a job interview... so I could afford to live.

[@JimTheCurator]

College professors don't seem to realize that students have lives outside of the classroom. Which is weird because the college professors themselves presumably do so why shouldn't the students as well?

[@frankgarcia9834]

This is soooooo true, at least where I work. It is so sad. The professors hide in labs to hide from students who go to their offices.

[@cryora]

I heard a faculty say that college is just day care for adults.

[@TheDrExaviouse]

I have a philosophy degree. I have found that the critical thinking skills learned through reading, grappling, and then writing about others works helps in the day to day at work. Comes about in argumentative writing, understanding complex issues, and throwing around Heraclitus quotes in meetings

[@lindsaysyt]

I am a senior in high school and am thinking about studying philosophy. It’s the only subject that I really love but i’ve found that there are limited job prospects that come with a philosophy degree. As a person that has experienced finding a job with a philosophy degree, would you say it’s worth it to study philosophy? Are there a lot of job opportunities?

[@KoiPondDreams]

@@lindsaysyt If you are looking for employment directly after college, just a philosophy degree may not be your best best as far as standing out from the crowd. If you're thinking of getting a second degree that shares some overlap into philosophy then that will definitely diversify you. So things such as law, consulting, government, business, NGOs, administration, grad school, finance, advertising, marketing, journalism, tech, higher-ed etc are good to accompany a philosophy degree. It's not vocational, so you can really set your sights on many different things. If you're looking to go into a graduate program such as med or law school, philosophy majors do exceptionally well on that front. As someone current in law, I can advise that philosophy is probably the best major if you're thinking about law school. That being said, it is worth it if you genuinely enjoy philosophy and those who have a philosophy degree can, generally speaking, earn a very good living and generally make more than other degrees in the long term. As usual, I am a random stranger on the internet and our lives have the potentail to be extremely different so your milage may vary, take it all with some consideration but by no means am I giving you "the best advice" for you. Hope you find your answers!

[@JohnnyMilz]

​@@lindsaysyt It's a fantastic 2nd major or minor. Maybe choose a primary major in something that opens lots of job prospects for you. Choose a minor or 2nd major that makes you stand out as someone capable of independent, creative, intelligent and original thought. Studying philosophy is rarely a mistake. *Only* studying philosophy will often be a mistake.

[@rtlau-mk4di]

​@@lindsaysytI'd recommend you listen to Aaron Clarey's videos about college and student loans on KZbin and read his book Worthless. He has some good advice on what to major in if you want to find a good job.

[@tonys.5029]

Just gonna toss my 2 cents in here as well since I also have a philosophy degree. You’re right that job prospects for a philosophy degree are highly limited. Really, what it does is make you extraordinarily qualified for the jobs other people get that don’t require a degree, like entry level business work, and will equip you to critically evaluate and rise up quickly. Of course, this assumes you land at a good company. A philosophy degree also works great as a precursor to law school or some other secondary school. Law school’s actually the most common path philosophy majors take. It turns out knowing how to argue people silly and point out all their fallacies is really effective in a court of law. If you don’t want to do graduate schooling of some form, choose a major that will be more lucrative and slap a philosophy double major onto that. Otherwise, you’ll have a hard time finding satisfying work that’ll actually monetarily sustain you.

[@julianfaustjulian8384]

I am studying in Germany and I have to say that it astounds me how expensive American universities are. In my opinion that should be the first thing fixed. My tuition is basically none (300 bucks a semester and even that is covered by a small scholarship I am proud to have) and somehow this works for every university in Germany, while you have to pay insane tuition fees in America making it impossible to really focus on your studies if you are not rich or have a great scholarship. i think that these absurd costs are the biggest problem of American universities

[@beevie4081]

Sounds pleasant, but if you're not paying for the infrastructure and personnel at your university... Do you know who is?

[@julianfaustjulian8384]

@@beevie4081 To my knowledge it's the government that pays... and I do see that this can be problematic as well, but it seems to be working rather well

[@beevie4081]

@@julianfaustjulian8384 I'm very glad you're benefitting from it. That's the tricky thing with tax revenue... Choosing which groups of citizens get to reap the benefits.

[@drozander3692]

Low-cost is mostly a function of those universities being highly selective. It is not merely a matter of governmental policy to subsidize education. In addition, Germany practices a robust tracking differentiation system which begins in 4th grade that formally/ inforrmally matches students according to intellectual inclinations and capacity.

[@bonghuongduongnomuon]

Hey, same here! After spending eight years in the US studying, I saw everyone around me paying obscene fees and it always stressed them out. I got accepted into an Erasmus Mundus master's program in Europe and have been here for 1.5 years now, currently in Germany. It really surprised me that it only costs 300 euros/semester (we call it a social contribution fee here, idk about u tho). The professors here are amazing and really know their stuffs. It makes me realize that you can receive an excellent education anywhere, even without paying absurd amounts of money.

[@paladinsorcerer67]

I received an engineering degree from UT Austin. I was very interested in my general elective classes, but I did see other engineering students who bashed those classes as being boxes that needed to be checked off on their journey to getting the degree. I think oftentimes engineering students are good at math and science, and struggle with the humanities, which might factor in to their poor attitudes regarding the humanities. What a college student doesn't understand is that obtaining knowledge is a lifelong pursuit. I recieved my degree 25 years ago, and the humanities classes I took are still relevant to me today as I read and do self study.

[@jacoblong6258]

Fair take but I think it’s more sensible to have a reading list or pop in to classes to audit them as your interested. The requirement of schools to take classes that don’t apply to your specialization was always ridiculous to me and other students I was in uni with.

[@patpickerall4820]

The comment that a reading list would be preferable to having to take a class you do not 'like' proves the point that students are the customer. Churlish attitudes in class are unproductive and immature.

[@jacoblong6258]

@@patpickerall4820 it’s not about a class not enjoyed it’s about a class that is useful. As far as the college education system, many young people I was in school with agreed that the first two years of repeat classes just to check a box is an utter waste of time and funds. It’s a repeat of American high school classes that are already a weak foundation for most, especially public education. It’s a sign of the times that academia is bloated and over extended and needs to be reformed . As far as a customer, Ivy League schools and even schooling in the ancient world was always reserved for the upper echelons of society so in that vein maybe they could enjoy the posterity of simply enjoying a class. Modern academia is a factory no doubt, I don’t think anyway would refute that statement. Most people go to college to better their situation and would rather focus on what gets them their faster. Education is a life long pursuit, you not need schooling for that.

[@rubenrobles6996]

Why is it always STEM students who have to take humanities classes, but never the humanities students who have to learn calculus and coding?

[@mollygrace3068]

@rubenrobles6996 What do you mean? All students have to fulfill all the areas of general education. So humanities students take lower level math and science classes and STEM students take lower level art and sociology classes. An art student probably isn’t taking Calculus, but an engineering student isn’t taking advanced sculpture either.

[@nahuakang]

Universities are failing students also because the workplace is moving faster and faster with technological changes. What happens when a student who spends 4-8 years learning things that aren't immediately practical for a unrelated job? Coming from a history degree, that was what really hurt me in my first years trying to look for a job. Luckily I was able to pick up programming and ended up working as a software engineer. Sure, college prepared me to learn how to learn, but many students didn't go into their studies trying to learn how to learn. They were under the impression that their diploma would be the investment that pays them with a job in return, which is often what universities promise.

[@christinaelliott8565]

I, for one, want to learn how I learn best. Learning how to think is, in my mind and personal experience, much more helpful that learning some technical skill, as this is often taught on-the-job or can be learned online. Learning how we think and learn and the complexity of that is essential to life. As but one example, throughout history there are many instances where others who have a deeper understanding of how people think are manipulating others for their own purposes (though some, I hope, have more benevolent aims.) I hear you though about being failing to meet job market skills with technological changes make it difficult to keep up and seem relevant to an employer. Factually speaking, I learned the technological skills on-the-job. Reading, writing and thinking were skills y employer wanted me to bring to my current position. So in the end, my university education paid off and I would do it all over if I were 20, 30, 40 and 50 again. As I'm 65, I'll continue to learn and work in my profession until I want to pursue some other realm of learning, though I hesitate to take on new and heavy university education debt even though I plan on working till age 71.

[@edbee8508]

Uni is not vocational. It's learning how to learn.

