By Holly the Assistant
A couple-three days ago someone at a major media outlet noticed this: https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-issues-final-rule-hold-all-colleges-and-universities-accountable-low-earning-programs which you’ll note is dated June 29, proving that the MSM is a tad slow on the uptake. Three months is not hardly news speed.
And of course the realization that the fine arts programs by and large do not graduate into paying fields hit the internet like a freight train.
First of all, we’ve got to exclude the B.Ed. degrees in the arts. Lots of arts majors are smart enough and capable of putting up with public schools enough to get the B.Ed. Those programs will be unaffected: they make as much as any other ed degree holder. The jobs are scrambly and often require midday commutes from one school to the next to the next, but they are education jobs. They pay well, like every other public education job, with good benefits.
No, the degrees affected will be the degrees like mine, a Bachelor of Arts in Music. This degree qualifies me to do exactly one thing, which is, go apply for a Master of Arts program. Had I done so, that would have qualified me to apply for a Doctoral program, the graduates of which are then eligible to compete for the very few professor of music jobs.
As it happens, I have a now-local friend who is, oh, about four or five years older than me, who did exactly that. She has a pile of student loans, and is paying them back on a professor salary, which is not nearly as well compensated as it used to be. Still not bad, but not what we’d call high paying.
I do not and am not. I was an academic full ride student, and could study anything I wanted as long as I kept my grades up. And I have spent the last decades working as a freelance musician, a little of this, a little of that, some weddings, some funerals, lots of teaching, some decidedly non-music-related gigs (points at Sarah), and that is very typical of my classmates, including those who did go on to get more degrees, including those who borrowed money. Dr. Professor Friend is, in fact, up for tenure this year, which is to say, she has just barely been a professor long enough to be eligible to apply. She will probably have her student loans paid off before she retires: she’s very frugal. Her first decade or so out of school she took whatever part time gigs she could get. It is a bad field to go into.
These degrees are demanded by the institutions for a look-in at the professor jobs, and there are more of us who would like to work professionally in the field than there are jobs available. Many more.
The Arts, with this rule, will become the property of rich kids and full ride scholarship kids, and the closure or reduction of most college arts programs, which means there will be no choir or theater for students in other majors to participate in. I do not like this. I think it will be bad for Art, and make the fields even more self-referential and nonsense-prone. I think the entire point of college was to expose students to a broad variety of information, and closing the arts departments will remove a large amount of human endeavor from the curriculum. (Especially since it looks like History is also in the same position of non-paying degrees.)
But I very much more dislike seeing my friends, my colleagues, kept in poverty, scrambling to pick up odd gigs, trying to make ends meet, when they would have done better to not have that mountain of debt, and would still be working at the coffee shop, the hardware store, the grocery, and performing and teaching on the side.
I think we have need of a great deal more educational reform, and that probably eliminating all federally backed student loans would be a good start, but as a prologue, this will do. It will slow the bleeding. It will help stop the old lie that if you study what you love the money will follow. Maybe it will help us get some reform into the high schools. That’s probably too much to hope for, for something that will affect only four or five percent of college students, but it might start the process.
Take what you will from this, and use it for your arguments with well-intentioned and naive folks, who haven’t and don’t work in the Arts, or who worked in the Arts two generations ago when it was a different career. Please.
Modern Higher Education sometimes seems to be a con-game (with students being the people conned). ☹️
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The students’ families, and the taxpayers, are also being scammed. ☹️
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I would argue that it has become a grift with everyone, including civil society as a whole, as the rubes.
A lot of the insiders are also rubes.
Civil society, the public, the ‘common good’, thinks that everyone who goes into the school a civilized man is coming out a civilized man. Some minority of the students are coming out savages. The pricing in a boomer has does not match the actual current day results, as far as I can tell. (Maybe the boomers are remembering the bombings and going ‘kids today cannot be that bad, we sucked a lot’.)
I could itemize through other cohorts and subsets, and explain how I see mis-estimation.
