Good points. Especially pointing out Jim's outdated 1993's mindset. Such backward thinking has no place in the innovative future of the ancient Greeks. :cheers2:

"but public speaking, creative or technical writing, or history for the technically bound is a load of crap"

Those things aren't a load of crap. But that's not the core of liberal arts courses. The core of liberal arts programs is to create a sense of entitlement, victimhood, and liberalism. Turn on the TV , watch what has been happening at Yale, maybe the finest liberal arts school in the world. The students there are idiotic, they couldn't form a coherent thought if their life depended on it. They are not learning the skills that you itemized, no one would be opposed to genuinely learning those skills. Those skills are critical. That's not what is being ingrained in these kids.

"I don't necessarily think kids really want college to be cheaper"

Due respect, then you're not paying attention to what they are saying, which is probably why you think liberal arts courses are designed to teach the valuable skills you itemized".

Conservative ideas persist no?

Tell it to the progressives.

"the engineering or actuary job Jim wants to fast track to is evaporating."

Clearly you know better than I do what skills are required for entry-level actuarial jobs.

"doesn't reward narrowly minded thinkers"

I never said narrow-minded thinking is the goal. What I said is that liberal arts courses aren't the path to open-minded thinking you claim they are. Again, look at Yale. A professor says "you don't have the right not to be offended", and the kids went berserk. Academia is one of the most narrow-minded bastions of thought in the universe.

If the point of these schools is to promote diversity of ideas, please explain the reaction when Condaleeza Rice or Ann Coulter is invited to speak? I'm all ears.

When Dr Rice was invited to speak at Rutgers, the faculty protested. Now, you are going to ask me to believe that those same faculty members promote diversity of thought in their class? I can give you as many examples as you want. The Mizzou professor who asked for "muscle" to haul off a student whose viewpoint she didn't agree with? She's going to teach her kids to be open-minded?

Ann Coulter gets invited to UCONN, the students storm the stage to silence her.

There is a Himalayan mountain of evidence to show that there is zero diversity of thought, or tolerance for opposing views, taught to these poor kids.

Let me guess, your response is "apples and oranges"

AT Amherst College, another one of the premier liberal arts colleges in the world, students want to punish a student who carried a sign saying, get ready for the horror, "all lives matter".

Among their demands...get a load of all this open-minded thought, Spence!!

"we do not tolerate the actions of student(s) who posted the ‘All Lives Matter’ posters, and the ‘Free Speech’ posters"

Wow! That's open-mindedness, and respectful of opposing points of view, eh? They are insisting on silencing those who feel that all life matters. If that's the "reward" for a world-class liberal arts curriculum, forgive me if I'm not impressed.

Read the wording..."we do not tolerate..." I wonder where they learned all that tolerance?


http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/13/am...d-free-speech/

Of course, it sounds great to say that we need well-rounded folks. I don't disagree. But the empirical evidence suggests that liberal arts courses are not the path to acquiring those skills.

I love it, College is preparing you for tomorrow. What happens next is up to you.

If these kids think you make college "free" by increasing the fixed costs, and judging by their demands that's exactly what they think, then no, college isn't preparing them for tomorrow. All it's preparing them for is a lifetime of self-identified victimhood.