Tag Archives: University

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Hope: California set to offer college credit for online courses

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There are forces in motion that could turn the tide against the secular left, and one of them is online education.

Excerpt:

A bill in California’s Legislature would force public colleges to award students credit for taking some outside online courses. It looks likely to pass, and its implications for higher education are vast.

A successful monopoly has an impregnable wall around some much-desired good, such as education, and controls the only door.

The higher education establishment in America has always operated this way. But cracks are starting to appear in its wall. A significant one opened this week.

On Wednesday, a bill was introduced in California’s state Senate to require public colleges to give students credit for online courses from outside providers.

If students can’t take an introductory or remedial class in the traditional way, they can turn to offerings from businesses such as Coursera, Udacity and StraighterLine, or the nonprofit EdX, a joint project of Harvard and MIT.

The bill looks likely to pass in some form.

[…]For the first time, colleges would have to offer credit for courses outside the academic establishment. As StraighterLine founder Burck Smith told the New York Times, “This would be a big change, acknowledging that colleges aren’t the only ones who can offer college courses.”

Up to now, online teaching could offer plenty of knowledge but not the credits leading to degrees.

Colleges could refuse to recognize the courses, and most did. That balance of power would shift if Steinberg’s bill becomes law.

That would be the start of real competition.

If online courses can teach more students just as well and cost the public less, the professors behind the walls will have to change their hidebound ways or lose more business to outsiders.

Either way, the public would be well served.

The faster we can disrupt the current higher education monopoly and focus students back on getting marketable skills at a reasonable price, the better off we’ll be. The financial crisis actually helps with this, because young people now have to be more serious about what they are choosing to study and how much they are paying to study. We have a chance here to turn the tide. It’s good news!

News

Gunman says he was acting on anti-white views that he learned in college

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The Daily Caller reports.

Excerpt:

The man who murdered one woman and paralyzed another during a 2011 Atlanta shooting spree testified at his trial last week that he was motivated by beliefs he had acquired about white people when he was an anthropology major at the University of West Georgia.

Nkosi Thandiwe, 23, argued that the bizarre political views he encountered — and accepted — in college led to a mental state that should have been grounds for a defense of temporary insanity, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

“I was trying to prove a point that Europeans had colonized the world, and as a result of that, we see a lot of evil today,” Thandiwe testified. “In terms of slavery, it was something that needed to be answered for. I was trying to spread the message of making white people mend.”

Thandiwe explained in court that he had attended an event designed to address concerns about racial inequality the night before the shooting spree. He became furious when he saw two white people there.

“I was upset,” Thandiwe said. “I was still upset Friday. I took the gun to work because I was still upset from Thursday night.”

Maybe we should have a ban on guns – a ban applicable only to Democrats. Guns don’t kill people, Democrats kill people.

Dennis Prager’s latest column looks at a college student was brainwashed to have obviously false views on war and foreign policy. Be careful what you study in college – it’s better to stick with math, science, technology and engineering – especially during a socialism-induced recession. Stick with things that can be measured and tested to insulate yourself from leftist speculations. You want to get a degree in something useful, not in leftist dogma.

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Department of Education investigates school over Bible and homosexuality comments

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From Christian Post, a story about how far the secular left will go to censor anyone who makes them feel bad.

Excerpt:

A federal investigation has begun in an Alabama school district after a Junior ROTC instructor allegedly expressed his belief that the Bible does not support the homosexual lifestyle during class.

The U.S. Department of Education recently sent a letter to Huntsville City Schools Superintendent Casey Wardynski, informing him that the department will be looking into the incident that occurred in April at Grissom High School.

A female student in the class was offended after the instructor, 1st Sgt. Lynn Vanzandt, expressed his beliefs about same-sex relationships. The 15-year-old student and her mother, Mia Gonzales, then contacted a local gay advocacy group, GLBT Advocacy and Youth Services, which complained to the school on the student’s behalf.

“My first thought was, ‘What if there was a gay student in that class that looked up to that instructor?'” Gonzales told AL.com in August. “I’m not arguing with what people believe. But what if this one student would have committed suicide? That was a concern for me.”

[…]In May an attorney from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based atheist organization, also emailed the district’s superintendent to complain about the situation. The email says Vanzandt “bullied” students and “preached” his beliefs to them, and claims at least one student left the class in tears.

It also acknowledges that Vanzandt apologized to students, but says an apology isn’t enough.

Got that? If you disagree with homosexuality, then you are bullying someone who might feel so bad that they commit suicide. Therefore, you need to be intimidated and silenced so that you don’t offend anyone by disagreeing with their view.