Discussion > Nine Causes of Scientific Decline in American Academia
I once asked a recruiter who was bragging on his institution's higher than average student loan repayment rate if that qualified the institution's student's for a lower interest rate. He was dumbfounded by the question, but there were titters from the audience.
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kim
dang, 'students'. Where's my moneysworth?
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kim
This is Cambridge, England in the early Seventies :) :
DailyMail:
Painful days with my right-on Cambridge professor
... and the Left's vice-like grip on our universities, writes TOM UTLEY
Robert Christopher
Success needs more than just the Internet:
Judith Curry: The radically fragmented and decentralized age of information
This post was triggered by a superb essay written by Justin Murphy, entitled The affective politics of keeping it real.
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Myself, Pielke Jr, Pat Michaels and others with perspectives that diverge from the alarm narrative have paid a heavy academic price. We have all found alternative paths and landed on our feet, but I’m sure that their are individuals that have paid a heavier price.
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I love this phrase from Murphy’s essay:
I have been able to cultivate and maintain an energetic, autonomous, creative intellectual life that feels to me on the right track intellectually and politically.
This perfectly articulates how I feel, but I had to resign my academic position to reach this point. Right now, the politically correct world of academia seems stifling to efforts to ‘cultivate an energetic, autonomous, creative intellectual life.’
Robert Christopher
Education has become an end not the means to an end.
TinyCO2
"I have been able to cultivate and maintain an energetic, autonomous, creative intellectual life that feels to me on the right track intellectually and politically.
This perfectly articulates how I feel, but I had to resign my academic position to reach this point"
This is how I felt in my last years at UEA (post Climategate II) yet I found myself in a position where I did not have to resign. Instead, from many at UEA, I was given support and encouragement to continue teaching my controversial stance regarding climate change. Yet when I tried to explain this here and at WUWT I was met with derision. UEA could do nothing right.
Supertroll
I have no dount that individually many academics are lovely people, it's en masse that they're a bunch of [insert epithet]. If they hadn't reacted as a gang when Steve M questioned the hockey stick, they might not have got into this mess. They've broken the process whereby they keep the science's more fanciful ideas in check. Instead of agreeing with genuine criticism, they've defended everything. How can you take the good stuff on trust when they're just as adament with the obvious rubbish?
TinyCO2
Yet when I tried to explain this here and at WUWT I was met with derision. UEA could do nothing right.
Jun 21, 2017 at 2:00 PM | Supertroll
Unfortunately for you, UEA and all with open curious minds at UEA, the "Management" at UEA and CRU, demonstrated they had no interest in honesty in Climate Science.
The former Soviet Union could demonstrate with certified statistics over 99% support for Stalin, by shooting those that disagreed. The Hockey Team have attempted to kill the careers of any dissenters.
Thank you Supertroll, for proving that not all UEA Scientists (past and present) can be bullied!
golf charlie
Most of this information has already been written about in other articles, but it is a good summary and highlights just how universities have changed since the 1960s and the challenges ahead, not just in 'Climate Change Science':
1. Unnatural, politically-spurred growth ... quantity instead of quality approach
2. The takeover of the universities and colleges by the New Left
3. Foreign influence ... [EU] Environmental politics ... international editorial boards of scientific journals
4. The rise of "studies" with predetermined results ... confrontational environmentalism ... post-normal Science
5. Al Gore!
6. Affirmative action and diversity policies ... affirmative action appointees didn’t need any qualifications
7. Academic scientists’ blindness
8. Suppression of the independent science
9. Universities’ abrogation of their duty
[But,] I know that thousands of outstanding scientists work and teach in academia. Academic institutions are to blame for suppressing or ignoring their contributions.
AmericanThinker: Nine Causes of Scientific Decline in American Academia
This must have a knock on effect after these graduates leave and enter the workplace.