The vast majority of people think of university as that thing they have to do that gets them a good job, and funding universities as “keeping down the tuition I have to pay for that god job”.
Perhaps their view there is flawed but that is why states find universities, not free inquiry.
Rationalizing the tax exemptions of universities ignores the original reasoning - schools were created by Church and Crown, and thus taxation of them was simply silly. Now, state schools are possibly a runaway government agency, but that isn't cured by taxation. Religious schools should be protected not because they provide some amorphous good, but on the grounds of religion. Many other schools are presently religious but their religion is 'progressivism' and that's a simple fact to be recognized.
Re: Mandatory DEI statements at colleges and universities.
Rather than enlist government's power of the purse, I propose a one-sentence social movement at the moment of 'compliance':
"I try my best to treat every applicant/student/colleague as an individual."
I know, I know, it's a collective-action problem and all that. But might it catch on, if a critical mass of high-status, non-partisan charismatic professors provide entrepreneurship, inspiration, cover?
Making student loan debt dischargeable again, and only allowing universities to be lenders for higher ed fixes this in about two years. (tried to delete his double comment, but I guess you can't do that...)
"Then the human is incented to imitate the machine. A sort of Doom Loop as far as creativity is concerned."
There are possible roots to this that go back before a moneyballification of all entertainment. Chuck Klosterman wrote about reality TV 20 years ago in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and claims that there was a sort of reality TVification to people and their interactions and the fronts they presented to others in public. Maybe this was just his asymmetric distorted impression of a famous person interacting with the world, but it does make the case that Reality TV was the moneyball of television and the pre-social media attention economy. And there does seem to be something to this phenomenon of people playing to types when everyone is carrying around a digital mirror of narcissus in their pocket and curating an image there. Klosterman also has talked about now, not in his 2003 book, a man named Mark Fisher who had an idea he called "the slow cancellation of the future." It is something along the lines of there is a deck of cards of all these things in the culture and we keep combining and shuffling the deck to create new amalgamations, but each one seems to feel slightly more derivative because they are derivatives of the same deck of successful cultural and entertainment products of the past. Maybe with the amount of recorded information and entertainment content AI will put this idea on steroids and it will be plain to see before us when the deck can be compressed in time by the technological innovation. If people are sort imitating the machine and whatever was successful culturally and interpersonally in the world I would think it will also look like Tyler Cowen's Complacent Class on steroids.
All of the Hess recommendations are good and reasonable, tho likely not sufficient.
"Defund the ideologues. " As is quoted here. It's not enough.
Require non-profit non-partisan educational organizations to have at least 20% Republicans & 20% Democrats - registered and publicly supporting at least 2 of the last 3 Presidential candidates of that Party. Those that don't lose their non-profit status and their endowments get full IRS tax liability as ...
some partisan legal organization.
Media is giving up the illusion of non-partisanship, so should more academics. Some 30-40% voters are registered as Dems, and a similar number as Reps. The willingness and ability of colleges to discriminate against Republicans is the key reason for the increasing polarization as well as many other social & political problems.
This affirmative action for Reps is more accurately called anti-discrimination by Dems against Reps. Reps should insist that all non-partisan tax advantaged orgs are required, in practice, to not discriminate.
Rob's notes on gossip is paywalled - but he's got a fine old essay reprint on Happiness vs Accuracy:
"In some ways, rationality can be self-defeating. If you are feeling joy, you can easily talk yourself out of it. You can change your mood by reasoning your way into misery.
But if you are feeling miserable, good luck trying to talk yourself out of it. "
I’m all-in regarding free inquiry but disagree that is the mission of colleges and universities. The public good they provide is education, regardless of whether free inquiry is included, regardless of whether free inquiry makes it better.
I agree with what The Ruffian says except for one small but important point. Not everyone herds to the latest trend. Spotify shifts the demand curve which then shifts the supply curve. The shifts might be small or big but equilibrium is unlikely to be at all or nothing.
While non-profits are protected from shareholders, they are not protected from markets. They still have to attract donors and/or customers. I see no reason why having shareholders is inherently better. It comes with both advantages and disadvantages, just like non-profits. An economy having both options is almost certainly better than only one. It provides more diversity and strength.
"What we have here, for now at least, is a machine for generating plausible bullshit."
In other words, building a machine to do something at which we were already really good.
