In America, college has become the new high school.
There is a “feel good story” being pushed around by my local media about a Harvard University senior from Atlanta who has become the first in the Ivy League school’s history to submit a rap album as his thesis. The album is entitled “Liminal Minds,” and is reported to be “a dark and moody take on what It means to be black in America … tackling topics ranging from police violence to slavery.” The album/thesis received an A-grade and is being celebrated by the university’s English Department, as well as the local Metro-Atlanta area media. Obasi Shaw will graduate from Harvard with honors this week.
Let me say this because I don’t want to take anything away from the kid. Congratulations to you, Mr. Shaw, for your acceptance into and completion of an undergraduate education at one of our nation’s first universities. As a cop, I’m expecting that I will probably disagree with many of the opinions expressed about my profession in your album. I’ll be sure to check it out if it is ever made public nonetheless. I wish you luck with your new job at Google, where I’ve read you will be working as a software engineer. I can only hope that you’ll not take part in your new employer’s practices of censoring conservative viewpoints and de-monetizing YouTube videos that challenge mainstream media narratives when you begin your career there. Diversity of thought is what makes this nation great. Let’s all keep it that way.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I need to level some criticism at Harvard University over this development. First I would like to discuss what a thesis actually is.
Per Google, a thesis is:
- a statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved.
- a long essay or dissertation involving personal research, written by a candidate for a college degree.
Harvard, if a thesis is a presented theory backed by research and facts – and a rap album is an expression of art and feeling – then how can a rap album be a thesis? This anything goes, color outside the lines approach taken by colleges these days cheapens the value of an education because graduating students are being robbed of the intense mental crucible of a research paper thesis that would force them to challenge their own opinions. Rather than simply express feeling and emotion in a rap album, a proper thesis requires its author to backup beliefs with research and facts. Let’s put it this way.
The college thesis used to be the academic equivalent of the 54-hour, 45-mile long sleep and food deprived marathon march that is the Marine Corps crucible. Introduced back in 1996, this final test a candidate must pass in boot camp before becoming a Marine is a big part of what gives these guys their famous “Esprit De Corps.” It makes them cut their teeth to become the superior soldiers that they are. Marines are the best of the best not only because they undergo the most soul crushingly rigorous training, but also because they have been the most successful of the branches at maintaining their traditions in a day and age when nothing is sacred. Here we have Harvard University, a school considered to be the cream of the crop – The Marine Corps of academia if you will – doing its best to emulate the mediocrity of other schools, and letting standards be damned. I realize that the Harvard University Undergraduate honors thesis is not required to be strictly a research paper as they have allowed novels, screenplays, and poetry collections to suffice in the past – but this is just the latest example of how we are watering down even our “best” institutions of higher learning.
What is going on with our nation’s college campuses these days? We’ve all witnessed the crazed social justice warrior collectives of communists, socialists, angry feminists, militant black student unions, and faux-science based gender studies majors running amuck – but is it really too much to ask for our millennial college grads to actually have to research a topic, develop a theory, and academically prove their thesis? The answer is yes – it is too much to ask. The problem is that college has become the new high school.
Here’s how college works. If you show up to the first class only, then come back when it’s time to take the midterm and final exams – you’re pretty much guaranteed at least a C in most classes so long as you cram the material into your brain on your own time the day before the test. There are obvious exceptions when you get into specialized and technical subject matter, but for an undergraduate degree in Sociology, Psychology, Liberal Arts, Gender Studies, Africana Studies, Criminal Justice, Underwater Basket Weaving, and so on – this rule of thumb applies for the bulk of your classes every semester. Yet, as easy as it’s been made to go through the motions and graduate, NBC has reported that just over half of all students who attend college actually graduate with a degree within six years. The key takeaways here? For one, not everyone needs to go to college. Two, the standards set by universities in the past should not be lowered to accommodate a higher graduation rate. The whole university structure needs to be destroyed and rebuilt. Here’s why college has become everything it shouldn’t be.
The McDonald-ized business model of the American University Industrial Complex is designed for maximum profit. Admit the plucky young student, then baby and coddle them by strictly following the tenets of political correctness to avoid a public relations nightmare that might slow enrollment and jeopardize profits. You can’t maximize the bottom line when you are pissing off your customers by making them earn things through a meritocracy of hard work and dedication when they’d rather just have it handed to them – and who can blame them for feeling entitled in this business relationship? People expect to get something in return for their payment everywhere else in society.
When I say that the business of churning out BA’s has created an environment where the college degree is the new high school diploma, this is what I mean. As is the case with high school, the most academic minds take classes seriously while the others simply go through the motions to graduate and be done with things. The vicious cycle in “higher learning” today is one where we keep admitting students who come to do the bare minimum to obtain that certified piece of paper when their skills would have been better suited to join the military, learn a trade skill, or become an entrepreneur – and then we send them out into a workforce that has less and less use for them by the year. At the end of the day, many young 20-somethings find themselves in debt up to their eyeballs for a degree they can hang in the childhood home they can’t afford to move out of. Aside from being a fun way to extend their childhood for four to six years, who does that help?
You would expect many state schools who are more concerned with building a college football powerhouse cash cow than their own academics programs to lower their standards and allow something like a rap-album for a thesis, but not an Ivy League school. A perfect example of the type of place I am describing is the University of Missouri, where the President was forced to step down when the monetary influence of the football team was leveraged against him by Social Justice Warriors who have all but taken over college campuses. Imagine the backlash that would have awaited Harvard’s shot-callers had they told Mr. Shaw that a rap album would make a fine project for a Music or English class, but that it would not suffice as the culmination of his career at one of the world’s top schools.
Here’s a taste of that backlash through my personal experience over the last three days of defending my position on this topic on Twitter. I commented, “College ain’t worth a damn thing anymore” on this story on Saturday night. The response was epic. Countless accusations of racism, attacks on my own whiteness, my profession, and even my looks racked up 125K Twitter impressions in just 72 hours. This hatred is a powerful tool. Is it perfectly clear now why colleges as prestigious as Harvard are becoming cucked beyond recognition?
