I’ve always felt that George W Bush’s place in history would be as the president who accelerated the end of the post-colonial era, the time when the West in general and the US in particular had structural advantages in geopolitics and economics. Trump’s flagrant moves speeding this further obscure the extent to which the US’s standing was already weakened by the Iraq War and the 2008 fiscal crisis, which itself was the biggest factor in the collapse of legitimacy that’s driven the rise in authoritarian nationalism. Trump is deliberately taking a jackhammer to pillars Bush heedlessly weakened.
One of the fascinating aspects of MAGA-land is how so many members seem to feel that they are partaking of Trump and participating in his being, in some sense. This goes from Elon who clearly believes he is now something like a co-president and a distinguished political thinker, out to folks like Rufo who believe they're going to be setting policy, and onward into the most distant reaches of MAGA-folk who seem to think they're suddenly empowered with the Essence of Trump. The laws of physics haven't been repealed, Trump is still a rapidly aging guy with serious personal issues, the people around him are still the same set of outstanding folks, the angry old white guys I know are still mad. Trump voters have agency. It was a narrow win, but elections have consequences, and they're going to get what they asked for, even if they didn't fully comprehend what it was. Now let's just hope those of us who tried to stop him come through ok and the country survives mostly intact.
"forcing schools to advertise the earnings of graduates from specific programs so students understand their risks when they enroll. If students default on their loans, he says universities should have responsibility for paying some of it back."
This is not a bad idea from a Human Caputal (Economics) theory point of view.
------------
Plus, they should ride if multiple choice exams as they serve no pedagogical putpose at all except help examiners avoid marking exams manually.
Perhaps America's structural power is declining because of the endless stupid decisions our foreign and military policy elites have made in the post Cold War era, the endless interventions we have made that have ended disastrously, beginning with "Gulf 1", which, among other things, drove one million Kurdish refugees into Turkey after George H. W. encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam even as his adminstration planned to keep Saddam in power. I wonder if that had any relation to what has happened in Turkey since then. I wonder if the Biden administration's blind support of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is hurting America's credibility around the world. I even wonder why Dr. Drezner keeps forgetting to address this issue in his blog.
Donald Trump in his blundering is not leading us away from foreign involvement in any real manner. He is as likely to get us into war by accident as his predecessors did on purpose. But there are reasons why a man as awful as Trump should not only be elected but re-elected, and one of them is the repeated foreign policy disasters engineered by a bipartisan gang of the best and the brightest. Dan Drezner, you should read Dan Larison. You might learn something.
Rufo is a genuinely awful person, and even if he does something good, I assume it's for bad reasons. But this part Rufo's plan isn't bad. "forcing schools to advertise the earnings of graduates from specific programs so students understand their risks when they enroll. If students default on their loans, he says universities should have responsibility for paying some of it back" aren't bad ideas. I get that the idea is to gut liberal arts, but if done in a fair way (in which I have no confidence), such as giving wages a decade out (as opposed to one year out) I don't think it would have the effect of turning everyone into business majors. Still, I wonder if he gets that making schools payback defaulted loans would put the proprietary schools that prey on vets, the poor, and other out of business.
Many years ago I ran a small non profit or Boston called the workforce solutions group. As a Sox fan you might also recall my blog Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME. Anyway predatory education was a top issue for me, but we could never get traction. I remember meeting with hospital execs and asking how many nurses they’d hired out of devry or some such and they said “none. We would never hire one.” So people were taking out huge debt, federally subsidized, to pursue a degree that they were statistically unlikely to finish, and even if they did finish, it was worthless. Broke my heart. Obama made some real improvements on that front, but the Rs fought it tooth and nail. Not sure why that would change now.
Not sure about the Jenga tower analogy. I fear it is too static. More like a steady corrosion that gradually turns quantity into quality. Far more than education, all the post-Bretton Woods institutions, the rules-based order -- particularly trade and the UN Security Council and specialized agencies, and amorphous key factors like US credibility, all eroding, while DC pretends it is still 1991.
Complete aside, but I've always read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, and the ones that always hit me the hardest were the ones where things slowly become shittier and shitter, there isn't some sudden toppling of dominoes, because they always seemed the most realistic.