The vast majority of people think of university as that thing they have to do that gets them a good job, and funding universities as “keeping down the tuition I have to pay for that god job”.
Perhaps their view there is flawed but that is why states find universities, not free inquiry.
Rationalizing the tax exemptions of universities ignores the original reasoning - schools were created by Church and Crown, and thus taxation of them was simply silly. Now, state schools are possibly a runaway government agency, but that isn't cured by taxation. Religious schools should be protected not because they provide some amorphous good, but on the grounds of religion. Many other schools are presently religious but their religion is 'progressivism' and that's a simple fact to be recognized.
Re: Mandatory DEI statements at colleges and universities.
Rather than enlist government's power of the purse, I propose a one-sentence social movement at the moment of 'compliance':
"I try my best to treat every applicant/student/colleague as an individual."
I know, I know, it's a collective-action problem and all that. But might it catch on, if a critical mass of high-status, non-partisan charismatic professors provide entrepreneurship, inspiration, cover?
Making student loan debt dischargeable again, and only allowing universities to be lenders for higher ed fixes this in about two years. (tried to delete his double comment, but I guess you can't do that...)
"Then the human is incented to imitate the machine. A sort of Doom Loop as far as creativity is concerned."
There are possible roots to this that go back before a moneyballification of all entertainment. Chuck Klosterman wrote about reality TV 20 years ago in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and claims that there was a sort of reality TVification to people and their interactions and the fronts they presented to others in public. Maybe this was just his asymmetric distorted impression of a famous person interacting with the world, but it does make the case that Reality TV was the moneyball of television and the pre-social media attention economy. And there does seem to be something to this phenomenon of people playing to types when everyone is carrying around a digital mirror of narcissus in their pocket and curating an image there. Klosterman also has talked about now, not in his 2003 book, a man named Mark Fisher who had an idea he called "the slow cancellation of the future." It is something along the lines of there is a deck of cards of all these things in the culture and we keep combining and shuffling the deck to create new amalgamations, but each one seems to feel slightly more derivative because they are derivatives of the same deck of successful cultural and entertainment products of the past. Maybe with the amount of recorded information and entertainment content AI will put this idea on steroids and it will be plain to see before us when the deck can be compressed in time by the technological innovation. If people are sort imitating the machine and whatever was successful culturally and interpersonally in the world I would think it will also look like Tyler Cowen's Complacent Class on steroids.
All of the Hess recommendations are good and reasonable, tho likely not sufficient.
"Defund the ideologues. " As is quoted here. It's not enough.
Require non-profit non-partisan educational organizations to have at least 20% Republicans & 20% Democrats - registered and publicly supporting at least 2 of the last 3 Presidential candidates of that Party. Those that don't lose their non-profit status and their endowments get full IRS tax liability as ...
some partisan legal organization.
Media is giving up the illusion of non-partisanship, so should more academics. Some 30-40% voters are registered as Dems, and a similar number as Reps. The willingness and ability of colleges to discriminate against Republicans is the key reason for the increasing polarization as well as many other social & political problems.
This affirmative action for Reps is more accurately called anti-discrimination by Dems against Reps. Reps should insist that all non-partisan tax advantaged orgs are required, in practice, to not discriminate.
Rob's notes on gossip is paywalled - but he's got a fine old essay reprint on Happiness vs Accuracy:
https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/the-happiness-accuracy-tradeoff-and
"In some ways, rationality can be self-defeating. If you are feeling joy, you can easily talk yourself out of it. You can change your mood by reasoning your way into misery.
But if you are feeling miserable, good luck trying to talk yourself out of it. "
Don't Worry, Be Happy...
I’m all-in regarding free inquiry but disagree that is the mission of colleges and universities. The public good they provide is education, regardless of whether free inquiry is included, regardless of whether free inquiry makes it better.
I agree with what The Ruffian says except for one small but important point. Not everyone herds to the latest trend. Spotify shifts the demand curve which then shifts the supply curve. The shifts might be small or big but equilibrium is unlikely to be at all or nothing.
While non-profits are protected from shareholders, they are not protected from markets. They still have to attract donors and/or customers. I see no reason why having shareholders is inherently better. It comes with both advantages and disadvantages, just like non-profits. An economy having both options is almost certainly better than only one. It provides more diversity and strength.