farewell to academe

[Brad DeLong]

>I talked with a friend about this distressing message. He is an 
>academic, and I am
>not. My parents, however, were academics, at a college (later a 
>state U) not very
>far from where Yates is about to retire. My friend's parents were 
>not academics.
>
>My friend agrees with Yates' perception of students as increasingly 
>blunted and
>stupefied...
>
>I wonder if other academics on this list could respond to the 
>question of whether
>or not students are or are not effectively stupider than they used to be.
>
>Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
>

Of course not. The trope of decline and decadence is an old one. More 
than two millennia ago Roman aristocrats complained about the times 
and the customs: how shocking it was that children no longer 
respected their elders, that everyone was worshipping foreign goods, 
and that a slave girl cost more than a sword.

But I daresay that back when my grandfather went to Harvard--at at 
time when perhaps 2% of Americans enrolled in college at all--it was 
distinctly uncool for anyone of his social class to try to get better 
than a C (and his social class made up the majority of the student 
body). And that were Michael Yates cast back in time into his golden 
age and confronted with my grandfather, or with George W. Bush, he 
would soon be singing a different tune.

Brad DeLong