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Despite the legions of administrators thought policing our campuses, our universities still seem to put out endless amounts of insanity. I\u2019ve covered the whole \u201cMilk is racist<\/a>\u201d madness before, but today I\u2019ll highlight two more. First up, trying to teach the sort of behavior that might lead to a means of paying off student loans is, apparently, racist:<\/p>\n Public University\u2019s \u2018Diversity Training\u2019: Expecting People To Show Up On Time Is Racist<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to come across as a whiner, as I chose this line of work, but the gentle reader really should get down on his knees and be grateful to never have been subjected to a Diversity Training workshop. YE GODS are these things abominations, utterly insulting the intelligence of everyone involved.<\/p>\n \u201cYou should teach pedophiles, murderers, criminals, and black people all the same way.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n –one of many useful pieces of information given to me at a diversity training workshop\u2026I just can\u2019t emphasize how relentlessly insultingly idiotic this \u201ctraining\u201d is.<\/em><\/p>\n Like many professionals, professors often have some continuing education requirements, albeit its bogus education mostly imposed upon them by administrators eager to justify their jobs. Admin has no idea what they\u2019re doing and, so they shop around to see which trainer sounds nice (Pro tip: put \u201cDiversity\u201d into your corporate name for maximum success) and offers the best kickback to the administrators for hiring them.<\/p>\n Admin at Clemson University decided to blow $27,000 on \u201ctraining\u201d materials, and, as is always the case with diversity training, it\u2019s pretty stupid stuff.<\/p>\n One slide features a guy named Alejandro who plans a meeting between two groups. Each group contains foreign professors and students. One group shows up 15 minutes early. The second group shows up 10 minutes late.<\/em><\/p>\n A question-and-answer section then instructs Clemson\u2019s professors that Alejandro would be insufficiently \u201cinclusive\u201d if he were to \u201cpolitely ask the second group to apologize.\u201d Alejandro would also be wrong to advise the straggling, late people who aren\u2019t respecting everyone else\u2019s time that \u201cin our country, 9:00 a.m. means 9:00 a.m.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m a professional. I apologize to my students when I\u2019m a minute late to class\u2026that\u2019s how it works. It\u2019s insulting to set a meeting time and then make the other party wait. That\u2019s not culture, that\u2019s\u00a0 not racism that\u2019s\u2026how reality works. Every culture on the planet uses clocks, it\u2019s just plain nuts that asking people to behave professionally and to apologize for even accidental disrespect is now \u201cracism.\u201d<\/p>\n There are a few other examples of idiocy in the \u201ctraining,\u201d but the gentle reader should be curious who actually ordered this training. Didn\u2019t she (going out on a limb) actually look and see what the training would entail?<\/p>\n Clemson\u2019s chief diversity officer, <\/em>Lee Gill<\/em><\/a>, appears to have approved the $26,945 order.<\/em><\/p>\n Gill brings home a taxpayer-funded salary of $185,850 each year, <\/em>according to The Tiger Town Observer<\/em><\/a>, a conservative-leaning student newspaper at Clemson.<\/em><\/p>\n Yes, of course, the title of \u201cChief Diversity Officer\u201d is twice as long as the title holder\u2019s name, and so we all know that this is a position that can be safely eliminated without harming a single student\u2019s education. Please, consider how much good could have been done if that \u201ctaxpayer-funded salary\u201d of an astronomical $185,850 a year (plus benefits which, by themselves, are more than the yearly income of the average US citizen) were spent on education. We\u2019re talking enough money to hire 4 full time faculty\u2014in other words, enough money to pay for full scholarships for a room full of students (a student generally takes 4 courses a semester, after all). This scholarship idea assumes a professor only teaches 1 course. Professors typically teach 4, to give an idea of just how poorly our resources are being used here.<\/p>\n Honest, there\u2019s so much money sloshing around in higher education that we could easily fix things with just a bit of common sense, or at least a touch of financial literacy, enough to know spending a fortune on a Chief Diversity Officer won\u2019t do nearly as much for education as hiring teachers and providing scholarships.<\/p>\n Oh, wait, we can\u2019t have financial literacy in higher education, because, financial literacy is racist, too:<\/p>\n Study: It\u2019s Racist to Teach Students Financial Literacy<\/a><\/strong> Some schools do attempt some limp teaching of fiscal responsibility, but those courses are now receiving criticism, not for being weak, but for being racist. Seriously:<\/p>\n \u2026these courses are actually racist, argue two professors in a newly published <\/em>paper<\/em><\/a> in the <\/em>Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review.<\/em><\/p>\n The paper, written by Duke\u2019s William A. Darity and the New School\u2019s Darrick Hamilton, argues that financial-literacy courses presume that the problem is simply that students of color lack of financial responsibility or financial knowledge\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n You know, if these courses were specifically targeted at a particular minority, this claim might be viable but, like most every course on campus, it\u2019s not intended for a particular group, beyond \u201ckids fresh out of high school.\u201d<\/p>\n Some more of their claims:<\/p>\n The real problem, Darity and Hamilton argue, is that too many black and Hispanic students begin at a disadvantage; they\u2019re poor, and without money, and so financial-literacy programs are irrelevant.<\/em><\/p>\n Huh. Let\u2019s try that with other topics. They\u2019re poor, and without parabolas, and so algebra courses are irrelevant. They\u2019re poor, and without sonnets, and so English literature courses are irrelevant. Honest, I\u2019m trying here, but this is so stupid that it defies any attempt at reason.<\/p>\n How insulting is it to assume that blacks and Hispanics will never, never, have money? How is it not racist to assume there are no blacks and Hispanics with money? It really seems like the professors are the racists here, or at least deeply ignorant of the foundations of American societal structure (or at least professional sportsball, where one is hard pressed not to notice any blacks or Hispanics there with a great deal of money).<\/p>\n The solution to this perceived problem of racism in trying to teach people not to hurt themselves taking on unpayable debts is good for laughs, at least:<\/p>\n A non-racist solution: Taxpayers should fund so-called \u201cbaby bonds\u201d for children born into low-income families, Darity and Hamilton propose. By the time these children reach college age, depending on their family\u2019s wealth, they would have between $20,000 and $60,000 in federal funds set aside for an education or business endeavor.<\/em><\/p>\n This is practically a joke unto itself. I should be obligated to just turn over this money to every 18 year old from a poor family? Even if I accepted this as sane, the numbers are wrong. A typical college education *today* runs around $100,000, and tuition (more accurately, expenses related to going to university) is increasing 8% or more a year. This means that by the time today\u2019s newborn reaches 18 years old, a degree will be $400,000.<\/p>\n Thanks to government-induced inflation, those \u201cbaby bonds\u201d will hardly put a dent in the cost of higher education. Whatever should we do?<\/p>\n Oh, let me guess: inflation is racist, too?<\/p>\n www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nWe\u2019re burying our kids in student loan debt, and I\u2019ve complained repeatedly that this is evil\u2026and been chastised by admin for suggesting that there\u2019s anything wrong with exploiting the ignorant, even in an institution that swears in writing (as per accreditation) to act with integrity.<\/p>\n