What is Wrong with Higher Education Today and What Can We do About it?
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- Опубліковано 19 січ 2024
- Join me in a conversation with a college student about the core problems affecting higher education today:
01:39 1. Loss of consensus regarding definition of education
10:36 2. Consequences of compulsory mass education
19:03 3. Explosion and fragmentation of knowledge
26:32 4. Marxism
33:47 5. Bureaucratic bloat
36:30 6. DEI
41:12 7. What can we do about it?
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I very much had the experience described at around 20 minutes. I studied philosophy and we kept getting into more and more obscure topics, having completely blasted past all of the great works.
Further, as a teacher, its clear that 80-90% of my high school students, at a very fancy public school, have 0 interest in being there.
Thanks for the confirmation and sharing the sad observation.
The contentious tone remark is absolutely on the mark. I would read papers in Philosophy about some extraordinarily obscure topic on metaphysics or epistemology and the papers would snark at other work in the field as if they were tearing down some great idol of a globe spanning Empire. When in reality they were responding to X et al's 6 page paper on counterfactual conditionals written in 2003. It was bizzare to say the least.
i would suggest reading on the ideas and opinion of many thinkers from western philosphy if you want to write your own philosphical paper what i read on philosophy is the criticism on aspects of society like psychology, religion, the culture, the different art movements, the depravity, sexuality, money, our actions we do, what is it that makes us who we are, how do we think differently than others , the morality, Nurture vs nature, is philosophy still evolving (Just ask your self why do i think this way) basic topics but i doubt reading metaphysics will make you think critically
It is amazing, isn't it?
This is really an EXCELLANT summary of the problems with higher education today. To say that it has lost its way is a kind of understatement. The list of 'problems' is a good one and quite complete. That being said, just about all these problems have a single root cause. We live in one of the most MATERIALIST cultures of all times. Everything has a kind of bottom line, a cost/benefit analysis...in the narrowest possible sense. The Marxist criterion of value is apt. This is our weltanschauung, our spin on everything. "How much does it put in my pocket?" De Tocqueville, Thoreau, Dickens and others have long noted this...One only hopes and prays this malaise will soon pass.
Thank you kindly for stressing the underlying materialistic mindset behind the malaise.
Join me at any time in my virtual academy to get a systematic theoretical framework for planning your long-term language learning in the Path of the Polyglot, to read and discuss Great Books of Western Civilization or the Comparative History of Religions in English (suitable for advanced non-natives as well as native speakers), to read and discuss French, German, Italian, and/or Spanish literature, to learn to read sacred languages such as Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek, or Old Norse, or to develop not only literary but conversational abilities in Latin, plus more at : www.alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ Subscribe to my monthly newsletter: www.alexanderarguelles.com/newsletter/
Professor Arguelles, my children are still young and need lots of time and I'm still improving my languages but it's my dream in 2-3 years to join your Academy, it's just amazing what you have set up, and it's still in its infancy, I see your Academy as an inspiration to so many of us 💙 God bless your endeavour 🙏
Thank you for your kind words of support. I understand that young children can make it hard to focus on studies, but if you could spare an hour a week, taking the Path of the Polyglot now (lecture only, nothing to prepare) could help you develop those languages slowly but systematically when you do get to them. If you would like to come one day as a guest to see what it is like, just ask.
Regarding your view of the future, while it is undeniably great to be able to attend courses online, nothing beats an actual good university in my opinion. Being able to go there, in the presence of your fellow classmates and inspiring teachers is incredibly enriching. And like you said, those wonderful libraries! I'm French and I was fortunate to attend Sorbonne university, which is a pretty old place (founded in the 13th century if i'm not mistaken), that still to this day, focuses primarily on humanities. No other place has ever felt more like home to me. (By the way, they have great language programs). Unfortunately this type of education is devalued, and constantly gets defunded (French universities are mostly free for students, since they're funded by the state).
Thank you both for your substantive comments. I totally concur that the ideal is a physical place, not online.