I don’t think this would actually help the regulars here to understand me if I have communicated a new idea. Or, at least would not explain where my thinking and feelings are coming from any better.
We are trusting scholarly ‘experts’ to more or less set valuations for a wide range of things, and some of those valuations are clearly wrong to a degree that I start raving about why anyone thought the current process was sound.
Almost every degree program is both mispriced and misvalued, for a wide range of reasons. I could not tell you what correct is, but we are mostly weighing opinions held by people from past performance, and who often do not have skin in the game where any one young person is concerned.
All predictions of value for degrees are a forecast involving future behavior. Thus, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
A couple of years ago, while blackpilled, I talked to an uncle. He had a story about his own father putting him to work picking cotton or tobacco, as a lesson for him about the utility of attending university. My uncle had a point, that was a correct thing for him to make to me.
I do also think that I am correctly interpreting some of the evidence I do have. Definitely not all of the evidence.
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Now why did I immediately see that as ‘A Modest Proposal For Student Loan Reform’? 😜
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Would sorta be hilarious if this is downstream of Barron’s prospective schools wanting him or his parents to do the FASFA stuff.
I can sort of imagine that happening, and Donald going “this is bullshit”, and Mrs. Trump doing the well-bred European’s version of communicating agreement without being so gauche.
If Barron gets a degree, the earning potential from that will be less than that he had as son of a wealthy man. But, as the son of a wealthy man, he can actually maybe afford almost any degree.
He could go for anything from basket weaving to a PhD in physics and not actually be that much worse off.
Who am I the son of?
My family history, and family example, do influence a bit how I understand all of this. As well as other experiences, sources, and methods.
If my background is at upper middle class, or lower, it actually does matter how I spend my time, and on what.
Unless I am truly permanently disabled with no possibility of vocational rehabilitation, and that situation will suck no matter how awesome the society is. Man was meant to strive.
If I put three, or five, or fifteen years into degrees I can’t actually get employment with, no matter how awesome those degrees are on paper, than that is an unaffordable loss. No matter what the exact finances and money situation is. Barring the case where I am literally Eric, or Barron or whomever Trump. (I am not a Trump.)
The case of analyzing degree programs in terms of their earning potential on paper is also relevant.
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“(Especially since it looks like History is also in the same position of non-paying degrees.)”
Around 20 years ago, about the time I was considering and then starting my doctorate, in business administration, there was a well-written blog (long gone, alas) called The Invisible Adjunct. While it was mostly about English as a field, the author took pains to note that there were at the time around 700 Ph.D grads per year, competing for about 300 tenure-track job openings in the U.S. I expect the rest of the humanities were in that neighborhood.
One overlooked piece of that phenomenon is the glee with which the humanities dove into the demolition of the telos. Spend two or so generations telling captive audiences that their civilization is wrongbad and not worth the lead it would take to sink it. Congratulations, you won! Now no one needs the humanities anymore.
Once again, we see that Frank Zappa is never wrong: “Do you love it? Do you hate it? There it is, the way you made it.”
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When I was doing my PhD (in a then-hot and job-rich subfield), it took 80 applications for one tenure track offer. When I finished, the first signs of change had appeared, and regents were calling for people with teaching, not research, experience. It was also 120 applications, on average, for one tenure-track offer.
I tell students to major in history, but don’t plan on a career in it. And minor in something useful-for-business or industry. Or minor in history. Or read a lot and watch really good podcasts and stuff.
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The engineering degreed folks who were recruited in the parking lot of the place from which they were just layed off were the analog and RF engineers. I saw this happen with my own eyes. They were carrying out their box of stuff and were recruiter-ambushed on the way to their car.
I imagine the HR grapevine did that.
The other folks I was riffed with over my years in cubical-land who were out of work days and no longer were accountants.
My generic advice for the determinedly college bound these days is thus accounting.
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I did analog, digital and mixed signal test engineering when Dot Com V1.0 had its bubble burst. My effective layoff date was Sept 1, 2001, and after 9/11 all the companies had a well-rehearsed line about why their job openings just evaporated. (Barring one company; high end digital IC startup, but with more red flags than a DSA street riot. Half expected to be ShangHai’d if I took a lunch with them. Nope.)
