Newmark's Door

At the university I worked for "Elsevier" was a really dirty word, like "pedophile". I think they'll need to change their business model substantially and soon.

Concise summary by Bryan Caplan of one his most recent arguments.

Could be interesting.

A Senior Williams [College] Professor and I will be debating the following resolution: Resolved: Williams is disintegrating. Each Monday, one of us will make an argument. One week later, the other will respond. We will debate until we grow bored with the exercise. Readers are welcome to chime in at any time. Senior Professor goes first:

Quorites discuss. This doesn't surprise me: 

Mostly MIT is difficult because the material is hard.

Take an average university course. Speed it up to go at twice the pace. Double or triple the homework. Make the exams harder, then put on the exam at least one question that you would expect the strongest student in your high school to be unable to answer. While you are at it, make sure that the hardest question on the math exam is one that your high school math teacher would be unlikely to be able to answer. Welcome to MIT.

Victor Davis Hanson:

Yet if one walks through the local Barnes & Noble bookstore, reviews the non-fiction best-seller lists, scans Amazon’s most-read categories, or looks through book ads in popular magazines, one is struck how well biographies of Churchill and Grant sell, and how histories of war and peace, exploration, and political careers capture the public interest — reminding us that the fault of declining college interest in the liberal arts may be not in the stars of vocationalism or the wrong values of students but rather deep within the university faculty and administration themselves.

They left out film strips which were all the rage when I was a kid. But otherwise it's instructive to just how long "technology" has been supposed to cure the ills of American public schools.

I would tell this story to any kid applying to one or more selective colleges: it's a crapshoot. Girl was rejected by Berkeley, Caltech, Yale, Princeton, Georgia Tech, and Rice.

But she was accepted by Harvard and Stanford.

My daughters' alma mater, Duke, gets slammed.

My wife and I didn't homeschool our kids, but this sounds like thoughtful and useful advice.

Examples:

2."Your parents are literally the worst part of my job."

3."The weed smell doesn't magically disappear between the parking lot and my classroom."

UPDATE: Link fixed now.