I’m really beginning to wonder. I subscribe to The College Fix and Campus Reform in my news reader. I get lots of news about how secular leftist political correctness has brainwashed the students to be very angry and self-indulgent. But whenever I read these stories, what I find is that they are almost never happening in STEM classrooms (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). It always seems to non-STEM professors (often feminists).
Here’s the first story from The College Fix:
The Muslim Student Association at San Diego State University is demanding that administrators combat Islamophobia by developing a “zero tolerance policy explicitly for Islamophobic speech and actions.”
[…]They demanded that the university adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward “Islamophobic speech,” mandatory bystander training, develop more courses on Islam, and increase funding for The Center for Intercultural Relations. Moreover, they demanded that “the SDSU administration address, alleviate, and eliminate systems of oppression that disproportionately target students of color, womyn, and all marginalized students on campus.”
Beth Chee, a representative for the university, told The College Fix in an email that the university has not issued a formal response to the demands, but members of the administration have reviewed the list and are currently “meeting internally and with the students to discuss their concerns.”
No word on whether these Muslim students want bystander training for Muslims in Muslim countries so they know to intervene in the frequent murdering, torturing and raping that goes on there. That’s what they are learning on college campuses – how to be offended and demanding, not how to battle real evil in countries where it really exists.
Here’s another from The College Fix – this time native Americans:
The latest example of an alleged “microaggression” hails from Syracuse University, where a student suggested her music scholar was guilty of one for not knowing the latest cultural music trends relevant to her heritage.
“One student said a music faculty member was unaware of the latest musical trends in this student’s culture. The student felt this was a micro-aggression against her,” recalls Dr. David Rubin on Syracuse.com. Rubin, a longtime distinguished professor and dean, attended the workshop and reported his observations.
[…]Reached for comment by The College Fix on Sunday, Rubin said he believes the female student in question was Native American.
Yes, this student actually thought that it was the job of others to learn the things that she liked, rather than learning the best music. And if you didn’t learn what she liked, then you were offending her, and she could call you out on it in public. I wonder if she will be able to get a job when she graduates with that attitude? I would not hire her.
Another from The College Fix, this time black students:
Saying that black women are “not hot” got a Colorado College student suspended for six months – appealed down from 21.
[…]His friend Lou Henriques was expelled.
Their jokes took place on a night where the Yik Yak conversation on campus was centered around the theme #BlackLivesMatter.
[…]“Some people screenshotted the most racial things said [from Yik Yak that night], and they blew them up onto banners and hung them up in the student center in front of the dean’s office,” Pryor said.
One of the screenshots was his six-word post. A Student Life disciplinary panel brought Pryor in for questioning, where he learned that someone had reported him as the poster for almost all of the offensive posts.
Senior Associate Dean of Students Rochelle Mason, Dean of Students Mike Edmonds and Assistant Dean of Students Cesar Cervantes decided in less than 24 hours that Pryor should be suspended for 21 months – the exact time it would take him to finish his degree – and prohibited from being on campus.
In addition, Pryor was forbidden from taking courses for credit at other universities because of his crass remark. Because Henriques had a prior disciplinary record, he was expelled for a similar post, Pryor said.
Where do the students learn to get obsessed with things that have nothing to do with finding work in a competitive private sector economy? They learn it from non-STEM professors. Here’s a professor of political science threatening students about global warming, and here’s a professor of racial issues telling all the white people that they’re racists. Can these non-STEM professors get real jobs in a competitive free market with skills like that? Of course not. They have jobs because the government hands stupid students free money, and tells them that a college degree in drinking and hooking up is the same as a college degree in biomedical engineering.
Most of these professors and college administrators that make the news seem to be people who would have nothing of value to offer customers in the private sector. And, unfortunately, they are teaching the students to have the same deluded, spoiled, entitled views that they have. I really think that we need to solve this problem by moving student loans back to the private sector. Instead of letting government officials buy votes with student loan generosity, we should let banks and private companies make the loans. Then there would be some expectation that the loans would be paid back. This would also reduce the cost of college, since the money would not just be a handout to the already extravagant colleges and universities.
