[Tim Murphy]

Ok, let's try a more serious thread.

The biggest problem I have had as an employer and venture capitalist is that kids can't write a simple, declarative sentence, let alone a letter or serious proposal. I'll get a letter from a senior attorney beginning "Myself and Darrold Rath have reviewed your proposal..."

I studied English at Yale, and I learned to write pretty well. I got a good job in advertising and public relations straight out of school, where I learned to write a hell of a lot better, under the supervision of an old newspaper man, than Yale ever taught me. I think it was the old saw that a liberal arts education teaches you nothing, but it teaches you how to learn everything.

Now we have a situation where 50 percent of our recent college grads are unemployed or underemployed, dispensing coffee at Starbucks. And they can't write a declarative sentence. They are graduating with student debt of $28k, and what hope have they?

I think two things are radically wrong with our colleges, first, the immense growth of college administration. What are we doing paying these bureaucrats the same total amount we pay our professors? In my neolithic time it was probably ten per cent. The second thing is that our professoriate has been taken over by my generation who don't give a shit about teaching kids how to read, to write, to think. They just want to brainwash them about racism, diversity, what have you. They want to keep the young adjunct professors on starvation wages, and they use every dime from public funds, especially student loans, to feather their own nests.

I am an outsider looking in, having never drawn a salary from a college, but this is how a small business man sees the corruption of higher education.