And yeah, if I had any experience with RF test, I could have found a replacement job in Silicon Valley. Got that experience via a consulting gig, but when the client went toes up, we decided it was high time to remove ourselves from California.
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Evil Rob’s degree is in history. He works in operations and does logistics for an international company. The hilarious part was what got him the original retail job that led him to this corporate position: he had warehouse experience in shipping and receiving. That was the thing that got him the interview, because the thousand+ applications for that place didn’t have people wanting to work in the warehouse.
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Way back in my first run at a degree, the professor for Western Civ 1 tried hard to get me to switch my major from business. Didn’t work, I was planning to get married (the future spouse already pursuing an anthropology degree…).
So, yes, lots of reading and videos. I watch a lot of those from fairly reliable people – like Invicta, Kings and Generals, etc. (When I feel up to it, I also watch ones by Esoterica – he’s good, but extremely info-dense.)
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Back in the early 90’s Qualcomm San Diego heavily advertised (there were billboards!) that they were hiring 400 engineers. Came the day, more than 4,000 people showed up waving resumes. The line wrapped around the building and snaked across the parking lot.
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Yeah, even post 9/11, Qualcomm (and perhaps another RF manufacturer in SoCal) were on the short list of companies still willing to hire. We didn’t want to move from S. Valley to Yet Another Cal city, since beating feet was already an option. As faint memory served, I passed on an interview with QC since I had no RF experience. Saved the hassle.
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When they first started college (at big university as oppose to local community college), I urged my two offspring (well, the older at least I remember) to go do some extra curricular stuff like music or chorus. Both of them had gone to the big all-state chorus thing that you only get to go to once in middle school. (It was in the middle of the state; it was a pretty fun trip.) Elder explicitly demurred, probably citing time factors.
I wanted them to have a richer time than I did; which is why I endorsed younger’s idea of intentionally going slow by taking lighter loads (12 to 14 hours instead of 15 to 18) than the usual course. Well, not so much for the enrichment as to get higher grades without driving yourself crazy. Wiser than me already.
I remember (or think I do; it was 40 years ago) speaking to the chancellor about another matter, and he mentioned going to school for an education (to just learn stuff) was what he wanted to see (or considered ideal). Pretty sure I didn’t comment, but I was thinking this is an engineering school (and ag); we go to school to get jobs.
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“…he mentioned going to school for an education (to just learn stuff) was what he wanted to see (or considered ideal).”
I’ve been hearing that since the 1960s. We should make that happen. I’m all for it.
You see, the problem with school being for scholarship is that the people teaching it have to actually be GOOD at their field. The other problem is that the students have to be GOOD at scholarship and pursue it for it’s own sake.
I believe that in Canada, 2026, there might be sufficient demand to fill one (1) such school. Out of the entire country. And not a very big school either.
But hey, I’m all for giving people what they say they want. >:D
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That sounds about right…but then, I think we should replace what passes for general education nowadays with the trivium and the quadrivium.
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The thing nobody told me that impacted my University GPA was that by testing out all of the lower division English requirements via the AP English test at admission, I was getting out of two years of the classes I would have skated with As, and instead getting a “no credit” tested-out note on my transcript.
If chasing GPA, the smart thing would have been grind through the classes. Instead I hit the fairly challenging lower division engineering and math heavy stuff and, along with the adjustment from HS, that caused me gpa problems. I recovered once I got my feet, and especially when I got to upper division English and General Ed stuff, which I skated as expected, but that tactical error was something nobody ever mentioned in the years of HS AP English or in any counseling session.
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My college considered the 5 I got on the AP English Composition test general credits, and if I hadn’t gotten into the one tiny group that didn’t have to take it, I would have had to take English 101 (“Learn to construct sentences and paragraphs”) with everybody else.
Somebody would have had to die for that.