It was refreshing to address the word salads that pass for deep academic thought. I live this most days and I feel that it corrodes my soul and my mind. I tell colleagues that we turn everything into scientism in hopes of making everything a science. For the life of me, having a science background, I cannot comprehend the twisted logic to raise value to disciplines that always had it without a pseudoscientific pedigree. I respected Prof. Arguelles before, but now he is even more deserving of my admiration.
Thank you so much for your kind words of appreciation.
Now that was refreshing and great to hear, definitely one of your greatest videos
Thank you kindly. I am seeing and hearing much resonance in the comments section, and in the "voting" - while it is getting more upvotes than usual in this period of time, it has also already gotten more than the usual one or two negative votes that most of my videos accrue, presumably from those who like what is going on today.
A lot of the reason I quit college was because I felt like why am I taking these bloat classes? Or classes that I was already taught in high school. Definitely enjoying self learning more.
if your broke and still living with your parents i need you to look at yourself in the mirror and ask why i am a dissapointed and abandon social media and start reading
Encouraging autodidacticism is what I am all about.
I had the same experience, I was a finance major sitting there wondering why I'm waiting 1.5 years to take a finance class. Instead I'm "broadening my horizons" by taking the same English, science, etc. classes I had to take in high school. I would've rather studied some comp sci, linguistics, etc, things I had less exposure to if the goal is to round out my education.
Some very deep thoughts from Professor, very enlightening. Thanks for sharing!
You are very welcome. I do think this is one of the most important issues out there at the moment. There is more to say, but this was already long enough.
Really intriguing discussion and a refreshing perspective from an older veteran academic freely sharing wisdom with the next generation. Mastery in a specific filled is not necessarily a bad thing. The issue with universities is the defunding of humanities departments and the politicisation of the Liberal Arts. Reality necessitates studying practical courses in order to attain a livelihood. This is the nature of the modern world ans we cannot easily escape it. Perhaps some professions and companies leverage off the critical thinking of humanities graduates, but STEMS is heavily favoured in a tech driven society.
Thank you very much for your appreciation and for your substantive comment.
I’m in undergrad in linguistics and I feel like I’m getting scammed. I feel like my professors don’t care or help their students and it’s getting to the point I’m losing passion for linguistics.
I am sorry to hear this, but unfortunately not surprised. I made this video to get it off my chest, but it has prompted me to look more into the situation, and I fear it is really much worse than I described it in the video.
I have to respectfully disagree with regard to specialization Professor Arguelles. I am in a history doctoral program and my colleagues insist on trying to bring in philosophy, literary theory, and other disciplines to the study of history at the expense of the study of the past overall. The interdisciplinarity confuses matters more. I do think that historians ought to be heavily engaged with philology, languages, and literature as foundations of our work. In the context of high school or college education a more wholistic approach to knowledge that you advocate is better, but I am not sure if it is easily applicable to research, although I am just working this out myself and do not have a real conclusion.
Hello and thank you for raising a most valid point. I concur that forced interdisciplinarity (e.g., examine this from X number of fields to get full credit on a grading rubric) is detrimental. However, I still maintain that a truly broad and holistic approach that does not even divide into disciplines in the first place is the true ideal.
Great talk. Its a pity how education has become so commerically oriented (e.g. higher education courses in Hospitality or Business). I believe the traditional focus on language, logic and maths, to the exclusion of more specific areas of knowledge, was correct. I studied literature but I feel as if it should have come naturally along with language study, rather than certain favored literary authors (e.g. Joyce, Derrida) being prescribed and deified.
Hello Liam, good to hear from you as always, and thanks for the substantive comment.
This is a very important topic, thanks!!
You are very welcome!
hence, the reason for my being here on this video... I've had a feeling for a few years that what i am experiencing is rather uncomfortable and counter to my views of education. I just couldn't exactly put my finger on what was happening, or perhaps I was naive in thinking colleges would never introduce certain mindsets. I have experienced a lot of the pushing of race, equity, gender, in courses that i would never expect. I literally had to withdraw from two classes this semester as i was being asked to describe either myself or someone I know who "doesn't fit the masculine/feminine frame." This is within a sociology course on family structure, yet they find a way to seep all kinds of other aspects into it.
