Submitted by Joe Beckmann (not verified) on August 1, 2008 - 5:59pm.
It is profoundly ignorant to consider a public service academy option when the Land Grant Colleges were financed to do the same thing in the 18th century; and the colonial colleges - Harvard IS the fourth branch of the Massachusetts Constitution, after all - were financed specifically to provide education and leadership resources to the colonies. What is necessary is to re-examine how they have - all of them - subverted that mission and turned the same poor and public from donors to victims. The exceptions like Berea and Cooper Union reflect the real intent of their donors - to make education available regardless of cost. The failure of the Ivy League, and regulators of the 19th century, to reinforce this process probably dooms higher education in this country, and, ultimately, dooms this country.
The entire financial system of postsecondary education is based on a false premise of a spurious "market" through which people move to professions they are largely spared by earlier K-12 failures. The last time that "market" had any meaning was around 1960, when there really was social mobility and some more concrete structure for meritocracy. Now it has become a maze of consumer fraud, mendacious financing, and meretricious pseudo academics promising power and careers to their friends and children of their friends.
We already have hundreds of Public Service Academies!
It is profoundly ignorant to consider a public service academy option when the Land Grant Colleges were financed to do the same thing in the 18th century; and the colonial colleges - Harvard IS the fourth branch of the Massachusetts Constitution, after all - were financed specifically to provide education and leadership resources to the colonies. What is necessary is to re-examine how they have - all of them - subverted that mission and turned the same poor and public from donors to victims. The exceptions like Berea and Cooper Union reflect the real intent of their donors - to make education available regardless of cost. The failure of the Ivy League, and regulators of the 19th century, to reinforce this process probably dooms higher education in this country, and, ultimately, dooms this country.
The entire financial system of postsecondary education is based on a false premise of a spurious "market" through which people move to professions they are largely spared by earlier K-12 failures. The last time that "market" had any meaning was around 1960, when there really was social mobility and some more concrete structure for meritocracy. Now it has become a maze of consumer fraud, mendacious financing, and meretricious pseudo academics promising power and careers to their friends and children of their friends.