Daily Archives: June 6, 2014

The Reactionary University Critiqued by a Reactionary who Ignores Reactionary Economists

By William K. Black

Victor Davis Hanson begins an article with an interesting title: “America’s Medieval Universities.”  His fundamental critique of the universities is:

“Employment rates for college graduates are dismal. Aggregate student debt is staggering. But university administrative salaries are soaring. The campus climate of tolerance has utterly disappeared. Only the hard sciences and graduate schools have salvaged American universities’ international reputations.

For over two centuries, our superb system of American public and private higher education kept pace with radically changing times and so ensured our prosperity and reinforced democratic pluralism.

But a funny thing has happened on the way to the 21st century. Colleges that were once our most enlightened and tolerant institutions became America’s dinosaurs.

Start with ossified institutions. Tenure may have been a good idea in the last century to ensure faculty members free expression. But such a spoils system now encourages the opposite result of protecting monotonies of thought.”

Some of these statements are accurate, though Hanson (a recovering classicist at Hoover) provides no logical basis for blaming the universities and tenure for the faults.

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Wall Street Crime and Misdeeds

NEP’s Bill Black appeared at the Unstoppable Right/Left Convergence event in Washington D.C. on May 27, 2014. He talked about Wall Street Crime and Misdeeds.

Valukas Assumes GM’s Reported Quality Was Real despite 13.8 Million Recalls in Five Months

By William K. Black

I just posted an article about the ludicrous excuse that Mary Barra, GM’s CEO, offered in her congressional testimony for GM’s lengthy refusal to correct a design defect it knew was killing and maiming people.

The defective design caused GM cars, without warning, to suddenly lose electrical power essential to the driver’s ability to control the car and for the air bags to function.  The car became an unguided missile and simultaneously lost the protective device that was most critical to safety in such circumstances.  The design defect, therefore, endangered not only GM customers but also anyone in the vicinity when the GM car lost electrical power.

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