Archive for the ‘Stupid College Culture’ Category

It’s Hard to do a Blog

Monday, April 11th, 2016

When others do it so much better.

The Libertarian Solution to College Sports

Sunday, January 17th, 2016

Arnold Kling agrees with me (and Glen Reynolds):

I suspect that the romanticization of college sports comes from the same human tendency that produces the romanticization of government. Lots of people will tell you that they hate pro football and hate pro basketball, but they love college sports. Because it is non-profit.

Source: The Libertarian Solution to College Sports | askblog

I share Arnold’s general antipathy toward non-profits.

Alonzo Stagg Bowl at Community Beer Company

Thursday, December 17th, 2015

My alma mater, the University of St. Thomas, will play the hated Purple Raiders of Mount Union tomorrow night at 6:05pm CST in the Alonzo Stagg Bowl. This will be Mount Union’s 11th straight trip to the championship game. The Tommies were last there in 2012. A game that was lost to Mount Union.

I’m going to watch the game at Community Beer Company located at 1530 Inspiration Dr., Suite 200, Dallas, TX 75207.

Come join me for a Mosaic or Public Ale. Heck, come join me for whatever of their beers you might like.

It will be interesting to see if this post on my unread blog gets any notice…

Probably not.

But if you’re a St. Thomas alum. The watching party in Dallas is at Community Beer Company…

This Came Up at Dinner Tonight

Tuesday, November 24th, 2015

Apparently the Deuce’s roommate sells dope at Big State U.

College Athletic Departments

Monday, November 16th, 2015

I used to work in higher education. I was in admissions at Directional U (we’re going to ignore that wasted nine months running a business school in Mauritius). I also used to write and post more on the problems of higher education, particularly the problems with borrowing money to attend college. There are a lot of people that do  that better than me. I’m mostly going to leave it to them.

I am going to shift the focus a little.

I’m going to start posting about college and university athletic departments. When you look at a place like the University of Texas’ Athletic Department, it is sort of easy to see and understand how it came to be in its current state. If you had no knowledge of college athletic departments (such as is the case in Europe), you would look at this arrangement and wonder how it is allowed to exist. There is no good reason for the UT athletic department to exist. The State of Texas’ premier tax supported institution of higher education and research should not have attached to it such a large organization that adds nothing, or even subtracts from, it’s core purpose. I do understand that UT’s athletic department kicks money over to the general fund every year, but it is a rare exception among university athletic departments. UT is an exception, the vast majority of university athletic departments operate at a loss.

Most of the scholarship athletes do not belong in these universities. They just don’t have the academic chops.

A significant number of these athletes are criminals.

I am not alone in my thinking. Victor Davis Hanson: End College Football.

Disclosure: The Ace spent two years at Arkansas. The Deuce attends Ole Miss. I do watch college football, but really remain puzzled as to why it exists.

Missouri football players to boycott until president Tim Wolfe resigns

Sunday, November 8th, 2015

Tim Wolfe’s response to a series of racist incidents has been considered inadequate.

USA Today

If I were the president of the University of Missouri, I would take this opportunity to put the athletic department of a public institution in its proper place.

The Tigers would become a Div. III athletic department by tomorrow morning. There would be no scholarship athletes on my campus.

So we now know one of many reasons I’m not the president of Mizzou…

America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution

Monday, October 12th, 2015

Ordinary people have also gone a long way toward losing equal treatment under law. The America described in civics books, in which no one could be convicted or fined except by a jury of his peers for having violated laws passed by elected representatives, started disappearing when the New Deal inaugurated today’s administrative state — in which bureaucrats make, enforce, and adjudicate nearly all the rules. Today’s legal-administrative texts are incomprehensibly detailed and freighted with provisions crafted exquisitely to affect equal individuals unequally. The bureaucrats do not enforce the rules themselves so much as whatever “agency policy” they choose to draw from them in any given case. If you protest any “agency policy” you will be informed that it was formulated with input from “the public.” But not from the likes of you.

From:Angelo Codevilla. Again.

This really is the way the government is run these days. I am probably being quite stupid complaining on a blog, as there really is no anonymity.

New Data Reveals Stark Gaps in Graduation Rates Between Poor and Wealthy Students

Monday, September 28th, 2015

At the University of Missouri-Kansas City, only 35 percent of Pell Grant recipients graduate college, a rate that is more than 20 percentage points lower than that of their wealthier peers.

Why is anyone surprised by that?

I think, for you thinkers out there, that this is just another example of Reynold’s Law in action.

The Ruling Class 

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015

They vote Democrat more consistently than those who live on any of America’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Streets.

Angelo M. Codevilla

This is an important essay. I’ve posted a .pdf here. It is my small part to make sure this stays available. Many of you have read this. Please pass the link along to your friends.

We were just talking about this at dinner…

Tuesday, July 21st, 2015

Heather Mac Donald in City Journal:

Well, you might ask any high school senior, steeped in his class’s SAT rankings, if it’s true that “people of color” are given “extra benefits” in college admissions. He will laugh at your naïveté. A 2004 study of three top-tier universities, published in Social Science Quarterly, found that blacks were favored over whites by a factor of 5.5 and that being black got students an extra 230 SAT points on a 1,600-point scale. Such massive preferences for URMs are found at every selective college and graduate school. Every student knows this, and yet diversity protocol requires pretending that preferences don’t exist.

The Ace and the Deuce were going over the college selections for the Deuce’s graduating classmates. “Is he a Mexican?”, came up more than once.