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Colleges have to have Bonehead English and Bonehead Math courses to teach students basic reading and arithmetic the public schools were supposed to teach them, but didn’t.
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“You have to go to college nowadays to get a good high-school education….”
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If you can even get it there. ☹️
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I learned nothing useful in terms of math in high school. It didn’t help that I’m not naturally adept at it. But learning algebra and calculus in community college when I was paying out of my own pocket for the privilege helped me focus. But more important, the instructors at that level actually were effective in teaching the material instead of standing in the front of the class and babysitting.
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I’m sorry for your trouble. Conversely, my high-school calc teacher (who was also the wrestling coach, for whatever that’s worth) was about seven orders of magnitude better than the instructors I had for the three semesters of calc and one of differential equations I had in college.
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I should also mention that this was a private college with decently-high standards, so the fact that they felt it necessary to require all but 20 freshmen to take Bonehead English back in the 90s is not a great sign.
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You could go back to making student loans dischargeable in bankruotcy, as they once were. If the problem was that JDs and MDs would declare bankruoptcy shiortly after graduating and then go on to live the high life, simply make their degrees an asset that they have to give up.
Why yes, I am a heartless bastard since you ask.
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Yes, med school is a chunk of debt these days, and the resulting pay levels for MDs are correspondingly high so they can service that debt, which in turn escalates the charges that insurers are paying some negotiated fraction of, which increases the insurance premiums… so the med school cost and resulting student loan debt impacts the entire economy. Given the shortages should be a priority for national remedy. I personally like expanding government service forgiveness programs, but taxing med schools endowments based on their net graduate debt load appeals as well.
Lawyers, eh, screw em.
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Medical H1Bs just got some attention drawn to them. Apparently some hospital back on the east coast just got noted by someone from the White House. The hospital in question has dozens of doctors (possibly 80?)… and only two of them are US citizens. Hmm…
Hopefully this indicates that the administration is working on a fix.
The tech H1B farms are already getting hit right now, with a particularly heavy hammer (from what I’ve heard) being dropped one particular company. Doing a quick search for them online will turn up a number of immigration fraud cases, which might be why they in particular drew the administration’s wrath.
The only issue is that I know everyone involved in this industry is trying to burrow in right now and ride it out. They’re expecting that after the 2028 election (or possibly the coming one if they’re particularly lucky) the new administration will revert things to back the way that they were before Trump took office.
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I think that before long we will start hearing the screaming and screeching of academics whose Iron Rice Bowl has been broken. Hold schools to account for their Real World (TM) results? C’est impossible! [This is meant to be said with a broad Joual accent from Montreal. Tabarnak!]
I look forward to seeing the hordes of #Leftist “scholars” delivering Doordash wearing their fricking Che Guevara t-shirts and their little ‘worker caps’. It’ll be good to see commies doing useful work for a change.
My current WIP is “Jimmy goes to university” in which Our Heroes run around getting into trouble at school. Lippy giant combat spiders and impatient robot girlfriends meet social justice and the intersectional stack. Hilarity ensues. I hope, anyway.
I’m having a bit of difficulty staying away from the “Ivory Tower Outrage Of The Week.” As has been discussed recently at ATH and at MGC, you don’t want your book being dated by old politics and obscure ‘tempest in a teapot’ stuff that was topical for ten minutes and then disappeared into the maelstrom of history without even a splash. (This week’s example, Lindsay Clancy. You’re going to say her name next year and everyone will say “Who?”)
Therefore I’m trying to keep things broader-brush and more foundational. The base of the problems we have with “higher education” these days is 1) credentialism, in which you can’t study B if you haven’t taken A first, and 2) Post-Modernism.
Credentialism is basically the education business jacking up government and private enterprise for more money. The beginings of all that were laid back in the Vietnam War when you could get a deferral for the draft if you were in university. All kinds of things from grade-inflation and nesting prerequisites grew out of it. These days it is a huge profit center. Our Heroes deal with prerequisites by parking a Valkyrie out behind the school. 30,000 tons of nuclear-powered fun on caterpillar tracks.
