Posted on September 19, 2012

Academic Dishonesty

Walter Williams, CNS News, September 18, 2012

Many of the nation’s colleges and universities have become cesspools of indoctrination, intolerance, academic dishonesty and an “enlightened” form of racism. This is a decades-old trend.

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Unfortunately, parents, taxpayers and donors have little knowledge of the extent of the dishonesty and indoctrination. There are several clues for telling whether there’s academic dishonesty and indoctrination. One is to see whether a college spends millions for diversity and multiculturalism centers and hires directors of diversity and inclusion, managers of diversity recruitment, associate deans for diversity, and vice presidents of diversity. See whether colleges spend money to indoctrinate incoming freshmen with programs such as “The Tunnel of Oppression,” in which, among other things, students call one another vile racial and sexual names in order to develop “oppression awareness.”

An American Council of Trustees and Alumni survey in 2004 of 50 selective colleges found that 49 percent of students complained of professors frequently injecting political comments into their courses even if they had nothing to do with the subject, while 46 percent reported that professors used their classrooms to promote their own political views. One English professor told his students that “conservatism champions racism, exploitation and imperialist war.” The “critical race studies” program at UCLA School of Law says that its aim is to “transform racial justice advocacy.”

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A recent National Association of Scholars report, “A Crisis of Competence,” reported that the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute found that “more faculty now believe that they should teach their students to be agents of social change than believe that it is important to teach them the classics of Western civilization.” {snip}

In today’s college climate, we shouldn’t be surprised by the outcomes.

A survey conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut gave 81 percent of the seniors a D or an F in their knowledge of American history. Many students could not identify Valley Forge, words from the Gettysburg Address or even the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution. The National Center for Education Statistics reported that only 31 percent of college graduates can read and understand a complex book.

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Our sad state of college education proves what my grandmother admonished: “If you’re doing something you’re not supposed to be doing, you can’t do what you’re supposed to do.”