Since making this, I have been inspired to look into the matter further, and unfortunately I fear that the situation is even worse that I describe.
I'd rank this as one of the top 5 videos I've watched on YT. It's a great sanity check to hear someone independently say what I've been researching and seeing with views similar to what I've arrived at. I too have wondered where the balance of being an ostrich w/your head in the sand and burning yourself out fighting battle after battle is versus accomplishing something. FWIW, I think your international career allowed you to spend much more of your energy on unique things that will have longer generational value in the future than having spent much effort to win a few interdepartmental battles against a tsunami of tunnel vision afflicted utopian activists.
I'm a year or two older than you and semi-retired (with actual retirement coming soon), and I have to say that not worrying about having a job is remarkably freeing with regard to expressing opinions; though I obviously keep a degree of anonymity in some public settings. I'm still debating to what degree this is prudence or cowardice. :)
I would like to add a couple observations.
1a. There is another ideology floating around that is as influential as marxism and invisibly pervasive. It started around the same time as Marx. Scientific Management (SM) as laid out by Frederick Winslow Taylor is the antithesis of holistic studies and has been implemented throughout the west in organizations ranging from government to gov't agencies to businesses to schools and non-profits. It is about the micromanagement of the efficiency of individual tasks without regard to the efficiency of the entire system. "Experts" give their opinion on what all the tasks are and how to do them; other "experts" give their opinion on the best pedagogy for teaching each task; and still other "experts" determine the best way to evaluate (i.e. test) "mastery" of each task. To a large degree, western education is built upon SM via the idea of "educational objectives" rooted in arbitrary opinions of what is important and what pedagogy produces the best group average standard test scores. A holistic approach to K-12 or BS level language learning would be built on a motivation like "what will best help each student become a lifelong learner and user of languages" with activities and curriculum geared toward adopting everyday language use and learning how to learn any language. In contrast, the SM approach is to break up learning a particular language into hundreds of daily regimented activities and tests where high test scores indicate educational success. A holistic language approach is more akin to practicing recognizing words in the context of reading and listening whereas the SM language approach is to practice recognizing words in the context of a vocabulary quiz.
1b, The remedy to SM is the more holistic approach to systems and processes advocated by W. Edwards Deming. The Japanese revolution of production and quality following WWII was nothing more than Deming's holistic ideas implemented on a mass scale. Indeed, a large part of Finland's educational success is that they moved away from SM and used Deming's holistic insights as the basis for their system of education. Caveat: There are Deming's real insights that the Japanese and Finns implemented and then there are cherry-picked details of his work that are widely broadcast in the west trying to achieve the same success without making fundamental changes. Sort of like the relationship between classical humanities as an educational mindset and having a one credit class or a weekend seminar on critical thinking and "soft skills." My sense of things is that the world of independent polyglots compared to the typical language classroom illustrates the sharp contrast between treating language learning as a holistic activity versus a regimented micromanaged series of tasks to master.
2. SM in education has changed our perspectives on what is "normal" and "abnormal". A HS student getting to a B1 level in a language in 4 years is seen as exceptional rather than being seen as not only desirable but typical. The latest ACTFL K-12 recommendations I've seen (which some states have adopted into their language teaching standards) is B1 level as the target after over a decade of classes (probably amounting to roughly 1500 class hours and $10K-$15K of cost). And to my knowledge, no state is even close to reaching that recommendation. Basically, experts determine a plethora of individual things to learn, how to best teach them, and how to best test. The empirical results from this determines what is "normal". The education system and society (via spending time in school themselves) become used to this as what is possible and what is exceptional. E.g. polyglots are thought of as exceptional geniuses with special gifts and opportunities that normal people don't have. Instead of seeing polyglots as pioneers and examples of what is possible for most people, they are dismissed as anomalies from an educational standpoint.