The other thing is post-modernism and Marxism more generally, which have given us the various ‘isms since the 1960s. Feminism, transgenderism, etc. When you dig a little you find the whole “nothing is real, everything is a speech act, everything is about who has the power” thing underpinning it. This philosophy has basically taken over the Ivory Tower in every discipline that doesn’t use mathematics.
What I want to do with the book is have the characters expose that stuff for what it is, a poison developed to destroy Western Civilization. But without being a preachy do-gooder.
It’s kinda difficult. ~:D
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So “The Emperor’s New Clothes” with combat spiders.
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Beloved Spouse played violin since around six, played in youth symphonies on European tours, went to a first rate university, and after her college degree auditioned for and achieved a seat in a major symphony orchestra where she played for 29 years – and for pretty much the reasons cited she chose to complete her bachelors degree in psychology.
She could have easily done a music degree, but thinking ahead she thought she should do something more generally applicable for the professional musician’s traditional “day job”.
And then her main day job was as a programmer in the semiconductor industry, where I met and wooed her.
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My daughter has a BA in Music (viola performance). She went on to getr a MA, where she met her (eventual) husband, getting his MA in bass. Two musicians, two kids, one cat, no debt because she got a full ride in undergrad, he went to a less expensive state school and worked his way as a short order cook (Daddy is the one who does most of the cooking). He eventuially went on to get a DFA.
Current life is he plays in regional orchestrass, teaches pprivate students, and plays electric base in a rock band. She does music when she can, and is a youth director at her church (full time paying position). Financially it’s tough, but they’re frugal and do alright. If they had a load of student debt? Fugeddaboutit.
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It’s the debt that kills. My children are all educated through graduate school with no debt. I told them that with no debt you can do most anything you want if you’re willing to live that way, but debt WILL be paid one way or the other and you’ll have to work for money, which you won’t keep.
I really feel for the people who got trapped by it since the availability of subsidized debt, and it is subsidized, drove up the costs as subsidies always do. The simple fact is that it’s all just too expensive — and unnecessary for the vast majority of people.
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I’m also reminded of the sayin “Do what you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life. Because no one will pay you for what you love.”
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something similar went on in the UK. After the war, there were a lot of working class people who entered the arts, especially theatre, either through art college or directly. As time went on, those art colleges faded away or became academical and the upper classes are now ubiquitous in the arts. Sure, the arts, again especially theater, were now seen as not only respectable, but prestige, but the closure of access to those fields went a long way.
That and the destruction, by Labour, of the grammar schools, which were the other exit for talented working class people. Funny. Ha ha, how the world’s Labour parties have all destroyed their working classes and are now replacing them with various foreigners who are expected to make fewer demands. FRnce over the last few days shows how that’s working out for them.
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Obviously, re-privatizing the loans and making them dischargeable in bankruptcy would go a long way toward solving the problem. I propose an addition: the loan originator has to hold onto the loan for several years into the repayment term. No passing the hot potato.
In the short term, it would be horrific, and yes, a lot of deserving students would be hurt by it. In the longer term, though, the mountain of debt weighting down our youth would be significantly decreased.
Now let’s get HR to stop requiring degrees for things that shouldn’t require degrees…
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My understanding is that Trump removed that requirement for govt jobs and contracting during his first term.
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Couple years ago (10???) New England College in Henniker bought out the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester. They began rolling some of the courses into the main campus and eventually dissolved NHIA and sold off all the properties. Funny how hostile takeovers occur even in academia.
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A number of seminaries have merged over the last decade.
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HollyMathNerd suggested that total repayments be capped at 120% of the original debt. I haven’t decided whether I like the idea or not.
Does someone pursuing an arts or performing arts undergrad need a residential school, with all the infrastructure, amenities, and costly side-businesses (“student life”?) attached? Or would a commuting school serve as well? (An agricultural or animal husbandry program might be different.)