[@edbee8508]

If you want a vocational education, go to a technical tertiary institution. The problem from my point of view (chemical engineering) is that those who do more applied degrees are not as adaptable as methods change.

[@thevichar]

What technology are we talking about ? If it is connect laptop to airplay and Microsoft Teams I can confirm they are not that hard.

[@nahuakang]

@@edbee8508 It doesn't have to be binary. You can learn how to learn and still get skills that can be applied to your jobs. I could have read Illiad while learning how to design databases or operating systems. And thinking it's binary is a big reason why many students feel like their universities have failed them.

[@evanhadkins5532]

Degrees as job tickets is just awful I think. And I don't see why citizens should pay to train employees for corporations.

[@evanhadkins5532]

As to a better way. Study how people learn voluntarily - not when compelled, which tends to mean increasing exam results. How people learn arts, crafts, sports etc The learning is in meaningful units not broken down according to analysis. In philosophy, practising the elements of analysis, of an essay, of constructing an argument. I guess an updating of rhetoric in some sense.

[@markpage9886]

What else is a degree for...? A job is the only way to recoup spent monies. Who goes to school to introduce a burdensome debt load to your life? It has to be an investment: otherwise a library card and a museum membership is much cheaper....

[@evanhadkins5532]

@@markpage9886 You accurately describe the current situation. I would like to see it changed.

[@arandmorgan]

Boom. Bang on. Privatised gains public liability.

[@Mark-zk7uj]

same point stands about subsidizing walmart's refusal to pay a living wage through welfare.

[@strigiformsW]

On quality professors: I was the one defending adjunct professors and grad students in your other video, but I do have a comment to make about the quality of professors in general. I have found many professor's tend to prioritize research and consider their students and teaching duties to be a hinderance and afterthought to what they would much rather be doing. This makes sense, in my field most people become mathematicians because they want to do mathematics, not because they want to teach it. I have taken many classes where the professor "phones it in" so to say. Out of my entire bachelors degree I would say only a few professors actually stood out (and were pivotal in my success as a result), the rest did and adequate job, and a few put an unacceptable amount of effort into it. Getting to grad school it made much more sense when I understood the culture around teaching classes better. It wasn't very nice to realize that many of the professors teaching the most important classes actively hate teaching it a consider it a waste of their time. You say the schools can't chase quality education and treating students as customers at the same time, but I would also say that in many cases the same distinction can be made between research and providing a quality education to students. On students as customers: This is clearly the case. Where I did my undergraduate there was considerable back and forth between administration and the economic department because there was pressure to minimize the amount of required mathematics in the degree program so they could increase enrollment. This left many professors feeling terrible about their program because they felt it wasn't adequately setting the students up for grad school/the workforce.

[@nyet_maker7948]

This! And it is only exacerbated by the pressure to publish, and the publishing culture in general. Its become a pure businessmodel with politics for profs (scratching each others backs, the need to stay relevant, etc.).

[@josxxiv]

I was just about to leave a similar comment. As a grad student at a research university, I’ve had professors whose “teaching” is uploading their pre recorded covid era lectures to a website and expecting us to figure it out from there. We as students, I feel, are seen as an active hinderance to the “real work” of the Uni, which is publishing papers and collecting citations, followed only by the secondary motive of playing departmental politics and destroying their petty academic rivals at other schools

[@otsoko66]

I'm a tenured professor at an elite university -- I was called into my department chair's office and told - in no uncertain terms -- to spend less time with students (after class, developing courses, in office hours etc) - and to spend all my time publishing papers and (much more importantly) get more research grants. It's NOT the professors' decision to prioritize research, it's the university administration's. The administration gets a cut (sometimes as much as 90%) of every research grant, so that is their priority. Publishing is a priority because it facilitates getting grants. For the administration, it's always about the money.

[@strigiformsW]

@@otsoko66 I think you bring up a separate but arguably more important point. Schools are essentially hedge funds that teach classes and the research funding system has many problems. I really don't understand how universities maintain the good-will that they do.

[@me0101001000]

I'm hoping to become a professor in engineering, and while my field is safer than many others who fall prey to the issues you mention, that still doesn't mean that we are safe. I have a deep love-hate relationship with universities. I love academia, I love research, and I love teaching. But I passionately hate administrators and what they've made universities into. And many of the problems you brought up sounded very familiar to me.

[@tiryaclearsong421]

I'm getting a PhD in an engineering field and so many of these issues are why I would probably never go into a teaching position.

[@jas2800]

Universities are also becoming much easier in their content. Old exams from professors are so much more difficult than recent exams its crazy.

[@occamsshavecream4541]

I've noticed it too, very superficial curriculum with little time spent teaching students how to continue a life long pursuit of self-education.

[@gzoechi]

That's because professors get cancelled if they don't comply with the demands of the students. Students are now high-paying customers and they get what they want. Even safe spaces 🤮

[@johnpayne7873]

Case in point: look at the rigor of a sophomore physics exam from the US Naval Academy from the 1950s. Very challenging questions even for a mature STEM professional just 20 years later.

[@Lolerez]

​@@johnpayne7873 we are a bit further in physics than 1950

[@007mooo6]

​@@Lolereznot sure if the person is exaggerating cause I'm not in the navy.However, exams from maybe 10years and more are somehow harder than we have. To me it's not that we aren't taught the same thing but that those before us although they had less information, it was more applied. I think with development, and new technology it kind of made it easy to explain in theory rather than going much in depth. And I look at the work those younger than me are doing and it doesn't feel challenging (not because I'm older and have a better understanding, but because it is literally explained in very simple ways), it's just a simple read and pass which feels wrong. That's basically craming and most students forget half of what they "learn" Hope I explained this well, plus the examiners probably overtime started finding ways to have more persons pass by making the work less challenging. Many schools tend to have coursework make up about 50% of a final grade where I am, but my school kept that 70% or more for exam grade and only three of us passed every course for this year in my field. While labs and assignments make up no more than 10% and the 20% were for all those annoying in-class assessments

[@FlosBlog]

I don't know about your theory that universities have two missions that are at odds. Because here in Germany, vocational training and the heady humanities are very clearly separated (there is no need for engineers to take humanities classes for example). But universities here still suffer from much of the same problems. So I would be skeptical towards this being the cause for the tilt of modern universities. More generally, I doubt that this problem can be fixed by "repairing" the institution. The fix is not something that can be done at there. I think this is to optimistic. Much rather it seems to be the case that modern universities aligning with a larger societal tilt away from valuing knowledge for knowledge's sake.

[@FlosBlog]

@@koschmx I was using it more of a case than a point. But yeah, trying to fix the issue at university level is like calling a plumber when it rains through the roof.

[@user-ts8ec7mm7u]

Unfortunately, the quality of education across the entire US varies state by state. I taught undergraduates who have a HS diploma but can barely write a full sentence-- they absolutely need to take some kind of english/writing class to be able to be successful in life. I've had students who would've benefitted from just taking chemistry courses in general because they have the background and were practically sleeping in English because the class is completely watered down to the lowest common denominator. I met humanities students who absolutely needed to take a prealgebra class- they legitimately could not do basic algebra, and quite frankly if you cant use a calculator and do very basic arithmetic, you shouldnt be able to take out the extensive loans because they prey off the fact that people cant do basic math. The system probably works well in Germany because you're relatively small compared to the entire US. It's not even a red state vs blue state issue here, it's that there's so much volume of students coming in who are completely unprepared for college but their guidance counselor told them they needed this to be successful.

[@xiiir838]

I love how nobody payed attention to your conclusion

[@X24453]

I do not know if I truly believe that society doesn't value knowledge for knowledge's sake. I feel like the biggest counterpoint to that is Wikipedia. The sheer number of users and contributors indicates that people love to learn and share information. I have a hard time speaking to the modern university since I went to an institute which was essentially a vocational engineering program that forced me to take 6 humanities courses. But at no point in my life have I been as stressed as I was during my 4 years of college. Just keeping my head above water felt like a monumental ask. I think living in survival mode actively inhibited my ability to truly learn and question rather than to repeat what was asked. Especially since, after entering the workforce and having free time and stability, I've often sought out knowledge and have been teaching myself skills. I think people LOVE to learn, but significant stress often leads to people doing the bare minimum to get by and not having enough mental bandwith to go further.