3. You mentioned this a bit, but I'll elaborate more as a physicist. My sense is that the modern industrial revolution was rooted in more systematic empirical observation of the real world along with the development of a mathematical language to accurately discuss it. Mass production, specialization, and trade has always existed where groups of people organized themselves into cities probably both as a chicken and egg cause and effect due to increased economic efficiency. However, empirical observation and mathematical characterization of knowledge coupled with a critical mass of capital, population, and unique worldview produced a huge leap in standards of living and wealth for masses of people within a few centuries compared to the preceding millennia. Ultimately, it was the harnessing of cheap energy via increased scientific knowledge that has driven this. I also believe that these types of standards of living could be extended far beyond what they have been, but that's a completely different topic.
Traditionally, a large part of the humanities has been the idea of literacy and the ability to tie together a range of ideas and fields. Much of this developed before quantitative knowledge and communication was a critical part of understanding and interacting with the world around us. I think the future of humanities must include quantitative literacy which would treat the language of mathematics in some sense as a foreign language to be learned alongside Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and modern languages. I would make the observation that the dialect of mathematics taught today is heavily influenced by SM and what is known as the French Bourbaki school of math where math is taught as a series of abstract axioms independent of the real world. This is in stark contrast to the language of mathematics originally developing as an observational description of tangible things and used as a daily tool. I think adding quantitative literacy in the humanities would be straightforward, but only if quantitative and mathematical knowledge and skills are treated more along the lines of learning another language to read source materials. What polyglottery is to typical western language courses is what real math is to a typical math course.
hope we can discuss some topics i want to see more of your insight
Thank you, Gandalf, as always for writing such substantive comments that make visiting this section a really valuable experience for anyone interested in the topics I am discussing.
@@itsUntamed Good input. I must admit to being influenced by VI Arnold and the movement toward geometric algebra in physics as a unifying language, but that's a long detailed post to properly elaborate on. :) I'm a couple of decades out of touch since I went to grad school and later into industry instead of using my teaching degree and license (math/physics).
After dropping out of FT employment due to high stress, I've been involved with non-traditional charter schools, using my analytics background to look at current school and educational data, and digging through research in a lot of fields to better understand why some non-traditional approaches seem to be yielding better results.
In an oversimplified nutshell, my sense is that the influence of SM can be seen most clearly by how evaluation is used. Things such as most gov't agencies and school administrators treating statistically meaningless year to year variation as being important, particular numbers fitting into arbitrary categories such as "needs improvement", "adequate", "meets expectation", etc., and that the majority of curriculum objectives being rooted in mastery of micro-tasks (i.e. passing a test with a high enough score) suggests to me heavy SM influence on actual practices in the US K-12 system. (I'm not blaming individuals here but rather the system that constrains them.)
Thank you for this unexpected and insightful discussion, Professor!
I think you hit the nail on the head as far as the consequences of mass education goes - the way that people view education and knowledge as nothing but practical tools is disheartening, and to me personally it is quite foreign. I think knowledge can have worth in its own right and one should always understand why they want to acquire some type of knowledge. It could be because that knowledge is very helpful for making do in this world, or it could be because possessing that knowledge and applying it to other theoretical problems and connecting it to other knowledge is immensely rewarding and pleasant on its own. And some people just don't seem to get it, which is sad.
And I too see the damning effects of the explosion of knowledge that you described. The fragmentation that has borne the savant archetype is frightening because it can create ignorance, even on topics that should be easy enough to explain if one just spent a little bit of time on them - like the effects of our economy on the environment, the reliability of the Gospels, the structure of matter, the origin of Indo-European languages, and so on.
It might be presumptuous of me, but I really want to be that Jack of all trades that will unite knowledge for other people and teach knowledge about the world in a holistic manner.
About the fall of the humanities - I find it paradoxical, because the "fall" is only in terms status, I feel like. Humanities-related courses are as popular as ever, it's just that the average Joe now has a higher chance of respecting a scientist way more.
