Auckland University has announced via a newspaper full page advertorial, a new degree course, specifically a Bachelor of Communications.
I don’t believe in my long life of 10 hours daily reading, I’ve ever read such abominable guff. Reading through the advert’s verbiage it appears the underlying proposition is the importance of speaking and writing clearly, something utterly alien to whoever penned the advertisement. Here’s two examples.
First, the promoters of this new bullshit degree (to add to the lengthy list already polluting universities) ironically chose to put in large bold type in the advertisement, an item of mind-blowing illiteracy and poor composition, specifically,
The advertisement then concluded with the following world-class guff.
There are intangible reasons to justify say a year or two at university as a bridging experience between childhood and adult status. But otherwise, unless studying for a traditional career such as medicine or law, to a very large degree trusting and unworldly kids attending university today are victims of a gigantic fraud.
A few years back I recall reading of an English girl suing her university for wasting years out of her life pursuing an MBA. MBA degrees are blatant frauds, luring the simple-minded seeking letters after their names.
World-wide the great names in commerce mostly never went near a university. Commercial success relies on energy, initial sacrifice, knowledge of society and history plus from reading and passion, all non-teachable subjects. So too with success in other fields such as literature, journalism, politics, the arts etc.
The modern university is today largely a scam, exploiting the vulnerable with its ever expanding range of non-intellectual bullshit degrees.
My 2004 comic novel “Degrees For Everyone” made fun of this. Among the flood of praising letters I subsequently received were a surprisingly high number from senior university academics confirming the underlying proposition.
That same year Zimbabwe born, now Scot, Alexander McCall Smith, with a justifiably acclaimed academic career in medicine and law under his belt, published his satirical novel “Portuguese Irregular Verbs”. This was a glorious send-up of academic nonsense, in which the participants waste their lives at public expense, pointlessly pursuing esoteric imaginary elements of their utterly bogus purported field of study.
I trace the degradation of our university’s to Tony Blair’s aspiration around the turn of the century, to see half of all school kids go on to achieve a university degree. At the time this seemed a virtuous aspiration but it very soon clashed with reality, specifically that a large number of kids simply lacked the intellectual capacity to achieve this.
So to accommodate them universities invented bogus courses of the Fat studies, Gender studies, MBAs, Maori Wonderfulness ilk, in the process transforming themselves into competitive commercial enterprises while maintaining a veneer, largely imagined, of being intellectual institutions.
In fact nonsense degree courses and subjects had been present in America for a quarter century before Blair. For example, I know someone who obtained a degree in English Literature from New York’s most prestigious university, this in the early 1980s. Her degree included a unit in tap-dancing. A Florida university offered a 3 year degree in Muhammad Ali studies about the same time.
All of this is a liberal western world phenomenon, the likes of China for example, in its relentless and inevitable path to becoming the global superpower, maintaining a hard-headed realism on such matters and doubtless viewing this as yet further evidence of western decline.
15 Comments
Obviously doing this degree would be a prerequisite to becoming a politician
Hi Bob, thank you for your posts, which I have read and enjoyed for a long time. I have two teenagers and I want to suggest books to them that could broaden their understanding of the world. Do you have a list of books that you recommend? Best regards, Blair.
All of Alexander McCall Smiths novels
Andrew Doyle Free Speech and why it matters
Amor Towles A Gentleman in Moscow ( beautifully written and wonderful lexicon )
Any historical novels often mostly accurate
Study history and its relevance to today to avoid our young things attempting to repeat the idiocy of lunatic ideologies of the past.
etcetcetc.
So succinctly put Sir Robert.The international dumbing down of the University system in the west supported by the resident academics posing as intellectuals is a trend regretably followed by New Zealand institutions .This is a travesty but fortunately for many of us who can will do and no doubt to the utter surprise of the institutionalised will survive and thrive much to their chagrin.
Least we forget, public organisations will employ these women.
Let’s be honest here, I’m confident 95% of those attending said courses identify into a gender, sexual orientation, or racial equality camp. I’m happy to be proven wrong.
If you are a straight man, that is a bad thing. If you’re a straight white man, you’re the enemy.
The liberal western world phenomenon to feminise and subjugate men perpetuated.
China in its relentless and inevitable path to be the worlds dominant superpower, now viewing with hard-headed realism, such western liberal nonsense.
The Chinese Communist party realizing feminisation of boys and men has and will have negative impacts on population reproduction, society, and its military. Recently adopting traditional masculinity promoting policies. Literally overnight, PRC media removed “man shaming” and the strong independent female role models. Favoring more traditional submissive motherly roles for girls. Again, I’m happy to be proven wrong.
