Haha, that reminds me: I knew a woman a few years ago who was a history professor at a small college in PA. She was writing a "Women's History" book at the time about how Betsy Ross was the first American intersectional feminist or something like that. She was a walking caricature of the miseducated American college professor, really. She was also one of the most unhappy people I've ever met. I always wondered which came first: was she depressed from having spent too long in academia, or did she opt into academia because its worldview validated her depression?
Let me add to my previous comment by pointing to the dilution of microbiology thanks to the many Tyler Cowens that have been writing in all places about how important their very little pieces of knowledge are to whatever is happening with Covid. A new example of this nonsense is this piece
The massification of education at all levels, including Ph.D. programs, has attracted all sorts of people willing to do anything but study to get a degree in X-studies. Massification always leads to dilution of whatever was supposed to have high market value. We can see it also in blogging, publishing, reporting, and anything related to communicating ideas. Sorry, Arnold, but people like Tayler Cowen have diluted the value of economics by throwing peanuts to get monkeys.
I agree that when institutions open up to the masses, things change, and often for the worse. But I don't know why you have to throw around gratuitous insults to make that point.
I use the example of Tyler Cowen because many readers of your posts also read MR. I have been reading MR and other blogs on economics for years. You can see how different Alex Tabarrok and Tyler are in their approaches to blogging. I can understand Alex's arguments to support or reject a conjecture because they are based on economics but Tyler obfuscates his conjecture and his arguments are, to say the least, incomplete (he prefers to list ambiguous ideas that never amount to an argument supporting or rejecting his vague conjecture). He throws vague ideas to his readers as if he were throwing peanuts to get monkeys. You can read many comments but most readers ignore each other because each one is focused and entertained by the peanut he or she got. He's maximizing the number of readers who commented on his posts. He represents the dark side of massification. It looks like he wants to be the Dark Pope of Massification.
BTW, remember that massification in the consumption of most goods and services has been the outcome of a growth process in which competition for lowering costs and diversifying quality allowed the expansion of their markets. That massification differs from the political massification of access to education and health care. Although in both cases we can apply your idea of a subsidized demand and a constrained supply, there is no excess demand for education because the "bad" beneficiaries exit before the mandatory number of years or they are given a piece of paper signed by an unknown administrator, while the excess demand for health care is "managed" and "manipulated" until it disappears (or the patients die).
2. The subsidization of education has attracted all sort of people willing to do anything to give people degrees in exchange for money. Unlike most other kinds of communicating ideas though, there's not much of a public good problem with respect to the "idea" of education.
In publishing and reporting, the supply has dramatically increased because the cost of supplying fell. OK, I can live with that. It's a market outcome, more or less.
In higher education, both the true cost of supply has certainly fallen, but what's different is supply is heavily subsidized. Also demand (again unlike the other industries) has increased significantly due to regulation and subsidy. This is a the heart of the problem... a vast market out of equilibrium. If you want to get a better outcome:
1. Reduce subsidies to both producers and consumers.
2. Reduce the vast multitude of regulations that de jure and de facto require higher education.
The rest will, within reason, take care of itself.
If "woke" is to be a worthwhile derogatory, it needs more discipline. Studying women's history is not "intrinsically" woke and there's no such thing as one old fashioned way of doing history that is objectively best and in no need of improvement (history is not the one academic discipline exempt from possible improvement).
Agreed, but what are the indices of proper discipline for history, especially the niche field of women and queer history? How do you prevent historical censors on one end, and fabrication of history ("wokeism") on the other?
And they're not just focusing on Woke research topics...
"Krug was denounced by other academics, among them C.V. Vitolo-Haddad, a black/Cuban graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, who accused her of ‘performing blackface’ and of being a ‘Kansas cracker’. And you’ll never guess what happened next! Yes, Vitolo-Haddad (pronouns: they/them) inevitably also turned out to be white, and it was reported that ‘C.V. has confirmed that they are Italian’."
Krug was a Historian, Vitolo-Haddad was a PhD candidate in Journalism and Mass communications. Based on the latter's medium profile, she seemed well on her way to a successful career "studying" white nationalism and modern nazism.