[@josephreynolds2401]

Anti-intellectualism has been and is appealing. Using your brain is harder work than some people give it credit for. I don't mean this in a pithy way. A blue-collar worker can see the fruits of their labor. It is not apparent to the outsider whether a white collar office worker, teacher, or researcher has done something because the work cannot be seen publicly and is often intangible. What happens behind closed doors? "Could be anything", the anti-intellectual thinks. When they propose more bizarre theories than the last amongst each other it gets to be a societal problem. I use "theories" very loosely here, of course.

[@AzureMichael]

During my bachelor study (I was a Computer Science student in Romania), I noticed this specific trend, especially regarding my university. There was a clear problem with the way things were done, as if our professors wanted us to be excelent researchers and scientists, but also be excelent software engineers at the same time. They might be similar, but at the end of the day it is very different, imo, being an excelent computer scientist in academia, vs. an excelent software engineer for a tech company.

[@theallisoncompendium]

When I was considering going to graduate school for English Literature 15 years ago (which I never did because my advisor basically told me that it's a horrible job market and he wouldn't advise anyone to go into it), I wanted my favorite professor to write a recommendation letter. I was *shocked* when my advisor said that wouldn't be impressive because she was an adjunct professor. All I knew as a student is that she was an amazing professor and that her publications were excellent. I've been disillusioned with the system ever since.

[@jacobmerrill693]

Loving the universe for showing me this video the week I decide I'm completely done with trying to get a B.S. after 5 years of working on it. The status symbol thing at 10:30 is one of the things that broke my shelf. I was in an economics program and I had a major realization that I never learned anything. I went into the program because I liked the field and wanted to learn more but all these years later I can count on one hand anything useful I actually learned. My HS econ class taught me basically 99% of the economics I know and this program was just to get a paper for the sake of making hiring managers happy. Realizing that drained so much of my energy and drive to stay

[@pdexBigTeacher]

I attended a large, midwest public university in the early 80's. My undergraduate degree is Engineering. I've been back on campus twice in the past 7 years, and while the campus is gorgeous, the amenities are 10-fold than when I attended, the cost is also seemingly 10-fold greater, and it seems a degree from this institution has become more of a badge of honor versus validation of the knowledge you've gained. That administrative bloat has trickled down to the secondary education level.

[@shafeequllahsatari2094]

Incredible points were discussed. Private universities often prioritize profit, and if they instill in students a focus solely on job-oriented education, this could diminish the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Such an approach risks producing fewer great minds across various fields, both in the social and natural sciences, and could potentially lead to a decline in intellectual creativity and diversity in the long term. Though I live in the UK, my personal findings from private universities, including 'AUOA,' reveal this trend. Thank you!!

[@mikolowiskamikolowiska4993]

You Really think great minds need to be coddled and want to spend scarce Resources on producing non productive members of society? Wow

[@calabi-yau4894]

Great video. Even from watching videos on fundamental issues with society that are unrelated to each other specifically, a common theme that comes out is the loss of community and the perception that people have of institutions and governments as seeing them as noting more than a cog in the machine. The rise of adjunct labor in academia really crystallized this for me, for the reasons that you have already mentioned. There is also this idea of 'diffusion of responsibility' that can potentially occur with a top-heavy administration, where there is little accountability for failures as a result of bureaucratic bloat and the 'student as customers' paradigm exacerbates this as well.

[@efraing.4503]

Here in Mexico we have very similar issues with our universities. As a History student, I will always be on the side of the "classic" university, with a student who, although he knows that he must try to work and live from his discipline, also wants to learn everything from it and never stop learning, and the ultimate purpose is that, knowledge. A professor told me this: our university forms two types of students, the "serious" and the "serial" Humanists and social sciences are naturally (and not always, I have already seen faculties that adopt a purely mercantilist vision of the study) the ones who will most defend this classic university, but it is something that are also called lawyers, architects, and a multitude of scientists. Because our disciplines are old and beautiful, and we are the ones who know that, and we can't let the logic of capital destroy it. Technical schools, workshops, guilds, etc. There is a variety of offers for those who want to work in an industry and only see the university as an obstacle, a respectable position in my opinion. But universities, with their business logic, do not want to leave those customers-students, betting on those careers, to the detriment of others.

[@deprecor1]

I'm curious as to which institution you're studying. I'm a professor in Mexico as well and I was curious if someone in the comment section was mexican too. It is very difficult to manage teaching properly vs treating students as clients. You really need an institution to back you up.

[@Galadhatan]

English professor here. Reason #7 for your list: the college wars of the 80s and 90s. When universities began to perceive that they could make money with larger enrollments, universities began to expand to offer those amenities to attract a larger set of students and ballooning the structure of the university. Top schools pulled from regional student populations, so regional schools pulled from trade schools. Everyone accepted less prepared, less successful high school graduates. New schools started up. And now universities operate on a larger scale than before, but as the economic justification has mostly reversed (most workers earn more than college graduates when debt is factored in, at least for the first decade of employment), and the student population is smaller than in past generations, universities are scrambling to find ways to survive. Since I've been a part of two schools that have closed down, and one that is on its way, I see the way this affects classrooms and professors. Because once schools needed so many professors, a lot of us gladly took on the task, but now we're finding closed doors as small schools close and big schools tighten their belts.

[@nojerama788]

I don't know if this is an issue in the US but a problem certainly in my dept (I studied human physiology) is that a lot of our lecturers aren't trained to be educators, they're researchers or research investigators who have to lecture and teach in order to supplement their research funding. It's very hard to get any amount of funding in Ireland if you're not going for something with a clear business goal or you're an international institute, so many research leads have to supplement with lecturing and teaching even if they're not good at it, or even want to do it at all. I can count on one hand the lecturers in my dept who were actually good at teaching, never mind enjoying teaching, which naturally means that people don't learn as well as they would from someone who took even one class in how to teach because being an educator is a very specific skill that you need constant feedback on and you generally need some kind of training, which isn't provided in any college here.

[@smkh2890]

Agreed. I studied English Literature at Oxford, and frankly did not have a single good teacher. Most of them are experts in their field and are busy writing their books. So dealing with undergrads is not a priority. If you are a self-starter they do leave you alone, which is fine, but there is little or no support, no study groups, no insight into the sort of examination questions to expect, no real interest in you as an individual. But at the end of the day, an OXford degree gave me a passport to employment, so I can't complain.

[@VicodinElmo]

@@smkh2890 Same for Cambridge. I also went to Plymouth and then Cardiff as a postgrad (very different unis, I know). Problems were the same in all three!

[@smkh2890]

@@VicodinElmo so maybe it’s better to go to a university where the lecturers are not doing research or writing books and have time to look after their students! my tutor, Terry Engleton was actually told by Stuart Hampshire the Dean to pay more attention to his students after I went off the rails somewhat! Amazing that he actually had to be told to look after his students!

[@priyas9751]

Nailed it. Research and teaching need to be separate institutions

[@vf1923]