What about refusing loans for colleges that have too many non-teaching employees? (Consider lab assistants, etc., teaching?) Or rely too heavily on adjunct faculty? That’s called tooth-to-tail ratio, though in this case it might better be called “tooth to belly fat ratio”. Also refuse loans for attendance at schools that have endowments and reserves that, over a 17-year horizon, have generated more than three times what they spent educating students and performing necessary maintenance. (17 years covers four presidential administration, whose policies affect investment.)
And, of course, requiring the school to bear part of the responsibility for the debt is a very good idea.
Forty-some years ago I got a CS Masters (an add-on degree, really) at night. That’s an idea that should come back. I won’t suggest you could get a BS or BA at night; that’s probably not possible, except possibly by internet. But maybe it could work, though exams need either physical attendance or some kind of registered and authenticated proctoring system.
Which is another idea to investigate.
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The one caveat to “night classes” is the scheduling jerks at low-wage jobs who are all about the last-minute schedules, especially for part-timers. It’s been part of large-chain policy for a couple of decades that you have to be available at any time, because they can change the schedule the day before and fault you if you don’t show up, having scheduled a cross-commitment (because that’s when you could get the doctor appointment, for example.)
Even weekly schedules can be obnoxious if they shift all over the place. When I got my last retail job 25 years ago, one of the things they talked up was that your schedule stayed the same week-to-week, so the rot was already deep.
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The current university model is skewed and unsustainable. It seems the Federal push on loans just resulted in skyrocketing tuition and added layers of admin staff. Then add in the “snitch brigades” and silencing of unapproved viewpoints, and I’d be OK with the ol’ alma mater being sold off and bulldozed.
When I graduated from high school with a gentleman’s D, I was going to be a machinist. After a month in the training program at Big Aerospace I was laid off (and told to get an engineering degree). Seven years later, I did get a BSCE, but with minimal loans, a nice canned ham trailer to live in, and lots of mac & cheese. And continuing that thriftiness allowed us to survive through my first career on a low-compensation state government salary.
Now my son is halfway through his BA degree work in a field with lots of openings and not much pay (but at least he’s laser-focused on that major and not waffling). Did the first two years at community college (affordable and better quality of lower-division teaching). Now he’s enrolled at Enormous State, and will complete his bachelor’s without ever setting foot on one of their campuses – all online or internships from here out). But they’re still harging tuition out the wazoo, but fortunately we put away a couple hundred bucks a month since he was born and that’s covering it so far. Yes, he’s “missing out” on the so-called “college experience.” But he doesn’t seem to mind, and given current circumstances, neither do we.
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College is going to change soon, no matter what the administration does. I’ve mentioned here before that last year the Japanese government was going to the various university conferences in Japan and telling everyone present that in twenty years, only half of them would be there. The reason, of course, is due to the falling population. The US birthrate isn’t as bad, but it’s also not high enough to sustain the current level of enrollment. So, schools are going to disappear over the next decade or two. It’s happening no matter what.
I like the announcement from the change in student loans. The next trick will be to see what methods students come up with to manipulate the system. “Yes, I was *going* to graduate with an Engineering degree. But at the last minute I decided it just wasn’t something I liked, and switched to Women’s Studies right before I graduated.” On the other hand, just the fact that this new rule exists means that students trying to pull that sort of stunt can’t say that they weren’t warned beforehand (one common complaint these days is students saying that they were told all that they needed to do was get *any* college degree, and post-college success was assured). If you apply for a student loan and are flat out told that the degree probably won’t support you when you graduate, well…
I also see an opportunity here. If students can’t use their loan to support their History major, we’ll likely see fewer students pursuing History majors. If some wealthy donors wanted to support bringing up a new crop of conservative-leaning History majors (to pick one at random) just as the overall total drops, then tuition scholarships might go a long ways toward that.
In any case, it’s a start. Hopefully a more comprehensive approach can be put together.
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One last item that I forgot to add –
This is only part of the problem. Another significant part is making sure that the students that take the majors that are supposed to earn them more money actually have jobs willing to hire them when they graduate. For too many, even getting a degree in Engineering still means you’re sending out resumes to Starbucks because too many companies would rather hire an H1B.
