Links for 11/24/09

Michael J. Offerman

The idea that the most exclusive colleges represent quality actually begs the question of the real value added by colleges that take only the best and the brightest. The idea that cost equals quality is just as questionable. Exclusivity and cost have served as proxies for quality because higher education has argued that it is just not possible to measure learning. I find this argument to be ridiculous. To think that organizations designed to teach and prepare researchers cannot figure out how to assess their own work borders on the absurd.

Adam Kotsko

unless we want to cultivate students who believe that their every utterance is intrinsically worthwhile due to their precious snowflake-hood, it would probably be good to get them to a point where their confidence is earned, where it’s based in actual knowledge…

The goals of critical thinking are the only possible goals of a liberal arts education, and I support them without reservation. Yet you can’t jump straight to them, and I think that a lot of the ways people talk about pedagogy assume that you can

Tim Ranzetta on the Canadian student loan program.

Barry Ritholtz

That millions of slightly clever, pants wearing primates can combine their collective ignorance, their intellectual foibles, biases and false beliefs somehow into something resembling intelligence was one of the false beliefs of the era.