I'm a historian of academia (and a marginally employed academic who really understands how universities function and have changed over time) and this take is incomplete. I get that recent changes have increased adjunct or "instructor" teaching, but this is not actually a new thing. When universities were growing in the US and Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most teaching was absolutely done by people who were brought on to teach particular courses. Over time, the concept of "tenure track" became a thing. Recently that's been viewed as quite expensive and so the instructor dominance is returning. One problem overlooked in this dynamic the problem is not that different types of university teachers are valued and supported differently, but that _teaching itself_ is not valued at many universities. Universities began as teaching facilities, not as research facilities. Over the 20th century, "research" became more and more central to the purpose of universities; it was a symbol of prestige, power and influence. That prestige has now migrated to professors themselves--teaching is certainly a part of a professor successfully gaining tenure, but falls below other contributions, especially research. You must be a good researcher in order to be a tenured professor; you only have to be mediocre teacher. This, of course, creates an in-house bias to research. Teaching is not something that is highlighted or focused on by either most college professors or the colleges themselves because it has far less utility than other types of activity, except to make money--which means more students per professor or TA, etc. Some professors are great teachers despite this, of course. But many great university teachers grow frustrated and exhausted. Some universities have tried to remedy this by hiring people specifically to be teachers, even on a tenure track. This is more common in the sciences and engineering. However, that doesn't stop teachers from feeling undervalued in terms of what they are expected to do, and with what funding. To fix this, teaching has to be re-centralised as one of the two purposes of universities and structural changes need to ensure that research is not the only way to prestige and recognition. Jared notes two purposes of the university as educator: educating for a career vs. educating to be educated. Again, not a new phenomenon, but he might have found a friend in like the 1880s when people were talking about bringing engineering schools into universities and people thought that these two types of education were incompatible and would be mutually destructive. I disagree that these things are incompatible. In fact, there's good reasons to combine certain types of education. The stripping out of the humanities and social sciences from professional programs is not doing anyone any favours, and there's a lot of crossover between programs that can be more efficiently dealt with on a shared campus, e.g. library facilities, and the collaboration of the practical/professional and academic programs can be productive and powerful. To me, it seems that Faculties of Engineering or Medicine manage perfectly well to deliver education to their students. In fact, because education remains central to professional training, in those programs more steps are being taken to remedy teaching deficiencies compared to the arts and sciences, where teaching quality is only as good as that particular course. Instead, I think the problem the fact that it's no longer enough to simply tell your state governor or provincial government that you're educating people to be better thinkers. Basically, society in general no longer understands or recognises the purpose of humanities education as valid or valuable. This is directly connected to the concept, which emerged in the Cold War, that there are useful students and there are not useful students. There are people contributing to the economic world, and there are people not contributing and doing what was referred to derogatively when I was grown up in the 1990s as "basket weaving" (which today would include things like pure science, increasingly underfunded). That's not university's fault. That's coming from North American society's problem with education for the sake of education more broadly. Universities aren't woke. They vary, and most of the ones you know will be small c conservative. What most people seem to perceive as universities being highly left wing is young people in universities who happen to be great at organising and kinda loud about their ideas. You know, like every young person ever. All universities and colleges do is concentrate young people and their ideas and provide them with other ideas. There are indeed some universities where _conservative radicalism_ is the pattern among students. This is the same feature, just in the other direction.

[@keshavraman7739]

Unrelated, but is it just me or do I find 1900s manuals to be more concise and easy to understand than today’s modern chunky textbooks. :p

[@alexmoliere570]

Since you study academia. I have a question. Is there empirical proof that general education/liberal education/GE requirements provide better prospects for students? I’m not against humanity classes, but I am against being forced to take them, so it’s not like I’m trying to close these classes/programs. It’s very vague on what these skills or pieces of information are and what they are meant to provide you. So if we compared an education center like vocational schools, what exactly do these classes provide that justifies a vocational school to provide humanity classes? When people talk about “better thinkers.” I don’t understand, these universities pick the best students, and then turn around and say “we have made them great thinkers,” but they were already great or were on their way to do great things anyways.

[@drzander3378]

@alexmoliere570, Great thinkers are a subset of highly intelligent people. What the best universities do - or are supposed to do - is take students with me the greatest potential to develop critical/analytic faculties. The reason that a range of subjects is required for all students (at least at the undergraduate level) is that different subjects have different ways of perceiving, analysing and synthesising complex problems or issues. For example, there’s a video on YT of a recent presentation by a politics professor at Tufts University dissecting the end of the rise of China and the establishing of an emerging world order. Rather than confine himself to only a political analysis, the professors examines the Chinese situation from many perspectives: historical, demographic, economic, military, sinological, international relations etc. I don’t know the details of the professor’s education, but suspect he studied many subjects, not just politics.

[@Diredirectv]

As someone who is currently in a masters at a state university for literature, I’m very surprised none of your classes explored Marxist criticism thoroughly when reading literature. Different universities may have differing focuses on literary theory but at least for me, my experience has been very different from yours. One of the first authors we discussed in a class my first semester was Richard Wright in our African American Literary Theory class and Wright was a huge Marxist so we spent a long time discussing Marxism and its relationship to African American literary theory. Later I had a professor who teaches a Marxist course to undergrads and spent most of his research analyzing Irish history and literature from a Marxist critical perspective. But maybe my experience is also unique?

[@_jared]

One class I took did, though it was also heavily postcolonial. I eventually dropped the major to then focus exclusively on philosophy, but my sense was that the classes I didn’t take would not have included anything about Marxism.

[@Diredirectv]

@@_jared I’m curious what you define as Marxism too? For instance, when reading Jane Eyre, we spent a long time analyzing the furniture that Mr. Rochester had in his mansion and how much of that furniture was taken for granted as a staple of British society at the time, yet also had a colonial history with slavery in Central America. Marx had a lot to say about the way capitalism causes objects and wealth to become invisible and detached from their historical origins. A large part of literary theory in our classes is looking to analyze what objects or even people, are treated as invisible, and how texts eschew those objects or people. There’s also a whole separate field of study called thing theory that factors into this conversation as well. N. K. Jemisin does a lot of thematic work with that in her Broken Earth Trilogy. Either way, it sounds like you and I had very different educations

[@raginbakin1430]

For the record, there’s nothing wrong with Marxist criticism

[@HaganeNoGijutsushi]

​@@Diredirectv those things always leave me an impression of false depth because... yeah, no shit people take stuff for granted when they're used to it. Paying no mind to furniture made by slaves? Try paying no mind *to the slaves themselves*, something that probably anyone wealthy enough would do back in antiquity. Anything that can be blamed on capitalism meaningfully should be tied to capitalism, historically and economically. Some Marxist criticism seems to just consist of pointing at bad things and yelling "capitalism", though with lots of sophisticated words to rationalise it.

[@ChannelWright]

You’ve said all I need to know as to why universities are such toilets these days.

[@misterjaxon2559]

I knew a guy a few years ago who graduated from college and immediately landed a very good job. Good for him, but the job had nothing to do with his major. I was puzzled by this and he said it really didn't matter. "They just want to know you are trainable and able to dedicate yourself to a goal." Sure surprised me to hear that.

[@nidhishshivashankar4885]

Cause they’re designed around the impartation of knowledge rather than the education of it: testing for correctness rather than analytic skill development and qualitative discourse. The aspect of academia, journals / peer review, which portend to be a discourse is a scrawling of largely unchecked assertions under the cover of peer review. Academia is but a pyramid scheme to put middle class debt in the hands of an administrative strata.

[@thegreenhomefront]

The North American universities' mission is to produce a class of people who can support the universities in perpetuity. A major point that I think was missed both in the video and comments is how higher education is a means of perpetuating the acculturation of the oligarchy. Even if you just go to a state university, there is a set of social rules that the students either arrive with & reinforce with others their age or they have to learn it to increase their status. If you come from a professional class family, you want to preserve that status by networking. You achieve that outcome by putting in the social time at a university and 'punch the clock' to eventually open the doors prepared for you. This is why bootstrapped poor bright students struggle; they didn't learn the social coding necessary to fit in from an early age. The corporate world is built upon this principle.

[@poetryflynn3712]

There's an argument it used to not be this way and only changed when colleges were forced to become more inclusive over time

[@destine1547]

I’m a staff member and I see the conflict of the student as a customer and molding minds play out live so much. At my institution as staff we are primarily tasked with making sure services are delivered in ways that make our students happy and ideally this retains them along the way. We flex and bend policy if we have to to meet the demands of unsatisfied students. However, when students try to implement this sort of “can I speak to the manager ?“ tactic on professors I’ve noticed it being a lot less successful. I think philosophically as an ecosystem we’re at odds.

[@jellyfishistory]

idk who you are but you’re so calming and it's almost comforting 🥲 first KZbinr I've come across who accidentally has an ASMR voice... thank you Henderson 👏🏽

[@Victfil]

Once my professor said in class that many people assume erroneously that the university is a service provider and the student is the customer, when in reality the university is a factory, the students are the raw materials, a graduated professional is the product. The customer is society.