Hopefully that’ll change soon.
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My stand on H-1B: As long as one American is unemployed, they’ve got no business bringing in foreigners.
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The current criterion is that, four years after graduation, the degree holders are earning more than high-school graduates. Since no one can predict the future, that’s probably the best we can do.
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Unrelated…
For those not on X, tsundere gender-bent Draco Malfoy has been a thing on X the last few days. In addition to everyone talking about how it would affect the overall story and possibly add depth to Draco (which can be fun to glance through), there are a couple of additional items that I find amusing.
1.) This is very definitely a *female* version of Draco. It is not trans Draco. It is not effeminate Draco who is attracted to guys (particularly one with a lightning scar). It is a proud, arrogant, tsundere, very much het Draco with XX chromosomes. And the alphabet crowd is enraged because this suddenly very popular version of her isn’t trans. That, and they’ve been trying to cancel Rowling for some time now, so anything that involves fans of her work is something that they hate.
2.) ATC keeps pointing out that gender-bent Draco isn’t new. She’s been a thing for over two decades now, largely as a way for straights to safely explore the idea of a relationship between the two characters. But for some reason, she’s suddenly exploded in popularity over the last few days. And of course, most people are unaware of the fan fic with her.
And one last minor item –
Partly in response to all of this, I saw someone from the alphabet people putting together a supposed synopsis of events related to Harry Potter fandom. And the dummy claimed that all of Rowling’s original fans left when Rowling revealed that she was a “TERF” (dummy’s word, not mine). Apparently the idea that Rowling had lots of non-alphabet fans even before she came out against the trans ideology was something that the dummy couldn’t conceive of.
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Honestly Rowling is proof of how intolerant the left is. The trans issue is the only one she’s broken with the left on and they hate her almost as much as they hate Trump and Musk.
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I think what makes them particularly mad at her is that they see her as a betrayer. She has generally lefty views, so they likely saw her as “on their side”. I also suspect they came up with all sorts of convoluted explanations about various things that fulfilled their fantasies about the story and settings (such as why Harry and Draco were in reality gay lovers). And I bet that they firmly believed that these things were true even though the story didn’t support them, and in fact contradicted them at points.
And then she disagreed with them on transwomen, and it shattered their delusions. They saw it as a betrayal.
Their ability to fixate on story elements and corrupt them in complete contradiction of canon is really something else, and has to be seen to be believed. A recent case in point is the title character from the popular Bayonetta video game franchise. She’s a leggy, statuesque, glasses-wearing, curvy, black-haired woman wearing a long dress… who briefly strips whenever she attacks (because both her dress and her weapons are made out of her hair; it makes sense in context…). Initially she was attacked as a vile, male-gaze-inducing sexualization of women, etc…, etc… Then when she remained popular despite the attacks, the alphabet crowd decided that she was a shining example of the Strong Woman(tm), and a role model for women everywhere. And obviously a lesbian, despite not showing any signs of any relationship at all within the game. As they see it, if you’re a strong woman and not head over heels with a guy, you’re obviously a lesbian.
There is official out of game artwork showing her in what appears to be a familial relationship with a male character, and a toddler (I think, though I’m not certain, that both are in the first game). This was released quite a while back, and has been circulating for a while. Even I was aware of it, and I haven’t paid that much attention to the games (I haven’t played any of them). It was confirmation that she was heterosexual. This was ignored or rationalized away by the alphabet crowd, because they refuse to see the things that don’t fit their reality.
More recently, one of them finally ended up provoking a response from the game’s creator who stated that she’s straight. Much anger ensued. More than a small amount of the anger appeared to be from people who had claimed her as an inspirational lesbian role-model, finally being forced to confront the fact that she isn’t a lesbian.
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Another bit of alphabet people “tolerance” –
People on X were looking for a particular piece by an asian artist of gender-bent Malfoy artwork that they liked. They’d seen it, but hadn’t been able to find it again later. Others stated that the artist posted it on Bluesky, but was bullied into deleting it and apologizing by the people there.
