I returned to school in my early forties, filled with enthusiasm and driven by the sense of urgency that comes with having one last chance at success in life. Though I was a lifelong bookworm, my first attempts at higher education had failed due to a lack of purpose. After twenty-plus years of wallowing in aimless underemployment, purpose found me. I wanted the good life that comes with having a good job, and it was obvious I wasn’t going to get one without an education.
Although I had recently gained an interest in computers, my initial goal was almost exclusively employment. I figured I could make a quick, year-round sprint to get a two-year degree in 16 months. But after just the first few classes, I knew I wanted more than just a few technical skills and some paper credentials. I wanted the knowledge and the mental training. I even wanted the effort: I actually wanted to battle my way through difficult math problems, spend long hours in the computer lab, and write lengthy papers about the great ideas of Western civilization.
I got the long hours, the two-year technical degree, and more—I had no idea what I was in for the academic world. After a nine-year odyssey through a variety of institutions of higher learning (and various full- and part-time jobs), I obtained an A.A. in information systems from Ocean County College (a two-year community college in New Jersey), a B.S. in computer science from Richard Stockton College (a small public liberal arts school, also in Jersey), and an M.A. in economics from the University of Delaware. In retrospect (and in a whimsical mood), it now seems an adventure worthy of a Ulysses, a Gulliver, a Frodo.
I was isolated more by my conservative outlook than by my age, and sometimes the campus had the feel of a hostile landscape filled with sinister traps and bogeymen. Little tiny people tried to tie me down, powerful giants toyed with me as if I were their plaything, and sirens beckoned with ill intent (Okay, I exaggerate slightly). And always I had to trudge on toward the goal, despite the increasing weight of my endeavors.
And while I spent most of my time as an undergraduate in technical classes, which are by nature insulated from political and cultural trends, I was still subjected on occasion to the standard fare offered by today’s academia: political harassment, blatant left-wing indoctrination, teachers with accents too thick to make themselves understood, acceptance of disruptive behavior and cheating, and so on.
Had I been less experienced, less focused, and less firm in my convictions, I could have fallen prey to the propaganda, bought into the unethical aspects of the system, or worked myself into such a state of resentment that dropping out might have seemed sensible.
Despite my attempts to remain apart from foolishness, on several occasions I forgot myself and spoke up. During a discussion in one of my few humanities classes, called “Ideas of America,” a girl claimed the United States is irredeemably evil because of its past institution of slavery. I objected, reminding her that over a century ago the country had acknowledged slavery’s immorality and put an end to it. And that Anglo-American influence nearly eliminated slavery across the entire globe. The professor, who slanted the reading list to include such representative American thinkers as bell hooks and John Dewey, diplomatically decided to change the subject. I was somewhat grateful, because the girl had become so enraged by my rebuttal that I was forced to consider the need to defend myself physically.
But most of the time, I played it safe. In another humanities class, called “Writing for Many Roles,” the teacher preferred to show his favorite movies rather than lecture, providing us with frequent opportunities to perfect that very practical and in-demand writing function, film criticism. After a viewing of the grotesque, semi-pornographic movie The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, I commented that the movie appeared to be a Marxist attack on Christianity. The instructor praised me, incorrectly assuming that I was in agreement with the film’s message. As I was hoping to graduate with a high GPA, I chose not to correct him. (The “A” was already in the bank.)
Yet sometimes forces beyond my control broke through my detached facade. Before a test in my Networking class, a foreign student sitting next to me, with whom I had exchanged pleasantries in the past, whispered, “We help each other.” Having studied for the exam, I didn’t anticipate needing much help, so I ignored him. Halfway through the test, the professor left the room. A short time later, the same student began making noises tapping my chair to get my attention. I continued working on my test. After a few minutes of this, while I was struggling to complete a problem on some scratch paper, he tried to slide my test out from under my elbow. I stopped him, and we had a brief tug-of-war with my test paper, which you better believe I won.
The professor remained out of the room until the end of the test. The offending student, rather than being contrite or embarrassed, was indignant at my refusal. I guess it all depends on what your definition of “Networking” is.
I also took a class in Artificial Intelligence in which two students sat in the front of the room and carried on a loud personal conversation while the teacher ignored them and droned away at the blackboard. Many of the class could not hear the lecture because of these two buffoons, but nobody attempted to shut them up until one day when I could no longer contain myself. The professor ignored my protest and also the subsequent shouting match, which continued outside the building after the class. I would have settled for some ordinary human intelligence in this case.