[@schoolofthewest]

As someone who works as a university administrator (grad admissions recruitment) and holds an M.A. in English Literature, on track to begin a PhD. in Literature in Fall 2025, I wholeheartedly agree with your points (except the wokeness one, more below). I especially loved what you said about universities being pulled in different directions and spending superfluous amounts of money. I really wonder how much money my university wastes on the printing of useless flyers/posters; excess t-shirts, stress balls, pens, and other giveaways that end up in the trash; and yes, athletic salaries. On the point of wokeness, I agree that it's become a buzzword with lots of different connotations, and I agree that it's not the sole factor bringing down the quality of our education, but I am shocked at how little you encountered Marx in your humanities program. I do believe that humanities programs have become heavily politicized, to their detriment. I think a more accurate way to describe this issue would be to call humanities programs too "social-justice-activism" oriented. When this kind of activist agenda is too politically one-sided, it excludes half of the population, both students who might consider enrolling in the programs and employers, who are considering applicants who graduated from those programs. To cite just one example from my own experience, in my M.A., I had to take a graduate class on Native American literatures prior to 1860. Instead of being immersed in the oral traditions of various indigenous tribes and learning their histories and worldview(s), the professor (a tenured research faculty member) mostly assigned readings from present-day activists (many of whom were largely influenced by Marxist principles even if not identifying as outright Marxists) urging readers to engage in "decolonization," sometimes through violent and/or radical means. Additionally, the professor created an assignment where students were asked to go out into the local community and present a poster in a space where any marginalized community (I guess the Native American focus of the class was left by the wayside?) had once owned a business, held land, etc. What could have been an opportunity to bring a historical period and culture to life was instead transformed into a course with a blatantly activist bent. This does in fact hurt enrollment numbers.

[@petersaccocia4510]

Exactly correct! I am a University professor and I think the problem in terms of wokeness is the existence of a relatively small number of professors who are activists and not scholars. The activist is an ideologue. And ideologues are not open minded. They don't have the mindset of a scholar to seek truth. It is very damaging to the reputation of the University. And what we see, in states like Florida for example, is backlash. The backlash was inevitable when one side of a political divide pushes way too hard, as I believe the left has done on cultural issues in the last 10 years.

[@schoolofthewest]

@@petersaccocia4510 agreed! Thanks for your comment!

[@Miguel-un1vh]

What I see missing in the video and this comment is acknowledgement that universities, and especially humanities departments are exceedingly homogeneous in political orientation. That orientation is increasingly based on critical theories which overlap heavily with praxis, activism, Marxism, etc. I would argue anytime you see oppressor/oppressed narrative you’re seeing Marxist thought (or at least Marxist adjacent thought). Anyone who has spent significant time in a humanities dept is like a fish in water, they don’t see just how wet it is because that’s all they know.

[@abody499]

@@Miguel-un1vh the issue with that take is that such a "narrative" can legitimately explain some of the worst material conditions people find themselves in by accident of birth.

[@abody499]

" I do believe that humanities programs have become heavily politicized, to their detriment." Yeah, here's the news: humans are political.

[@TromboneGamer]

Before I took my first Philosophy class, I was part of the crowd that thought it was a waste of time and after I was surprised to learn what it had to offer me. The Humanities taught and engaged my critical thinking skills to a degree I hadn't thought possible at a time in my life when I often felt lost in a world that is increasingly hard to comprehend. However, this intense degree of analysis is difficult even to those who find it appealing, so it is understandable that it would become a source of even greater frustration for the people who are only interested in pursuing their passions either through their career, or who wish to use their career as a means to achieve other goals. That being said, the education system is a hard problem to solve. I think athletics and extracurriculars provide their own important value, providing environments that can foster self-improvement mindsets and social skills to help prevent some degree of prejudice, but the financial burden at least on its face does seem ridiculous even if scholarships often make higher education possible for talented athletes. We need to find a way to provide quality facilities for these activities at a lower cost and move more money into core curriculums to ensure that our society is prepared to engage with the world in a constructive way.

[@BederikStorm]

The problem is the same as with healthcare. Management. They get a lot of money for nothing, they are not professors/doctors that you need, but they somehow earn more than the crucial workers.

[@ViolinViolaMasterclass]

I LOVE your channel! Thank you for taking the time to make this. I thought about going back to school to study history but I realized a few things…the biggest one being I could just read all the books I possibly could starting with antiquity. I can connect with others via conventions, lectures and actually reaching out to authors and professors. Social media has been amazing for connecting too. But reading has been sooooooooooooo important 🙏 a life time of this sounds like fun

[@willnill7946]

Adjunct professors were supposed to be people in the work force that taught part time as a kind of public service, in some occasions they still are. Adjunct professor on its own is not a career and nor should it be

[@jacobmerrill693]

Maybe in theory. My mom was an adjunct at a college for decades, as was about all the faculty at the school. Modern higher ed uses them as cheaper "part time" employees that they don't have to to give benefits like they do tenure tract professors. As a kid I went to work with her a couple times and the office for adjuncts (giant room of unassigned cubicles) was bigger than the department's full faculty office. Schools are basically dependent on their adjuncts at this point for instruction but don't want to offer them the resources and pay of a full instructor because they penny pinch to fund all the extra secondary systems

[@gabemadorma2933]

As a chemistry grad, I completely agree with the issue of “too many missions”. 1/3 of the classes necessary to graduate were completely unrelated to chemistry, then the university tells you that you need to go to grad school for research experience. I found it very irritating to be forced to take 2 foreign language classes, of which I don’t remember anything.

[@WhatAMagician]

They dont allow free expression of ideas, they're diploma mills you have to really try to fail, they dont challenge people's worldview for fear of sparking controversy, there is a ballooning support staff/administration who add nearly no value but cost of a ton of money, whose job is basically to justify their own jobs and those of others who don't teach. These are just the problems I saw in my own university, now i watch the video to see what you've noticed.

[@Bookworm214-y3d]

the irony of the age of diversity is that there is zero diversity of thought or opinions, just the same mono culture that shifts colors around while maintaining the exact same thinking process that fails to deliver any kind of net positive results for people

[@blackorcshagrat8587]

Which country are you specifically referring to here? Because that certainly doesn't reflect my personal experiences. (Bachelor of Science from Finland).

[@WhatAMagician]

@@blackorcshagrat8587 USA

[@blackorcshagrat8587]

@@WhatAMagician Why doesn't that surprise me?

[@reginaldphillips7615]

“Free expression of ideas” really isn’t an issue if you take STEM classes.

[@sophiaisabelle027]

This definitely resonates with me. Never was the perfect student. But you know what they say, you can still grow from your mistakes.

[@Munchosticks]

Surprisingly I actually have a different experience with adjunct lecturers/professors. I studied computer science and in my experience I found them to be the best teachers because they were actually there to teach. I think in a way them being on contract actually gives them an incentive to be good teachers rather than professors who are "protected" by tenure. Many of the professors I had were p much just there for research and were terrible at teaching or just didn't care. I only studied to a bachelors level of education however so maybe as you move up it becomes more important since the fields are more specialized.

[@red..ridding..h00d]

Did you learn C++ coding? :)

[@Munchosticks]

​@@red..ridding..h00dyup!!

[@Munchosticks]

​@@red..ridding..h00dYup!! 😁

[@red..ridding..h00d]

@@Munchosticks that’s awesome!! I’m just starting off and it’s SO complicated 😅 do you have any advice? :)

[@Munchosticks]

@@red..ridding..h00d yea I get that it can def be really hard at the start...I'm guessing you're going to school?

[@LisaOfTroy]

I am in one of the best school districts in my state, and I have been frankly shocked at the educational system. The school doesn't like to teach spelling or multiplication because it isn't "fun." The students aren't supposed to have homework so they aren't used to struggling. For example, I used to have to write essays. The students don't write essays. They don't struggle over them, edit them, revise, and develop skills over time. One explanation is that students don't need to learn spelling because of spell-check, and they can google information. I have noticed this in the medical profession. Some of the younger medical professionals will just google things. However, when I was listening to a description of Parkinson's Disease, it was talking about a lack of dopamine, and I thought of a medication that is known to trigger dopamine, and I concluded, "Oh maybe this medication could help Parkinson's Disease!" I then googled that, and an article popped up confirming my suspicions. For some, this will directly impact their quality of life, how their medical provider thinks. These are big, important issues. Thanks for starting this discussion!

[@stigee]

I got my BS in 2008, and to this day I feel like it was a check box to get a job. I can't say I truly came away with tons of knowledge. I learned more on the job once I started working, and it makes me wonder if more focus should be on vocational schools or the way they teach. In traditional universities and colleges, it's lots of info being crammed down your throat, you take a test and you either pass or don't.