“You will become one with the Alphaborg.”
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Some good news. The artist relocated to X, and reposted her(?) artwork there.
Bluesky commentors who commented on it were largely outraged that she would leave Bluesky for the Chud pretend tolerance (their words, not mine) of X. In fairness, there was apparently a minority that stated that what had happened to the artist to push her off the site was something that never should have happened.
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“I felt a great disturbance in the Farce, as if a million bureaucrats cried out in anguish, and were suddenly silenced.” 😁
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Speaking of history degrees, I took one military science course at good old Moo U back in the day. The course was taught by a captain who said he had a bachelor’s in history and found out a person could starve with a BS in history so he joined the Army.
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Elsewhere –
I’m hearing about lots of riots in France right now. The claim is that the riots are by students over extremely poor conditions at schools. But they’re spread across multiple cities in France, which seems a bit odd for supposedly spontaneous student riots. And while I don’t pretend to have looked at more than a few photos, the ones that I’ve seen show an awful lot of headscarves among the female rioters.
Actions by the rioters include setting schools on fire, dousing teachers in gasoline, and in at least one case setting a firefighter on fire.
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If I remember correctly the firefighter was trying to put out a trashcan fire and something in the trash exploded. But they were certainly celebrating.
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Since the “students” are waving flags unrelated to European countries, or the Communists, and teachers say that they are being attacked by “youths” they do not know from school, I’d say that bad school conditions are just the excuse used for an insurrection of some kind, possible red and green (Communist and Islamist).
But …. that’s based on what I’m reading in a lot of various sources, with nothing confirmed or solid.
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Just noodling yesterday, and wondered what it costs per year today at my first college, USF (Jesuit ‘liberal arts’ school in San Francisco). I was there 67-71. Today, on the very close order of $100K/year for a resident student. So, too, for USC and Stanford, and that’s as far as I could stand to research.
If I had $400K to spend in 4 years, I don’t think the current educational product is where I would put my money.
Best part of those 4 years was meeting my wife-to-be during ‘welcome week’.
BTW, greetings from Malta – our ship is just pulling in to the harbor.
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I absolutely concur, as one of those recipients 22 years ago of a B.A. worthless to any other use than pursuing MA. and PhphphphD (pronounced like a raspberry tart) programs. I went into the English track to read more books and to write, absolutely clueless about the fiscal prospects of it. And the threat of membership in the self-referential English Department ivy-tower was enough to put me off Postgrad studies altogether until they were functionally out of reach. I was on a full-time ROTC scholarship, but dayumn! Such meaningless Professorship pipelines shouldn’t be eligible for a red cent of Federal Loan money.
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I see no reason that the government is continuing this program in any form. What did I do to deserve a bunch of college age dependents?
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Gah, my comment is stuck in moderation! I wonder if it’s because it was excessively long, so I’ll try to post it in two bits. Here goes …
I have had two things that have particularly affected how I view “appropriate” majors — thoughts obtained after I finished my PhD in math:
First, before I graduated, I stumbled onto CNC machining via my interest in gun rights and exploring the idea that “guns are easy to make”. This inspired me to take an “Intro to Machining” class, which made me yearn for earning Machining, Blacksmithing and Welding, and Carpentry Certificates. Each program would take 3 months to complete, but as an out-of-work mathematician with gobs of debt, a wife, and two kids, I couldn’t justify pursuing that.
However, I also reflected on how a year of that before moving on to college had great potential to expand my education: I’d have learned how to make things with my hand, and possibly used these skills to pay for college, and if I liked them enough, maybe even go on to make a living this way — and even if I had continued down the college path, my experiences would certainly have reinforced what I learned in engineering, physics, and math! Engineers in particular are famous among mechanics for designing things impossible to make, and starting off knowing how to make things could prevent that.
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Confound it, attempts to post the second half of my comment get moderated anyway!
WordPress Delenda Est!
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that probably means you fell afoul of its capricious and secret detestation for certain words.
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