October 15

 We have a very chilly morning (temperature in the mid 30sF) and sunny. We had a good rain last night which is good because I disconnected the hose and would have to bring out my large watering can. I have a couple of plants I want to take out. Otherwise don't have much to do out in the gardens. Soon the patio should get covered with fallen leaves which I will sweep up for mulch around the plants I hope will survive the winter.

I found a couple of articles that reflect the conditions in higher education. As this one notes the current conditions have been brewing for a couple of generations and is now reaching a peak of dysfunction. If, as the author contends, half of GenZ is forgoing college, it marks a significant sea change our media and pundits haven't yet caught up with. The local news has continued to tout all the local kids who get scholarships and service organizations that provide those scholarships. An interesting poiat is the claim that our society has economic incentives in the situation beyond the profits garnered by the student loan industry and the colleges/universities. It keeps large numbers of young people out of the labor force and uncounted in the unemployment statistics. That reminds me of assertions by some historians about one of the causes of the Crusades: it got a large number of aggressive men armed with sharp pointy things out of Europe and doing their damage elsewhere on other populations.

I have seen several articles about the NYU teacher or organic chemistry who was fired recently. This is one that brings up some interesting points most of them missed by most accounts. Organic chemistry is a hard subject as I know because it took me two tries to get a C average in the subject. My instructor gloried in flunking most of his students. I also got a C in Biochemistry from a even more stringent prof at another school on the first try but my numerical score would have given me a B+ or A- in any other course. The real problem was, and is, the use of these courses to weed out students. I had classmates who would have made excellent doctors but they couldn't get past Organic while a couple of others who had all the empathy of a rock got in because the aced the course. One of those latter students  was admitted to the medical program which would lead to an MD but rejected from the MD/PhD program because he scored abysmally on the English portion of the entrance exams. Degrees have simply become a credential that may or may not have relevance to whatever work one will do later. I remember the story from more than a decade ago about a law firm which insisted all employees have at least a bachelor's degree--even to work in the mail room.

What both stories underline is the way students have become consumers and colleges are just another service that has to cater to their customers' whims, complaints, and ambitions.