[@hazardisgaming9287]

Student here, I like your discussion of taking on too many roles and overall agree with you. I have definitely seen that sentiment of Gen eds being pointless from a few of my Chemical Engineering friends and people working towards pre-med. I personally wish I could take more but my time is already used so much for my major focused classes. I guess in that way I like thats its a mix of both, where I want to get both a development and academic journey but also be trained to be an engineer. The nice thing is I can do both at once with one tuition, the bad thing is that I have very little time for the humanities classes I do want to take which proves your point ultimately. Nice video hope your day is going well

[@Nico-lk5hb]

3 videos in less than 2 weeks? I’m here for it 🎉🎉🎉

[@_jared]

One more coming tomorrow (I have to get it out in July for scheduling reasons)

[@phactress891]

This video is so meaningful to me as someone who has been feeling these things since I was in college.

[@tzatzikiv812]

I chose to study Greek but before I could even finish my studies, the Greek / Classics department closed because of "lack of popular request". 😢 I was gutted.

[@emmalespark]

Bash a theatre degree all you like, but it’s set up the way a university degree should be. You get academic instruction that puts you ahead in higher learning (literary, history, etc), but everyone is very career minded, you’re there to learn the things to go work. You don’t get caught up in theory, it’s kinda like trade school in a way. Plus, the professors are there to teach and work with students. It might vary a bit on how much they actually want to be a professor overall, but they aren’t a research hermit.

[@EricMcLuen]

Regarding professors, while they may know their subject frontwards and backwards, how many have actually studied on how to actually teach. And I keep thinking of Adjunct Lorn and Tavore... For coaching salaries, they are likely not paid directly by the state. Rather through the athletic depatment's budget which their success contributes to. Now how much they are getting paid is another issue.

[@StephenDeagle]

Yes, I am going to disagree with your take on "wokeness". Bring out the pitchforks. You first say you think by wokeness people mean "identity politics". You then immediately turn to saying that "Marxism" isn't even a big topic on campuses. If you don't know this exposes either lack of insight on your part or a willing obfuscation, I don't know what to tell you. Seeing as I am sure you're aware that Marxism, focused inherently on class, has absolutely nothing to do with the content of modern identity politics, other than sharing a similar form of delivery in its antagonisms between oppressors and oppressed.

[@kahlylroberson2067]

It is interesting that you make this video because I’ve made a class with the sole purpose of becoming educated enough to answer this question. My focus is primarily on how to become a trained pastor through solely using books and advances in cognitive and behavioral psychology to inform the study. I’d love to share my results with you in 6 months when I’ve finally answered the question robustly.

[@cmstan]

I think you are spot on with the core argument of a pivot to the student as consumer, but I hesitate to dismiss the underlying ideological commitments as a factor entirely. I have found the Heterodox Academy's ideas compelling, particularly Dr. Haidt's idea that universities have a conflict of core values/pursuits between the pursuit of "truth" and the pursuit of "social justice" [or other more specific social/cultural/religious goal]. I think you are correct to say that the "wokeness" argument is too vague, but I think there are some underlying ideological themes are contribute to the problems others point out.

[@longiusaescius2537]

It's race communism (kulak = white)

[@mariadvoryankina955]

Point of View from the Outside I have a unique perspective because I studied in Russia and am now studying in the U.S., both in master's programs. In Russia, I was enrolled in a commercial program and paid around $9,000 for two years. Yes, this is a high cost compared to other Russian universities, which offer good quality educational programs for much less. Now, in the U.S., I am paying $25,000 for two years at a national university, and that's because I am a state resident. For non-residents, the cost is double. I very much agree with what you are saying in this video. I knew that U.S. education is valued worldwide, but when I entered this system, I was shocked at how poor the quality of education was. The content is so superficial like it’s meant for high school students. The exams (tests) seem designed for people with low intelligence. This is especially true for online classes, where the recorded lectures are short and pointless. And I had to pay a lot of money for this subpar education. I learned almost nothing new. Instead of learning, I was completing an endless number of meaningless assignments every week. I felt like a workhorse being prepared for an office job. I finished my first year of the master's program feeling almost burned out. In the fall, my second year will start, and I do not feel excited about it. Additionally, there was a focus on topics like the million types of genders, which felt irrelevant compared to more important subjects we should have been studying. Studying here, I realized that my Russian program provided me with a very good education, which I rely on frequently. Both programs are in mental health, and I do not understand how U.S. students work as counselors after this program. I am concerned for the people who are their clients. Personally, I would never go to a regular mental health counselor here because of the lack of education unless they have extensive training (3-5 years) after university. Overall, I feel disappointed. And thanks for your video.

[@mz2535]

I agree. I see a similar difference between Polish and English universities. I was thaught the hard stuff in STEM at a Polish university while at a very renowned British uni I am given subpar education and easy tasks to do. Like if no one wanted to get tired with thinking. Funny thing is that the official rankings of universities do not reflect it at all.

[@danielperales3958]

i'm mexican and that shit subpar education is all i have in my stat if i wanted to study physics, which is so dissapointing i'm switching to engineering, i like the program and that, but sure lately higher education it's really scary as it could be very useful, but only to get trained for a job, or very reduced in depth and quality that it's just a bunch of silly assignments to turn in. In the college i was studying physics, sometimes I used to read past exams from the 70's or so, and those physics exams were *the shit*, actual relevant topics, well designed problems, difficult yet simple sometimes. Now that i studied the first year i was getting tests pretty much designed for middle schoolers...

[@ChancyC]

I know you said you won’t reply, but I did want to help you a bit. You can't properly diagnose a problem you can't define. ‘Wokeness’ isn’t just identity politics. The best way to define Wokeness is that it is identity politics with the emphasis on victimization hierarchies and the intentional viewing of all aspects of life through the ‘oppressor/oppressed’ framework (which is where the marxism comparisons come from). There doesn’t have to be a class called “marxism” or some professor assigning particular readings. When the structure of your learning environment is infected with that framework (which all colleges are now), you are essentially teaching the fundamentals of marxism by another name. As someone who spent 8 years in college over the last 16, I can say that you properly diagnose real problems that drastically need attention, but I do think you are missing just how damaging even a small amount of this stuff is to the health of the overall system. Just 1 person that lives by the ideology I defined above can paralyze a whole class. Every class has at least 1 these days.

[@karenclark266]

Nearly all faculty across all departments is into Marxism, political activism, anti-Semitism, and race baiting nonsense. 100% of Administrators are Marxist.

[@carlonardone2134]

Well said but I would add wokeness is also an accelerant to his other points like adding social justice to his too many missions point. I also think there is a betrayal of the public trust when the majority of parents / taxpayers are paying for school for mainly economic / human capital reasons but what we are getting is creating an activist believer class in a new religion.

[@Alvis44]

A great youtuber named celine marie has a video similar to this called ‘why i am studying philosophy’ and in the video she says that in her country (norway) they actually will pay you money to study in university. In america university is just seen as a means to an end of getting a job when it originally was never supposed to be that way. I think in america we need a severe reform financially and idealistically on what a university actually is, its meant to be a place to learn not a training lab for people seeking jobs.

[@brittca]

I live in Canada and I’m having the opposite experience. Although, I’m attending a top 6 University, and understand my privilege - I do think it really depends on where you are studying. I do agree that *overall* you’ve addressed very serious problems throughout the ‘higher education’ realm.

[@flyingscalpel7]

I am finishing my degree in engineering this week. I absolutely agree with all of your points here!

[@PikaOmiPika]

Love the channel, love the messages. Topic suggestion: How do you think you will explain education and higher education to your child?

[@LittleMissTotoro]

My university used to be an institution set up to train vocations! Librarians, engineers, physiotherapists, nurses etc. Real jobs! With practical skills! But when they were granted Uni status they started doing everything badly. And the push to just let students through with a meh bachelors is so great because of the financial pressure to get them through (uni is free in my country. Students don't pay but the institutions are under pressure to educate them fast. ie we need nurses). I am just a PhD student. Not teaching. But me team got into one of the best journals in my field!! Such a big moment. Then we found out the uni had cancelled their open access payments to most good journals we can publish in! We fought them hard for 4500 dollars and won. But... seeing that they pay open access fees for the Predatory Journals!!! It just broke me. I feel so done.

[@rooneytutoring]

In my experience identity poltics are usually not the problem itself but veil or cover used obfuscate bigger more substantial issues. Like company that brags about their ESG investments while at the same time buying up signle family homes for investment and worsening the housung crisis. It's a slight of hand to keep the public too busy arguing about unimportant stuff to keep them ftom denanding action on bigger issues.