I recently retired. I was amused to see the requirements, including a degree, for my replacement. I had been doing a similar job for 50 years but I would not be qualified to apply for my own job. I wondered how I had managed for 50 years and achieved a reasonable degree of competence. The reality is that most young people would be better off avoiding university or at the very least spending two or three years in the real world first. As for MBAs, God help us. I recall one particularly useless manager who spent his whole day with door closed ‘studying’ for this useless degree and when he achieved it he was a pillock with letters after his name.
In the 1980s we used to laugh at the Bachelor of Hamburgerology degree at McDonald’s Hamburger University in the US but thanks to the inane, post-modernist claptrap taught at universities today, this seems like a practical and useful subject to study. How things have changed at our institutions of supposed higher learning and not generally for the better. https://www.mashed.com/320192/the-untold-truth-of-mcdonalds-hamburger-university/
Last year I attended my daughters graduation from AUT. As part of the 3+ hours of handing out degrees to approx 1,200 grads they highlighted at the end those getting a Doctorate (I think that’s what you do after a PHD and takes another couple of years study). Your topic apparently has to be unique – so it became clear that the choice of topics was the biggest challenge to these students. Out of more than 20 Doctorates issued only one topic I could recognise any of the words. And that was a doctorate on the impact knitting had on society and mental health of knitters…. I kid you not!
I remember Blair’s goal of 50% of kids being university educated. The most significant impact of this unnecessary achievement has been the production of millions of socialists. It’s part of the ‘long March through the institutions’.
You want a real world view, ask a plumber.
To be fair here, how could Auckland City Council inform me that my rates are being spent wisely without its 200+ employees trained to deliver clear, persuasive, ethical messages? How could the government, facing such a bitterly hostile press, ever reveal its transparency, honesty and competence?
Good to have you back Sir Robert
Yes. 1963 we had a very intelligent worker driving the tractor on our farm. While out hunting one evening he shot himself in the foot (assured accidently). Very unfortunate of course, though perhaps a small blessing for my husband as two weeks prior to this he’d left the tractor to pic up his fallen change, not thinking . The tractor proceeded to roll away and demolish a corner from our house. Harold was unsure of why the tractor had decided to do this.
Two months prior to this incident, our shearers quarters were nearly burnt down as Harold had left some chops on the heat to go outside for a smoke. He’d often explain to me how the oppression of the common worker was very unfair in New Zealand as was the distribution of wealth. My husband just could not comprehend his extreme ideals and somewhat lack of ability to get anything done.
We heard eventually through the grapevine he’d joined the communist party, then proceeded to university and a Phd in Psychology. Sometime after he’d joined the Labour party.
No surprises there I suppose.
I do find myself pondering how many of our Labour party members have tried farming, given the decadent life style and apparent ease wealth can be accumulated. Perhaps more city folk should try the “easy” life style.
These days i think we might refer to Harold as a wanker.
Best Wishes
Jennifer
I believe Waikato Uni is now offering a degree in climate change
Blair did allot more damage than just that.
One can not forget him supporting George W Bush in the raid on the oil wells in Iraq. Reading between the lines, it would seem politicians who support (and often work for after) the oil companies, private defense companies and the banksters are the bigger weapons of mass destruction.
Course we know the biggest fraud of all are these tax havens, which have the dual function of hiding ill gotten gains and a transfer price scheme they have got going. Not hard to wonder why politicians are doing nothing about it.
Might help explain the changing of the guard every 100 years or so. And see some politicians running for the hills.
Nice Sir Bob. Once they’ve realised that their bullshit courses have no meaningful employment options all the fat and non-binary must line up to formulate the rules of which golf can be played under the respective alert levels.
This is certainly not a new problem. There has been a steady decline in academic standards for decades. As an example, a math text for first year Uni when I was there (1973) ended up as a third-year text a decade on. As another example, NZQA, being concerned at falling pass rates in a core tertiary math paper analyzed those topics that students found hard and did the only logical thing viz: removed those topics – that fixed the pass rates – brilliant solution!
I was a keynote speaker at the opening of the Ako Aotearoa Academy of Tertiary Teaching Excellence back in 2006 and reflected on the fact that universities had lost their way and had sacrificed quality teaching and courses for short term gain via dodgy research outputs. Hon Minister Cullen who spoke after me fortunately concurred (much to the scowls of the vice chancellors present). But the fact is that our tertiary institutions have turned into degree mills, The proliferation of crappy, weak degrees from the tertiary sector has devalued what it means to work hard and get a “real” degree. I have spoken often (on deaf ears) that the old NZCE, NZCS, nursing and radiography diplomas were quality, well recognized qualifications. When they morphed into degrees, material was removed, courses shortened and standards dumbed down resulting in soggy degrees for one and all.
The best PhD I have come across comes from Otago University – The thesis being “Polynesian Puddings”. What a wonderful world in which we live!
PS. I am so glad to have retired from tertiary teaching – Seeing what is happening is soul destroying.