I’ve always felt that George W Bush’s place in history would be as the president who accelerated the end of the post-colonial era, the time when the West in general and the US in particular had structural advantages in geopolitics and economics. Trump’s flagrant moves speeding this further obscure the extent to which the US’s standing was already weakened by the Iraq War and the 2008 fiscal crisis, which itself was the biggest factor in the collapse of legitimacy that’s driven the rise in authoritarian nationalism. Trump is deliberately taking a jackhammer to pillars Bush heedlessly weakened.
One of the fascinating aspects of MAGA-land is how so many members seem to feel that they are partaking of Trump and participating in his being, in some sense. This goes from Elon who clearly believes he is now something like a co-president and a distinguished political thinker, out to folks like Rufo who believe they're going to be setting policy, and onward into the most distant reaches of MAGA-folk who seem to think they're suddenly empowered with the Essence of Trump. The laws of physics haven't been repealed, Trump is still a rapidly aging guy with serious personal issues, the people around him are still the same set of outstanding folks, the angry old white guys I know are still mad. Trump voters have agency. It was a narrow win, but elections have consequences, and they're going to get what they asked for, even if they didn't fully comprehend what it was. Now let's just hope those of us who tried to stop him come through ok and the country survives mostly intact.
"forcing schools to advertise the earnings of graduates from specific programs so students understand their risks when they enroll. If students default on their loans, he says universities should have responsibility for paying some of it back."
This is not a bad idea from a Human Caputal (Economics) theory point of view.
------------
Plus, they should ride if multiple choice exams as they serve no pedagogical putpose at all except help examiners avoid marking exams manually.
Perhaps America's structural power is declining because of the endless stupid decisions our foreign and military policy elites have made in the post Cold War era, the endless interventions we have made that have ended disastrously, beginning with "Gulf 1", which, among other things, drove one million Kurdish refugees into Turkey after George H. W. encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam even as his adminstration planned to keep Saddam in power. I wonder if that had any relation to what has happened in Turkey since then. I wonder if the Biden administration's blind support of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is hurting America's credibility around the world. I even wonder why Dr. Drezner keeps forgetting to address this issue in his blog.
Donald Trump in his blundering is not leading us away from foreign involvement in any real manner. He is as likely to get us into war by accident as his predecessors did on purpose. But there are reasons why a man as awful as Trump should not only be elected but re-elected, and one of them is the repeated foreign policy disasters engineered by a bipartisan gang of the best and the brightest. Dan Drezner, you should read Dan Larison. You might learn something.
Rufo is a genuinely awful person, and even if he does something good, I assume it's for bad reasons. But this part Rufo's plan isn't bad. "forcing schools to advertise the earnings of graduates from specific programs so students understand their risks when they enroll. If students default on their loans, he says universities should have responsibility for paying some of it back" aren't bad ideas. I get that the idea is to gut liberal arts, but if done in a fair way (in which I have no confidence), such as giving wages a decade out (as opposed to one year out) I don't think it would have the effect of turning everyone into business majors. Still, I wonder if he gets that making schools payback defaulted loans would put the proprietary schools that prey on vets, the poor, and other out of business.
I agree with you! Done right, there is some merit to the idea -- particularly if it's extended to for-profit universities.
I have zero confidence that this will be done right. Also, it should be noted that there are multiple rankings and reports that already do some version of this. See, for example, https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024-college-guide/ and https://freopp.org/whitepapers/does-college-pay-off-a-comprehensive-return-on-investment-analysis/
Many years ago I ran a small non profit or Boston called the workforce solutions group. As a Sox fan you might also recall my blog Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME. Anyway predatory education was a top issue for me, but we could never get traction. I remember meeting with hospital execs and asking how many nurses they’d hired out of devry or some such and they said “none. We would never hire one.” So people were taking out huge debt, federally subsidized, to pursue a degree that they were statistically unlikely to finish, and even if they did finish, it was worthless. Broke my heart. Obama made some real improvements on that front, but the Rs fought it tooth and nail. Not sure why that would change now.
Not sure about the Jenga tower analogy. I fear it is too static. More like a steady corrosion that gradually turns quantity into quality. Far more than education, all the post-Bretton Woods institutions, the rules-based order -- particularly trade and the UN Security Council and specialized agencies, and amorphous key factors like US credibility, all eroding, while DC pretends it is still 1991.
Complete aside, but I've always read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, and the ones that always hit me the hardest were the ones where things slowly become shittier and shitter, there isn't some sudden toppling of dominoes, because they always seemed the most realistic.
Exactly.