[@Daniko2]

I find it interesting that you said one of the missions of a university is to foster "a life of the mind" without going further. I went to one of those "great books" universities. I did not attend recently, although the particular institution I attended thought far too highly of itself to buy in to the "student as customer" model; so I doubt it has changed overmuch. At the time, it saw its mission as fostering the ability to think, critically and well. But the reason that was the mission was to create a populace that was able to be valuable citizens--and leaders--because that's what was needed to make post-Enlightenment societies function. The whole point was to produce people who knew how to see the forest rather than the trees no matter their particular specialty. That ability fosters creativity in any field. Teaching those skills was not an abstract endeavor, and it was seen as a critically important set of skills both inside the academy and outside; by employers and society at large. In a literate, knowledge-based society, that mission is not one that can be adequately served by a mere handful of institutions that cheerfully deem themselves above the fray. That has been well understood for a long time. It's the reason most, if not all, states have at least one publicly-funded university. And the need for such training is something that most college students should be able to grasp in their freshman year. So perhaps the problem stems from too many people forgetting that need? Is that idea even conveyed in the early required classwork? Are students expected to grapple with the fact that an educated citizenry isn't optional in a democracy? Are they taught that good paying job depends on a society run by people who know how to move from granular to broad and back again? I don't think educating for the life of the mind and educating for the kind of skills that can be taught in a university are in conflict. I think the problem stems from thinking that they are.

[@Autostade67]

"Woke' isn't even directly descended from Marxist theory, but from post-structuralist theory (which applies aspects of Marxism but is often a reaction to some of its myopias) and it's nothing new: it was rife in the more progressive departments of universities when I was teaching nearly thirty-five years ago (under the then moniker 'po-co'/or 'political correctness') and I would agree that though it isn't directly failing students (in fact is 'succeeding' by churning out a generation of 'puppy-mill' ideologues quoting convenient cant with no depth of analysis) it is if not eroding then at least stifling intellectual discourse - and worse: the intellectual radicalism typically associated with the post-war North American university, There is nothing radical about 'woke', it is actually profoundly conservative, an orthodoxy, as prescribed an epistemology as those it claims to demolish. I happen to intellectually follow and support a great many of its deepest theories, but this is just part of a greater syncretic, wide ranging personal erudition. I do think its orthodoxy, its rigidity, its regular tendency to the hypocritical (ie; it beaks endlessly about discourse but has no ear for discussion and even less for dissent), and its amateurish 'roll out' (I mean, come on, these child soldiers of the All New! Left spout the rhetoric like drones quoting from Mao's red book [and make no mistake, in some respects, I'm far more left than they are!]) IN CONCERT with the failures you have cited is deeply compromising universities. Your commentary and the comments below are perceptive and accurate descriptions of the ills; I simply felt I needed to add to the general dismay at the dissolution of something which I once admired very much.

[@QueenRaven911]

I stumbled upon your video and I found this very informative and I like your approach and the way you presented it. Very pleasant to learn about all these information in a constructive manner. I’m looking forward to all your future videos. Thank you!

[@amsd1231]

It's clear that you only used wokeness as a hook and nothing more but the point you made about the word being imprecise is exactly the reason why the humanities exist. If there ever was a utility in humanities, and especially philosophy, it would be to formalize imprecise concepts that are "you know it when you see it" level of abstract. The fact that when you bring up words like social justice, political correctness, and woke the conversation just gets blown up is showing failures in the humanities department. They are the ones who have the tools and the training to defuse these land mine words but aren't doing so.

[@jenniferbrown9464]

I know this is addressing universities, but my adjuncts at our community college are absolutely amazing. Granted, we are in a specific career path and educating students to go into the workforce, so our adjuncts are experienced professionals first, and educators second. But, they get the full support of the college, and I am co-enrolled in all of their classes so I can jump in and help if needed. What you're saying is important, and one of many reasons that I've not jumped ship to teach at the university level.

[@abody499]

u mean turning people into obedient labour resources?

[@hypergraphic]

I think it would be cool if we in the US had a system like in like Switzerland and Germany where you have two tracks for secondary education, one focusing on preparing for university and the other for part time study and apprenticeships learning real world skills. But then doing all of the gen ed stuff in high school (Gymnasium) so you can just spend three years studying your major, would also be very helpful and deal with the resentment of having to study material that's not pertinent to your major.

[@josephforte8736]

Thanks!

[@cypress_piper]

First: Get rid of student loans. This will drive the cost of tuition down immediately. Second, help students realize that college is not necessary for everyone. Not only do the trades offer lucrative careers at a much lower initial investment, but they also pretty much guarantee a job at the end of your training. And there are many careers where a college degree isn't even necessary. I have a BA in Literature. I will be celebrating 20 years in the beverage distribution industry this January no thanks to the BA. I started in sales and worked my way up.

[@andrewlim9345]

Listening from New Zealand. Our universities and polytechnics face similar issues around financing and the tension between generating a profit and educating the next generation.

[@oliviawhite633]

I recently graduated with a stem degree and I know a lot of people who enjoyed their ‘general education’ classes but felt like it was a financial burden because it is (at our institution) literally just checking a box in MyDegrees and ultimately what the class was about didn’t feel like it mattered. Of course there were people who resented taking those classes, but a lot of people I knew enjoyed the material of more humanities courses

[@zep13017]

just to prove your point of viewing students as customers, the ads that played during your ad breaks for me were selling to enroll in a specific university program with statistics on job placement after graduation.

[@abbythornton5726]

I'm a public school teacher. My university experience felt like an absolute waste of time. I left my program really angry that anyone spends money on it. I didn't even go to graduation I was so disillusioned. From my perspective (someone who would not have gone to college if I didn't have a scholarship), career prep is the only reason someone could justify going to college. The "life of the mind" for me is also under that umbrella of career prep: the career of research and academia. I think the idea of gen ed requirements beyond career prep is, frankly, a money grab and provides no use for students. People should not have to study philosophy. My degree was in mathematics education and I voluntarily took plenty of classes not required for my major (foreign language classes, a political psychology class) but I also had to take English 102 which was just busy work and didn't require any rigorous reading or writing. Those freshman year classes are a way to inflate the degree requirements and make it take a full 4 years to graduate. On the topic of "wokeness," I did notice a leftist identitarianism in a lot of my education classes. I don't think your personal experience of only being assigned Marx once is enough to dismiss that point out of hand. I had to take classes on how to talk about identity in the classroom, even though those things don't come up in a correctly run math classroom. All teaching majors had to read critical theory papers for these classes. I will say I don't view that necessarily as a problem on its own, but I see it as part of the "time-wasting," unspecific nature of higher ed. Some people should learn those things and read those papers. It's not future math teachers. I also see that "students as customers" attitude shift in public high schools, and it's an incredible problem there, too. Thanks for bringing that up.

[@dennismorris7573]

Many well-stated points here - excellent and very important presentation.

[@CinkSVideo]

The model of a student as customer has devolved our educational system over the last 30 years. Professors now must worry about student reviews over curriculum. Failing a student who hasn’t done the work is unheard of these days. I went to college twice between the late 80’s and late 90’s. There was a stark difference between student attitudes between these two stints. The downturn seemed to be taking hold in the late 90’s and has continued. Feeling this my second time around stopped me from devoting another 4-5 years for my PhD. I knew I wouldn’t want the faculty role in the direction things were headed. On a side note: The philosophy class is quite terrifying to an engineering student. They spend their entire engineering education solving towards a single correct answer. The open ended critical thinking of philosophy is far outside their comfort zone. For many it is the only low grade they get. They are usually too young to understand how important development of that critical thinking is and the engineering departments no longer foster an understanding of its importance. It’s just a box to check of core requirements.

[@TeriyakiTakeout]

Seriously just such a good discussion on these problems. Thank you for putting all of this so aptly and in an interesting enough way for people to listen to. Hoping these things are recognized more widely, soon.

[@AlecSalgado-p1y]

nice hairstyle btw, it suits you tbh

[@JeremyDelancy]

Here is the "Wokeness = Marxism" that shouldn't be mentioned. The 'commodification' of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the relationships we have and the education we get must lead to the 'enshittification' of things that we thought were beyond the reach of that process. Education for the common good seems antiquated but it definitely delivered better benefits to more people.

