Visit to a University

SCANALYZER The Happening World
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Circumstances required that I revisit a University from which I had graduated lo these many years ago. Some observations:

An institution which supposedly encourages discussion & debate is unable to compete with technology. Students wander between classes with their faces down, scrutinizing the small screen in their hands. It is understandable that, this far into the academic year, the attractive fountains, statuary, and architecture which surround them no longer capture their attention – they have had lots of time to observe and appreciate those. But Spring’s magnificent blooming shrubs and blossoming trees on the well-kept grounds also fail to distract them from their silent communion with their cell phones.

There still are male students — a surprising number of whom have a distinctly foreign look. However, the student body is predominantly female these days. Close observation of female pulchritude was a favorite time-waster in my student days. Were young females actually more attractive back in those days? Or is it that my age-related decline in testosterone now allows for a more objective evaluation?

Certainly, young women seem to plump up faster these days. One can make a reasonable guess at a female student’s years at university by assessing her Body Mass Index. And the acres of exposed flesh are generally not titillating, defiled as their bodies too often are by excessive tattoos. As those females age, and taut young skin sags and wrinkles, those tattoos are going to become even less attractive. We should always keep our eyes open for future business opportunities – any team that develops a fast, painless, affordable method for removing tattoos will be raking in profits from middle-aged women a decade or so from now.

The most interesting observation was that graduate students have unionized! Tenured academics trip over themselves demonstrating their allegiance to the cause-du-jour – such as the treatment of trans-gendered Iranian illegal immigrants. But those same academics have no room in their expansive consciences for the one group of abused individuals for whom they are directly responsible. Underpaid graduate students toil in dismal basements keeping the academic wheels turning, yet they do not merit the attention or support of their tenured masters. Those graduate students are the modern academy’s lumpenproletariat – and now they are railing against the machine.

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It is sad and discouraging that the institution at the root of much of the West’s material success has withered so abysmally. Your observations were, necessarily, of outward and visible signs of decay. A bit of reading and/or viewing of so-called academic matters shows the rot going to the very core of the academy. How much longer can it survive on the capital of years past. This situation reminds me of Western Europe. Take away the historical artifacts and museums - and what is left?

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No question that academia has failed – and continues to fail, proudly even! But is it stolen glory for universities to claim to be at the root of the West’s former success?

James Watt had been a technician at the University of Glasgow and had learned much about the properties of steam from working with Professor Black – but did the university really spawn his later success in improving the steam engine? Did universities lead the way on metallurgy, or did they merely codify the discoveries made by men working in the foundries? Rockefeller created the modern oil industry without the benefit of a college education.

To jump to more modern times, we have Bell Labs to thank for much of modern electronics, including solid state devices, the cell phone network, and even the discovery of the cosmic microwave background – not any university. Needless to add, Apple was founded by university dropouts.

Of course, many advances were made by graduates of universities – Einstein was working outside academia as a patent clerk when he made his major advances. Have the universities been claiming more credit than was their due?

The hopeful implication might be that we are losing less than we might fear with the decline of academia into woke irrelevance. Andrew Carnegie – another guy who revolutionized an industry without the benefit of a college education – had the opinion that anyone who could read could learn anything, hence his donation of Carnegie Libraries across the US. How much more true is that in these days of internet access to anything?

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