We are $20 trillion in debt, thanks to Obama, and $1 trillion of that is outstanding student loans. We cannot afford to continue shoveling money to universities where spoiled brats are teaching the next generation of students to be spoiled brats.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
CAN YOU LEARN ANYTHING USEFUL IN A NON-STEM PROGRAM AT A SECULAR UNIVERSITY?
No. Next question please.
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I suspect that you might be able to get some mileage out of a business degree (maybe… I have a nice STEM degree, no personal experience there). Foreign language as a means of allowing the use of STEM degrees with people who don’t speak English probably has a place as well. I had to read a lot of German (and a couple of Spanish) publications (journal articles) in the course of graduate school.
Most of them though… no practical application of any sort.
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I agree that business is STEM. As long as there is some connection to testable aspects of reality, it has some value.
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Is it a good idea for the government to hand out no-strings-attached taxpayer money to people who want to wanting to “study” non-STEM subjects in school when we have $1 trillion of outstanding student loans already?
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Question: Can you learn anything useful in a non-STEM program at a secular university?
Answer: Yes; you can learn what will get you fired from your job and rendered unemployable for the remainder of your life, and what won’t. In our Orwellian future guaranteed to arrive when these kids get into voting booths in November, it will be vital to know what the local commissar of Allowable Opinion will decree is permissible for you to say, do, and think.
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That’s not useful. Oh wait. It’s useful to Democrat politicians who want to buy votes by shuffling money from the next generation of unborn Americans to this lazy, brainwashed generation of godless, immature leftist brats.
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You say that you would not hire them.
That assumes that they do not sue you for discrimination against their views. Or find a way to destroy your business reputation through slactivist social media crusades.
It may be like a mafia protection racket, where you need to hire them to keep bad things from happening to you.
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Yes, they seem to be good at suing people when they feel offended.
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Whether a non-STEM field is useful towards a certain end, like getting a good job, is one question. Whether you can learn anything from a non-STEM is another. The answer an obvious “yes.” Whether that knowledge is useful is another question, though it depends on what you mean by “useful.” Useful for getting a job? Useful for ministry? Useful for something else? Philosophy, for example, strikes me as very useful. Perhaps learning the difference between internalism and externalism in epistemology or the arguments for the existence of abstract objects in metaphysics are not useful for getting a job, but that field is good at teaching one to think logically, present good arguments, make good critiques of arguments, learn clear distinctions, identify hidden assumptions in people’s claims, write well, etc., all which strike me as useful, desirable skills. Knowing some metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics is very good for ministry and apologetics, since one can hardly do either of those things without it. This does not mean that is wise for some people, or even most people, to spend money on a philosophy degree, but there is knowledge to be gained in the field, as I suspect there is in other non-STEM fields.
None of this negates the problems with non-STEM fields at universities that WK and other commenters have brought up, but I think people are being more than a little immodest when they just say “no, not at all” to the question.
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I know those things!!!! But I learned them later by listening to J. P. Moreland lectures from the Biola “Defending the Faith” series, or from the DVD series that William Lane Craig does on Introduction to Philosophy!!!! I attend EPS conferences and the Wheaton conferences on philosophy!
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Yes, there are many useful ways to learn these things thanks to the internet and books. I’m listening to a Peter Williams lecture right now, which is nice because I’m not getting a degree in biblical studies or ancient history.
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Me neither, which Peter Williams? Peter J. Williams, Peter D. Williams or Peter S. Williams?
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J. Williams. Listening to this lecture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUOsBQYuZ9g
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I listened to that one last week, he also covers the Old Testament massacres in it.
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“Can you learn anything useful in a non-STEM program at a secular university?”
Are there no History or Language teachers in your world, WK? Unfortunately, a third-level qualification in the related subject area is kinda necessary if you want to teach the subject. So yes, you can learn something useful in a non-STEM subject if you actually want to be a productive member of society. Are the Humanities open to corruption? Sure. Are they open to teaching Liberal insanity? Sure. But so are the STEM disciplines. The whole world doesn’t simply revolve around private sector jobs, you know.
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Yes, you can. You just have to find the right (i.e. competent and well-regarded) professors and develop other skills, such as languages or something similar. You also have to be willing and capable to continue on to graduate work.
NT scholarship made me a Christian. I learned it at my secular university. I consider it pretty useful.
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