It was very interesting hearing you talk about the lack of freedom of speech in Universities, I have been hearing something similar from other scholars on UA-cam, but never in so much detail. Having been part of some online and the local LGBTQ+ communities, I only knew the nice side of "woke" ideology and I had no idea about the negative effects it has had on the Universities in its homeland. Genuinely sad to see people becoming the monster that they hated upon becoming overzealous with their ideology.
In Russia we too have ideological issues, but instead of being culturally-driven, ours come from the state and the attempts to reinstate the USSR way of things where propaganda about the cosmic greatness of the state and the Russian people were part of the *University* curriculum. I am fortunate enough to have avoided this, but the younger generation have whole year-long courses (and all University courses are compulsory in most Russian Universities) dedicated specifically to learning about why the state is so wonderful and amazing and superior to others, and that's really frightening.
One thing that I feel like you left out is that along with compulsory education being heavily oriented towards job skills, even University education is now heavily skewed towards the kind of science that's all about earning money: by publishing articles in journals, attracting investors, winning grants - perhaps that's not as prevalent in the humanities, but in chemistry for instance the focus on that is really great and I am just so not into that. I did not get into this with the intention of running around and begging for money promising to do something I am not confident I will be able to provide.
That's it for me, and I hope you'll have a good day!
Thank you, Yan, it is go to hear from you, as always, and to learn a bit about what the situation is like in Russia. I think that U.S. universities have indisputably led the field for many years now, and that, unfortunately, what afflicts them will sooner or later afflict institutions around the world.
@@ProfASAr Funny enough, although that might very well happen, the evolution may have a different cause. Although a large chunk of what you were describing in this video is completely unknown to me, right wingers in France are already copying American right wingers discourse about the university being too "woke" (here they mostly call it "islamo-leftist", which is an even more absurd concept than "woke"). So there is already a huge pushback on the "leftists" at universities. And while reasonable academics simply call out the absurdity of it all, I'm afraid younger academics might precisely become what the right wing is denouncing in response to those very attacks… And the sad thing is that the only part of the university that is suffering from this phenomenon is precisely the humanities and social sciences, putting them in even more danger of disappearing.
@@ProfASAr Yeah, unfortunately...
I'm surprised that you didn't mention that negative influence millionaire and billionaire donors are having on the curriculum offered and faculty hired at all universities. Despite the fact that most of these elite donors majored in the humanities, they donate all their money to current tech and financial fads like A.I., robotics, data science, startup incubators and accelerators, etc.. Not to mention the big money coming from overseas dictatorships and monarchies like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China.
Good points. Subsumed into my "bloat" section, I could not mention every detail in conversation. I am sure there are other factors I also failed to mention.
I don't think Cultural Marxism is a helpful way from framing recent academic trends, its sometimes used to group together very different figures some of whom weren't marxist. I think when American literary studies and perhaps other humanities departments first imported a bunch of European philosophers, it initially tried to take them out of their original context and make use of them for literary theory, but more recent scholarship tends to emphasize more their original context and differences. There's certainly criticisms that can be made of many of those thinkers, many criticisms have already been made both internally and externally as the discussion evolves. If someone is interested in constructively engaging those thinkers and understanding recent academic trends, its better to approach different schools of thought and thinkers on their own terms.
Even if there are different schools of thought, I think a lot of the 'critical theory' and trends in the social sciences and humanities have their origin in Marx's dialectic of the proletariat vs. bourgeoisie. In the last 40 years, this dynamic has been exported to different domains (race, gender, colonialism, etc) under the influence of certain thinkers. Even for thinkers who have brushed Marx aside for his eurocentrism and his grand récit of history are still undeniably haunted by his spectre.