The last two incidents highlight a key problem in today’s academia. There is a heavy emphasis on student evaluations of professors, which does little to limit the most egregious flaunting of improper political and ethical conduct by faculty members but encourages instructors to drop standards to curry favor with the failing or disorderly students likely to cause them trouble in their reviews. I knew one teacher at Ocean City College who bragged privately of never, in fifteen years, giving a failing grade to students who completed the class.
It might be unfair to expect administrators to be aware of such situations, as they have many important demands on their time. For instance, the president of Stockton while I was there was forced into resignation for sexually harassing a lower-level male employee nearly twenty years her junior. She was, however, given a free pass on her financial improprieties. Obviously, her time was too valuable to spend on mundane details such as how to evaluate professors without making them subject to the demands of students.
I also found that, sometimes in academia, words have strange meanings. Professors in my graduate program in economics spoke of “teaching capitalism,” but the assumption that government and academia can predict, control and fine-tune an economy was embedded throughout the curriculum. Entrepreneurship received scant attention. Government policies were heralded as the primary determinant of prosperity and growth, while taxes and subsidies were assumed to be the proper paths to economic equity. It was a strange sort of capitalism they teach.
On another occasion, two different professors, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, both snickered that our trade imbalances didn’t matter, since we could pay off our debts with “meaningless pieces of paper.” Their words now seem prophetic, given our recent devaluation of the dollar, that fact that world leaders are expressing a total lack of confidence in our currency, and the high likelihood of severe inflation lurking somewhere in our near future. Of course, hyperinflation really doesn’t seem that funny in places where it actually happens, like Weimar Germany.
That was hardly the first convoluted logic I encountered. Rather, it often seemed as though the inmates were running the asylum (unlike the University of California at Santa Cruz and Northwestern, where actual inmate professors such as Angela Davis and Bernardine Dohrn are actually in charge).
At Richard Stockton College, the head of the campus organization for gay students was exposed for perpetrating a hate crime hoax—she trashed her own dorm room and car, and claimed that these actions were performed by anti-gay bigots. In response, a majority of the faculty circulated, signed, and published a petition suggesting that the incident revealed the need for greater vigilance against sexual hate crimes. I, being less enlightened than the faculty, thought it signified the need for some punitive action or psychological counseling for the student in question, since she had made false accusations.
Events at the University of Delaware in the spring of 2007 exceeded that twisted logic. A fraternity with a predominantly white membership had a Mexican-themed party to celebrate the Mexican holiday of national pride, Cinco de Mayo. Pictures later appeared in Facebook of students with costumes deemed offensive by the school administration, although they were in fact quite mild. Apologies were demanded of three students. (To their credit, two refused. I left the state before their punishments were determined.)
What made the case so amazing is that the third student had to apologize to a representative of La Raza (The Race), a Hispanic organization that considers European- and African-Americans to be interlopers who should leave the continent of North America. The racial virulence of the La Raza platform often approaches that of the Ku Klux Klan, yet the group was (and probably still is) funded on the University of Delaware campus with mandatory activity fees.
Further adding to the absurdity, previously in the school year La Raza had held an African-American gangster-themed party, with stereotypical costumes much more offensive than those worn at the Cinco de Mayo affair. Yet a representative from the campus African-American organization had no problem with Hispanics deriding his own people as anti-social thugs and prostitutes. He was, however, deeply offended by the white students’ characterization of Mexicans as migrant laborers who like their tequila.
Even Michelle Kwan could not perform so many sudden twists and turns while skating on thin ice. Can you say “Soviet Show Trial?”
To be fair, during those nine years I received a great deal of help from many decent and excellent professors. It was also my choice to pursue my educational goals with dogged, single-minded determination, thereby cutting myself off from venues where I might have encountered more like-minded fellow students and professors. But the academic experience still gives me cause to identify, just a little tiny bit, with the heroes of legend and literature.
Just as Ulysses, Gulliver, and Frodo faced fierce monsters, capricious gods, and bizarre creatures, my journey through academia forced me to deal with biased professors, spoiled brats, and bureaucratic drones. The heroes managed to survive against all odds, armed mainly with wits and will power, to reach their destinations. Likewise, I managed to gain three academic degrees while avoiding expulsion, academic failure, and assault charges.
And, because it was so hard for me, I learned more than I was taught. The adventure strengthened my conservative convictions, my resolve to pursue truth, and my determination to walk a straight and narrow path.