Ep. 0253 Reissue: Academia is a Racket
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The centerpiece of this episode is DHP Episode 253: Academia is a Racket, which CJ produced back in late-February 2023, only about 6 months after he walked away from academia, after spending 22 years of his life in it (6 as a student & 16 as a teacher.)
In this episode, CJ mostly avoided the lowest-hanging & widely understood defects of academia in recent decades — ie, the rise to hegemony of once-fringe (even in academia) “Woke” ideology, & the exorbitant costs to the students of getting a college “education.”
Instead, drawing from his 22 years inside academia, he mostly focuses on structural (in the true sense of the word) problems inherent in the nature of the institution & the perverse incentives created thereby, which minimize the amount of education (in the true sense of the word) that takes place.
Join CJ as he discusses the following problems with modern conventional academia:
- No real market feedback mechanism to indicate whether a “good education” is being provided.
- Overspecialization.
- Rigid credentialism.
- Too many courses online (especially at the intro/gen-ed level.)
- Excessive disability accommodations.
- Private-sector profiteering (off a captive audience & cartelized, non-competitive system.)
- Administrative bloat.
- A focus on arbitrary metrics that can be juked/gamed.
- Degree inflation.
- The accreditation agencies functioning as a cartel enforcer to artificially restrict entry & reduce competition.
- Ideology baked into most (if not all) disciplines, in many cases for over a century.
- The adversarial relationship often automatically created between student & teacher.
- State & corporate influence & control.
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