@@dowolo This may have been somewhat true of some trends in some American humanities departments for some decades, but it doesn’t really sound like a helpful way to understand the broader historical context of these trends or all the various places current academic discussions have gone. I think we have to be careful about these oversimplified narratives that are easy to digest and prevent critical thinking. Obviously not saying everyone needs to jump into all the details of these discussions, since we all have limited time and have to choose for ourselves where we think best to spend it. But everyone should at least keep an open mind to new information and try to keep in touch with people in different specialities around the world.
@@YnEoS10 Agreed
cultural marxism has expanded into europe and the western hemisphere @@patricknewton7744
@@patricknewton7744 I would chalk those up more to other issues Arguelles mentions like over specialization and routinization in academia. Similarly a lot of times the thinkers of those movements suffer the same issue you describe where specific texts are operationalized to churn out publications, when often they had more complex and nuanced projects in mind. One advantage of specialization is there is a lot of much better scholarship on those movements and earlier neglected thinkers coming out, but it’s difficult to synthesize all that information together. There’s some scholars that care about more nuanced work, but it takes additional effort beyond the routine.
The problem is obvious, Americans no longer have European grandmothers: "Take your hat off indoors!"; "Don't shrug your shoulders at people!"
europe is in a downfall
That, too!
based video. these days this ideology is really messing up a lot of English media and other west European languages too. so when i watch media from japan or Poland or India its refreshing .and on UA-cam there is a lot more censorship now. but this censorship often only works on English comments so i may have to translate this into another language. it does not just affect English. media in my native language Dutch has gone down hill too and there are way less people making "underground" content online. its mostly just the same old tv companies that have now lost all their integrity .
i also noticed some smaller languages have more non mainstream political youtubers and podcasts like in Swedish or in Slovak. so while the Swedish media became bad its still better than in Dutch. but i think the worst one is welsh they pretty much can't make a video in welsh anymore without forcing far left politics down your throat since the community is so small there is not a lot of pushback. and i can't even go back to just watch old content because welsh had a recent revival so they didn't make much in welsh between 1900 and 2000.
in some countries they take the right wing stuff too far like in zulu they always mention religion .i noticed smaller languages are more affected by group think in general when you have a big population there are always going to be more rebels and people who think differently. like with Arabic most of them are hyper religious but there are still a lot of atheists or moderates among them just because there are so many and they can have a community .this makes learning Arabic more interesting to me compared to some of these smaller languages
messing up engliish media? look at you using the word based i have never seen that word on any literature book unless your using a word taht everybody on the internet is using , i think the media has molded you to be this negative and even if you criticize the current political climate i wouldnt think you would do any research about it . Everybody watched different forms of content you would understand how the algorithm works as for underground content there is and theres other video sharing sites out there. Nothing you have said can relate to anyone here and its just sounds like a you problem
@@derek7 its slang you must be old or something . most people know media in western countries has gone down hill .
im not im in my 20s thats the thing im disconnected from the media becuase i chose to and i have work and school western culture is not downhill its alwasy happening i mean counterculture has been a thing since the 60s @@belstar1128
This is very true. Learning German I am exhausted seeing all of the culture war nonsense that I sought to get away from. Reading anything in Japanese really allows you to get out of the Anglosphere censorship.
Thank you for commenting, though I am not quite sure I follow what you are saying.
Professor, I’m disappointed that you equate feminism and Marxism with Fascism, especially since I am otherwise quite sympathetic to your views.
He's not equating the two, he's equating the ridiculous nature of proclaiming your (fringe) political views on introducing yourself.
He wasn't equating feminism with fascism. He was with Marxism, which is an absolutely fair comparison.
Thank you, David, for correctly and succinctly restating my point. I am disappointed in you, too, ManaveESulanul, for not listening more carefully at 31:30 before posting, even more so in those who have upvoted your comment if they did not even listen to the segment but only concurred with your sentence. It would indeed be absurd for me to conflate separate historical phenomena, which is what your comment implies, and what many who come here will read and infer. Please edit your comment to remove that impression.
Marxism, Fascism and Feminism are constructs of secret societies to divide and rule through the Hegelian dialectic.