Tag Archives: University

News

Student who was fired for opposing homosexuality loses court case

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From the Christian Post.

Excerpt:

A Christian student at a Georgia university who was expelled from her school’s counseling program for expressing her disagreement with homosexuality has lost a court case against the school.

“(Jennifer) Keeton’s speech and conduct were evidently impelled by the absolutist philosophical character of her beliefs, but that character does not entitle her to university accommodation and it is irrelevant to the court’s analysis,” wrote Judge J. Randall Hall, of the Southern District of Georgia, siding with the university. “Neutrality as a legal standard is immutable, it does not bend to the strength or tenor of personal conviction.”

Keeton refused to change the way she engages with homosexual students because of her religious beliefs, and was expelled from the counseling program at Augusta State University in 2010, which stressed that the program should not discriminate against students regardless of their sexual orientation.

[…]Keeton was initially placed on probation, and school officials required her to follow a “remediation plan.” This included attending sensitivity training, going to gay pride events and writing papers on her experiences and the lessons she had learned in tolerance. When Keeton refused to comply, she was removed from her position.

“The remediation plan imposed on Keeton pursuant to those policies placed limits on her speech and burdened her religious beliefs, but, as the allegations show, the plan was motivated by a legitimate pedagogical interest in cultivating a professional demeanor and concern that she might prove unreceptive to certain issues and openly judge her clients,” the judge said. “The allegations show, in sum, that while Keeton was motivated by her religious beliefs, Defendants were not.”

Hall added that the American School Counselor Association’s Ethical Standards for School Counselors clearly states that counselors cannot impose their own values on clients, and must take on each case from a neutral viewpoint. The judge also defended Augusta State’s remediation plan, stating that it did not infringe on Keeton’s first amendment rights, but was an attempt to get her to comply with the school’s policies.

In a similar case, Julea Ward from Eastern Michigan University was also expelled from her counseling job because of her views on homosexuality. She had requested that a gay client be transferred to another counselor, which the school argued went against its policies, despite the fact that it allows client transfers based on non-religious reasons. A lower-court initially ruled in favor of Eastern Michigan University, but the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision, arguing that Ward’s constitutional rights were violated.

Remember, these schools very often get public funding, which means that Christians are paying to have this done to them. That’s what you get when you vote for more goverment and more grants for universities. These places are generally not our friends – across the board. Also, think of how she gave them thousands of dollars in tuition.

What’s the lesson here? I think that the lesson is that the safest way to avoid losing thousands of dollars is to study STEM-related fields in a secular university or any field in a Christian university. The best schools for Christians are listed here. I agree that Wheaton College should be left off the list and I think that Grove City, Biola, Houston Baptist and Hillsdale are the best, especially Grove City. Christians have to be careful where we go to school and what we study now.

One last point. It is a good idea for Christians to learn how to talk about their convictions on moral issues using evidence, and not talking about their faith or the Bible to people who don’t like us very much. The Bible informs your faith, but that is not something you share with non-Christians who are hostile to you.

News

Rising student debt will impact future housing demand

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Bad news for homeowners from the California Association of REALTORS. (H/T Captain Capitalism)

Excerpt:

At May’s midyear legislative meetings held by the National Association of Realtors in Washington, DC, a panel of experts in a session titled “Shifting Demographics and Housing Choice: A Whole New World?” discussed future housing market demand and trends to keep in mind as we think about the future of housing in the U.S.

The biggest takeaway was that baby boomers will increasingly contribute to housing supply as they age, yet echo boomers are in a difficult position to absorb the inventory. The echo boomers, also called Millennials, are those currently ages 17 to 31, and account for 62 million people. And although future housing demand highly dependents on different rates of household formation among Echo Boomers, this generation is in a precarious position.

In addition to having seen the worst housing downturn, these younger buyers have been hit hard by the recession. Faced with an uncertain job market, no real income growth, tighter mortgage lending rules, and mounting student and credit card debt, it is no surprise that some of them do not put priority on homeownership.

The concern over student debt is particularly alarming. According to a number of recent research studies, college seniors who graduated with student loans each owed an average of $25,250, up significantly from an average of $12,750 in 1996. Parents have accumulated student debt as well, $34,000 on average. The aggregate amount of student loan debt in the U.S. is over $1 trillion currently. The pace at which debt is mounting adds to the concern. Between March 31, of this year and 2011, student loan debt rose by $64 billion. However, over the same period, all other forms of household debt fell by $383 billion. Put another way, since the peak in household debt in the third quarter of 2008, student loan debt has increased by $293 billion, while other forms of debt fell by $1.53 trillion.