Haha, that reminds me: I knew a woman a few years ago who was a history professor at a small college in PA. She was writing a "Women's History" book at the time about how Betsy Ross was the first American intersectional feminist or something like that. She was a walking caricature of the miseducated American college professor, really. She was also one of the most unhappy people I've ever met. I always wondered which came first: was she depressed from having spent too long in academia, or did she opt into academia because its worldview validated her depression?
I am at least encouraged that there are educators who push back against the postmodern approach to history. For example: https://voegelinview.com/history-forgotten-and-remembered/
Let me add to my previous comment by pointing to the dilution of microbiology thanks to the many Tyler Cowens that have been writing in all places about how important their very little pieces of knowledge are to whatever is happening with Covid. A new example of this nonsense is this piece
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/health/coronavirus-omicron-next-pandemic.html
The massification of education at all levels, including Ph.D. programs, has attracted all sorts of people willing to do anything but study to get a degree in X-studies. Massification always leads to dilution of whatever was supposed to have high market value. We can see it also in blogging, publishing, reporting, and anything related to communicating ideas. Sorry, Arnold, but people like Tayler Cowen have diluted the value of economics by throwing peanuts to get monkeys.
I agree that when institutions open up to the masses, things change, and often for the worse. But I don't know why you have to throw around gratuitous insults to make that point.
I use the example of Tyler Cowen because many readers of your posts also read MR. I have been reading MR and other blogs on economics for years. You can see how different Alex Tabarrok and Tyler are in their approaches to blogging. I can understand Alex's arguments to support or reject a conjecture because they are based on economics but Tyler obfuscates his conjecture and his arguments are, to say the least, incomplete (he prefers to list ambiguous ideas that never amount to an argument supporting or rejecting his vague conjecture). He throws vague ideas to his readers as if he were throwing peanuts to get monkeys. You can read many comments but most readers ignore each other because each one is focused and entertained by the peanut he or she got. He's maximizing the number of readers who commented on his posts. He represents the dark side of massification. It looks like he wants to be the Dark Pope of Massification.
BTW, remember that massification in the consumption of most goods and services has been the outcome of a growth process in which competition for lowering costs and diversifying quality allowed the expansion of their markets. That massification differs from the political massification of access to education and health care. Although in both cases we can apply your idea of a subsidized demand and a constrained supply, there is no excess demand for education because the "bad" beneficiaries exit before the mandatory number of years or they are given a piece of paper signed by an unknown administrator, while the excess demand for health care is "managed" and "manipulated" until it disappears (or the patients die).
1. Is this the first documented case of TCDS?
2. The subsidization of education has attracted all sort of people willing to do anything to give people degrees in exchange for money. Unlike most other kinds of communicating ideas though, there's not much of a public good problem with respect to the "idea" of education.
In publishing and reporting, the supply has dramatically increased because the cost of supplying fell. OK, I can live with that. It's a market outcome, more or less.
In higher education, both the true cost of supply has certainly fallen, but what's different is supply is heavily subsidized. Also demand (again unlike the other industries) has increased significantly due to regulation and subsidy. This is a the heart of the problem... a vast market out of equilibrium. If you want to get a better outcome:
1. Reduce subsidies to both producers and consumers.
2. Reduce the vast multitude of regulations that de jure and de facto require higher education.
The rest will, within reason, take care of itself.
If "woke" is to be a worthwhile derogatory, it needs more discipline. Studying women's history is not "intrinsically" woke and there's no such thing as one old fashioned way of doing history that is objectively best and in no need of improvement (history is not the one academic discipline exempt from possible improvement).
Agreed, but what are the indices of proper discipline for history, especially the niche field of women and queer history? How do you prevent historical censors on one end, and fabrication of history ("wokeism") on the other?
And they're not just focusing on Woke research topics...
"Krug was denounced by other academics, among them C.V. Vitolo-Haddad, a black/Cuban graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, who accused her of ‘performing blackface’ and of being a ‘Kansas cracker’. And you’ll never guess what happened next! Yes, Vitolo-Haddad (pronouns: they/them) inevitably also turned out to be white, and it was reported that ‘C.V. has confirmed that they are Italian’."
https://edwest.substack.com/p/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-being
Krug was a Historian, Vitolo-Haddad was a PhD candidate in Journalism and Mass communications. Based on the latter's medium profile, she seemed well on her way to a successful career "studying" white nationalism and modern nazism.
Interesting link Thanks