[@wanderlking8634]

1. Depending on what the admittedly nebulous word means, "wokeness" is an issue that is related to the increase in administrators. More money goes towards increasing the number and pay of administrators while less money goes towards the teaching staff. Students are indeed treated as customers and administrators are there to guard the brand they are selling from being liable or diminished publicly. 2. Philosophy can work well as a pre-law major. That aside, earnings gains are at least in part due to networking. Basically the college system is a classist system. It is not a meritocracy. It is rich people sending their kids to be with other rich people's kids. Scholarships change that to a degree but there aren't enough of them.

[@economicsandguitarsandsome1722]

With 20+ years in academia -- I agree with nearly everything here. Thanks for putting it together. For all these years I've dreamed of working at a University that just "did solid education" and nothing else. I personally call it "Aldi University" after the bare bones grocery chain. These past few years students are finally telling me that is exactly what they want. So perhaps the future is bright?

[@gauloise6442]

I studied literature in the early 90s when you would still have some old school profs and then a lot of the first wave of politically correct (which is what wokeness/culture wars were called at the time) teachers. My old school profs would teach literature in very in-depth, universal ways, exploring the poetry and use of the language, universal themes, etc. With my PC profs, it was all about "how are women or minorities treated in this novel" or "let's see if Shakespeare was gay by analyzing these sonnets" and throwing out everything else. The PC classes also demonized the Western canon, but taught writers of other cultures in a way that only looked at their work through class, race, gender and power - doing their works a tremendous disservice. I hated the PC professors as their classes were always indulgent and babyish, taking grand narratives about sweeping visions of life and grinding them into banal bits of dust that were easy to consume. I just feel the problem with wokeness and the humanities is that it infantilizes works of fiction that are saying much more about man's existence than the narrow lens through which they are now being taught. IDK, having been there and experienced the way the humanities used to be taught, as well as the way they are now taught, it's so different. And I think that is why us older people go on so much about wokeness. I guess you can't get too upset if you don't know what exactly you lost.

[@guodah77]

Jared, thanks for sharing this! This is worth people talking about. I worked as a faculty for 12 years. It was sad to see some students graduate with 100k debt and no good job offers. I agree with you on some points. But I do believe universities should be transparent on the potential ROI to all students. Most of students decide to go to universities for better careers.

[@kathleenbriggs8791]

Adjuncts historically were not meant to be FT. They were typically professionals who were giving back, like the banker who was the 101 econ instructor.

[@anaestrada6906]

Exchange student here! I am terribly dissapointed by the education system in Europe. Subjects are ridiculously easy and people go to uni to party for 4 years (6 if they do a masters) and the actual learning that is done has to be done independently. No one cares and I regret coming to the other side of the world for this with a passion that I can't even begin to put into words.

[@christinaelliott8565]

As a high school teacher, I have pondered some of your thoughts as stated here in your video, however, hearing the reasoning so concisely stated is helpful. I'm wondering how to create an Argument Unit for my eleventh graders that would help students to focus on public school education K-12 asking if we are failing students and why or why not.

[@GameJeannie]

I'm a university professor (who just earned a tenure track position after several years working as an adjunct): I went from teaching ten courses per year to make ends meet to teaching four with job security & adequate pay. There's no question that I can teach better now than as adjunct. Thank you for bringing attention to this desperately overlooked issue!

[@TheLuminescentCube]

I don’t think that’s what people mean when they complain wokeness. They mean that universities focus too much on race, gender, and sexuality both academically and institutionally, and that the emphasis on political correctness creates a chilling effect on fair and honest enquiry about said issues.

[@GIR177]

The problem with that is people who unironically say "wokeness" are not making the same argument as you. You think they are, but many don't expound on it the way you just did and aren't interested in having those serious, good faith discussions. Wanting to have a fair and honest enquiry on race, sexuality and gender means coming to terms with certain privileges that come with them, but there are those are don't care to talk about those privileges or deny that they even exist, in which case there is no discussion to be had. Those people aren't interested in edification, they simply want schools to stop talking it entirely.

[@anb9999]

I'm in uni, I took 3 race/diversity credits out of 150-ish credits in undergrad. No one got "cancelled", you're free to make a fool out of yourself.

[@mrmoeezali]

Bro today is the first time I came across your channel, and its so great. I've been listening to one video after another while working, and I'm really enjoying the conversations. It honestly feels like I'm sitting with an intellectual friend and having conversations about different topics.

[@refusalspam]

I think not all degrees should be priced the same. Why should a pure humanities degree in philosophy be charged the same as an engineering degree that requires millions in equipment and software licenses. I imagine even the faculty compensation is heavily skewed towards STEM programs as well. A lower priced humanities degree can then become a better value proposition. We are in a market economy after all. People are not wrong to weigh the less tangible benefits of humanities with a penalty compared to a more direct benefit of stem. It makes sense to then price that education with the perceived value.

[@Croz89]

UK perspective here, in many universities the STEM programs attract a lot of lucrative overseas students, which are exempt from tuition fee caps.

[@andreaseversonlopez8316]

The student as customer model is absolutely the problem. I am a history professor at a small college and we are so worried about retention that there is tons of pressure to make sure students stay in class and do well to the point that I’m doing everything except doing the work for them, and I still have students who don’t succeed. This type of environment sends a message to the students that they don’t need to meet expectations because the professors will always bend over backwards for them if they don’t do the work.

[@andresmicalizzi5420]

I agree with all your points, but at the same Time there's a Lot of "woke" messaging being pushed from academia, that Is totally nuts, even countering the own base idea that inspires that message. That stuff validades then the discourse on the streets, since someone in academia wrote a paper about it or pushed for it.

[@luoboeguy]

Identity politics might make the top 5 for me in terms of problems, in the sense that that seems to be the driver behind the politicization of higher education.

[@misterkefir]

You're obviously right. I'd say it's easily in the top 3 even.

[@neroresurrected]

According to this dude, it’s not even a top 20 problem. It’s clearly affecting most top Ivy League schools and has been for a while, you think this garbage isn’t going to trickle its way to lower tier universities and colleges??? Ok this guy is just being disingenuous and not forthcoming with his audience period.

[@abody499]

What are some examples of this type of politics in higher education and the "problems" you claim it causes. Thanks in advance.

[@gijshuppertz7332]

Spot on analysis! I very much agree with your points.

[@nickbernstein]

I think that wokeness in this context is the prioritization of, "social justice" above "truth". This is not the only issue, but dismissing it out of hand is not fairly giving the concern it's due.

[@maskingtables]

When you refer to your own perspective on social issues as "truth", you lose all intellectual honesty. Replacing basic education with classes about Social justice is a real problem. But the solution isn't getting rid of the concept of Social justice. That's just reactionary edgy bullshit. We need to integrate those topics with the current curriculums without replacing necessary content. The issue is that universities should not treat students as customers. Turning higher education into a business is exactly what causes the excessive focus on social justice. Because it attracts people. It gets you free advertisement. It's capitalism and social justice eating each other while the students learn nothing, because the universities don't give a fuck if they learn anything or not.

[@asignacionesytareas9737]

I work for a private university in Mexico, and everything you've said applies to what I have experienced here. There has been a shift in perception where we have to think of students as "clients" and teachers are forced to "entertain" students rather than educate them. It is very frustrating to see most of the budget to social or sport activities that aren't related to academic activities or projects. It's like we have forgotten our mission, we need to reclaim it.

[@ngraner421]

For sure identity politics is not affecting the math department but I can tell you I took art classes at a art department that was being ruined by it. They were teaching that what make an art work good was the political mesage that it gave.

[@zant41]

Me when I lie

[@andrewbacon3583]

Point two and your comment on "culture war bullsh*t" earned you a subscribe and a bell from me. Good content.

[@richardsequeirateixeira]

You also have people who are pushing for flawed concepts in the name of ‘equity’. We had students who were proposing a “minimum grade” in other words anyone can get a ‘C’ just by doing the work. It is insulting to educators and people who have invested in the higher ed setting.

[@patrickwestaway8718]

A philosophy degree translates into better career prospects because of the skills that it teaches: reading comprehension, analytical reasoning and disciplined writing. Philosophy is more properly understood as a discipline, not subject matter. Accordingly, nothing prepares one better for the LSAT, law school and the practice of law. Having taken a degree in philosophy before going to law school and now having practised law for 26 years (corporate, commercial and multinational tax planning), I can assure you that philosophy has served me well.

[@mrRoverkane]

I think it’s all boils down to corporate greed.