The rise in student debt is attributable to rising cost of education. Since 1978, the cost of tuition in the U.S. has increased more than 900 percent, 650 points above inflation. Between1990 and 2010 alone, tuition rose by 116 percent while the median household incomes inched a mere 2.1 percent.

The libertarian Cato Institute knows what the problem is (see my bold below) and they know how to fix it too.

Excerpt:

The real answer is for the federal government to get out of the higher education subsidy business altogether, as a Cato essay argues.

The following are some key points from the essay:

  • The effect of subsidy programs, in part, is to impose taxes on blue collar workers—who have not attended college—to pay for the tuition of future white-collar professionals. Why should the government subsidize future high earners at the expense of average working people?
  • Federal student aid programs transfer wealth from taxpayers to academic institutions. That’s because the rise in student subsidies over the decades appears to have fueled inflation in education costs. Tuition and other college costs have soared as subsidies have risen. College cost inflation induced by federal aid probably hurts low-income families—the people that federal aid was supposed to target—more than others.
  • Federal aid has probably helped increase student enrollment, but many of those additional students may not have been ready, or suited, for college. This is evidenced by the rising shares of college students who require remedial work, and the fact that institutions have lowered their standards to adapt to the rise in second-rate students.
  • Increasing top-down control and subsidization of higher education from Washington is creating a threat to the strength of the American system. As we have seen in K-12 education, the growth in federal subsidies is usually accompanied by calls for more oversight, micromanagement, and rising levels of red tape imposed by Washington.
  • Federal student loan and grant programs have been subject to waste and fraud for decades. The Pell grant program (which SAFRA would enlarge) costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars per year in fraud. Another ongoing problem is the high default rate on student loan programs.

Will the student debt problem be fixed through privatization? Not while Obama is in office. The universities are dominated by secular leftists – they are the ones who benefit from these rising tuition costs. Obama isn’t going to do a thing to stop them from getting your money through subsidies, otherwise he would lose lots of campaign donations!

In the meantime, the best policy is to make sure that you do your degree in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering or math). Non-STEM degrees, according to Captain Capitalism, are not recommended.

News

Going to university? Then be aware of the secular leftist thought police

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Here’s a fine book I enjoyed by my friend Ari Mendelson, which talks about the dangers of political correctness on campus.

Excerpt:

Lured by brochures promising limitless intellectual freedom, Jeff Jackson arrives at picturesque Tinsley College, eager to experience college life to the fullest. He does not know that the freedom he has been promised is in short supply at Tinsley, a college so dedicated to leftist ideals that the administration changed the name of the anthropology department to “anthrogynology” in order to make the name more “gender inclusive.”

Jeff makes the mistake of believing that the renowned Professor Bancroft Tarlton would be willing to debate the left wing politics that the professor advocates in his classes. Not realizing that there are just some questions one does not ask on a college campus, Jeff submits an essay outlining his provocative theories about happiness and human sexuality.

Professor Tarlton is not the only one furious at Jeff for his lack of devotion to left wing norms. Calling himself a “pomosexual” and believing Jeff to be not only a homophobe, but a “pomophobe” as well, Carl Fitzgerald, Jeff’s classmate, begins a feud with Jeff. The battle escalates from insults, to vandalism, to shattered love affairs and a dorm room inhabited by a fainting goat. In a college obsessed with political correctness, a clash between the writer of a “homophobic” essay and the “pomosexual” victim of a college prank can only end one way: with a showdown in a campus courtroom.

You can click the link to get an electronic copy for $0.99. You will get many times more enjoyment out of it than that. It’s a nice little introduction to parents about what really goes on in the liberal arts departments of most universities.

University is a fine thing as long as you go there to learn math, science, technology or engineering. If you go there to study anything else, all you will learn is how to parrot the opinions of your professor. Any dissent will be met with bad grades, and possibly expulsion. There is no focus on producing value outside of the STEM departments. Not only is it a waste of money to be indoctrinated, but it destroys your ability to think critically and independently.

Note: I have a BS and MS in the hard sciences, and that’s what I recommend to everyone going to college. Engineering, math and technology – you can’t go wrong with actual marketable skills.