Pursue 'safe and tried path' to success

From xelns:
Pursue 'safe and tried path' to success

"If you haven't been to a college campus lately, here's a quick primer on the current freshman/1st year class:

• 26 percent frequently talk about politics.

• 48 percent had 'A' averages in high school.

• 33 percent say the death penalty should be abolished.

• 23 percent say racial discrimination is no longer a problem in America (though at historically black colleges, that figure drops to 14 percent).

• 51 percent spent less than an hour per week reading for pleasure in their senior year of high school.

Each fall since 1965, first-year students at more than 400 four-year colleges and universities sit down to a massive survey developed by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. It asks about everything from their intended majors to their political and spiritual values.

The participants probably don't realize that they are throwing their mite into a treasure trove. For college administrators, the survey results can be a road map for future course offerings, financial aid, and counseling services. For social scientists, it's a chance to explore a nearly 40-year arc of shifting values.

From her vantage point as dean of first-year students at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Voncile White says that students in recent years have become much more worried about choosing the "right major" and boosting their résumés with community service.

"I find them a lot more reluctant to explore something they haven't done before - they'd rather take a safe and tried path," Ms. White says. "We're engaged in a struggle to try to get them to become educated individuals rather than just people who know a lot of stuff."

Her observations follow some of the trend lines in "The American Freshman/1st year students" the annual report by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). Results were released Monday from the fall of 2004, the 39th year of the survey. The nearly 290,000 responses were statistically adjusted to reflect the nation's 1.3 million full-time freshmen.

For the past 25 years, there's been an increase in the percentage of students who place a high value on "being very well off financially," and a parallel decline in the importance of "developing a meaningful philosophy of life".

When the survey started in the 1960s, focus groups insisted that the "philosophy of life" choice be added to the list of important goals students could check off. "That was the most popular value," says Alexander Astin, founding director of HERI, who has been involved with the project from its inception. "Most of the decline occurred during the '80s - the Reagan era, the 'Me' era."

Other changes help explain students' concerns about their financial futures. With rising college costs, for instance, the portion of students who plan to work full time while in school has more than doubled since 1980, to 6.3 percent.

There was a slight uptick in favor of developing a meaningful philosophy of life, but researchers won't call it a reversal of the trend unless it continues for another year or two.

The overall pull of materialism in society is prompting many colleges to do more "to encourage exploration of the inner life," Mr. Astin says.

Some campuses are reviving Western Civilization and Great Books courses, which send the message "Know thyself," he says. The trend of service-learning also requires self-reflection. And many colleges now have "Freshmen 101" programs. "The best are an attempt to get the students to look at what the college is offering and to make sense out of it in terms of their own values and aspirations and hopes," Astin says.

A spinoff project on spirituality in higher education is also in the works at HERI, tracking students all the way through college to explore the interaction of academics, religion, spirituality, and other aspects of college life. A pilot study found that by junior year, church attendance drops off significantly, but more students place importance on integrating spirituality into their lives (58 percent of juniors, compared with 51 percent of freshmen).

When it comes to political engagement, first-year students don't come close to their 1960s counterparts, but one-third still say it's very important to keep up with political affairs.

Nearly half consider themselves "middle of the road" politically, but the numbers are growing on the far right (2.2 percent) and far left (3.4 percent). Those extremes saw the biggest single-year increase in the 35 years the question has been on the survey, perhaps because of the polarized presidential election season of 2004, says Linda Sax, a UCLA professor of education and director of the survey.

Some of the most noticeable changes over the life of the survey have been prompted by the women's movement, Astin says. Women and men are much more similar now than in the 1960s and '70s, in everything from their career interests to their values. One notable difference this year, however: More women (36 percent) than men (16 percent) say they frequently feel overwhelmed by all they have to do."

xelns: Pursue 'safe and tried path' to success

xelns: Pursue 'safe and tried path' to success

Pursue 'safe and tried path' to success
If you haven't been to a college campus lately, here's a quick primer on the current freshman/1st year class:

• 26 percent frequently talk about politics.

• 48 percent had 'A' averages in high school.

• 33 percent say the death penalty should be abolished.

• 23 percent say racial discrimination is no longer a problem in America (though at historically black colleges, that figure drops to 14 percent).

• 51 percent spent less than an hour per week reading for pleasure in their senior year of high school.

Each fall since 1965, first-year students at more than 400 four-year colleges and universities sit down to a massive survey developed by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. It asks about everything from their intended majors to their political and spiritual values.

The participants probably don't realize that they are throwing their mite into a treasure trove. For college administrators, the survey results can be a road map for future course offerings, financial aid, and counseling services. For social scientists, it's a chance to explore a nearly 40-year arc of shifting values.

From her vantage point as dean of first-year students at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Voncile White says that students in recent years have become much more worried about choosing the "right major" and boosting their résumés with community service.

"I find them a lot more reluctant to explore something they haven't done before - they'd rather take a safe and tried path," Ms. White says. "We're engaged in a struggle to try to get them to become educated individuals rather than just people who know a lot of stuff."

Her observations follow some of the trend lines in "The American Freshman/1st year students" the annual report by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). Results were released Monday from the fall of 2004, the 39th year of the survey. The nearly 290,000 responses were statistically adjusted to reflect the nation's 1.3 million full-time freshmen.

For the past 25 years, there's been an increase in the percentage of students who place a high value on "being very well off financially," and a parallel decline in the importance of "developing a meaningful philosophy of life".

When the survey started in the 1960s, focus groups insisted that the "philosophy of life" choice be added to the list of important goals students could check off. "That was the most popular value," says Alexander Astin, founding director of HERI, who has been involved with the project from its inception. "Most of the decline occurred during the '80s - the Reagan era, the 'Me' era."

Other changes help explain students' concerns about their financial futures. With rising college costs, for instance, the portion of students who plan to work full time while in school has more than doubled since 1980, to 6.3 percent.

There was a slight uptick in favor of developing a meaningful philosophy of life, but researchers won't call it a reversal of the trend unless it continues for another year or two.

The overall pull of materialism in society is prompting many colleges to do more "to encourage exploration of the inner life," Mr. Astin says.

Some campuses are reviving Western Civilization and Great Books courses, which send the message "Know thyself," he says. The trend of service-learning also requires self-reflection. And many colleges now have "Freshmen 101" programs. "The best are an attempt to get the students to look at what the college is offering and to make sense out of it in terms of their own values and aspirations and hopes," Astin says.

A spinoff project on spirituality in higher education is also in the works at HERI, tracking students all the way through college to explore the interaction of academics, religion, spirituality, and other aspects of college life. A pilot study found that by junior year, church attendance drops off significantly, but more students place importance on integrating spirituality into their lives (58 percent of juniors, compared with 51 percent of freshmen).

When it comes to political engagement, first-year students don't come close to their 1960s counterparts, but one-third still say it's very important to keep up with political affairs.

Nearly half consider themselves "middle of the road" politically, but the numbers are growing on the far right (2.2 percent) and far left (3.4 percent). Those extremes saw the biggest single-year increase in the 35 years the question has been on the survey, perhaps because of the polarized presidential election season of 2004, says Linda Sax, a UCLA professor of education and director of the survey.

Some of the most noticeable changes over the life of the survey have been prompted by the women's movement, Astin says. Women and men are much more similar now than in the 1960s and '70s, in everything from their career interests to their values. One notable difference this year, however: More women (36 percent) than men (16 percent) say they frequently feel overwhelmed by all they have to do.

normblog: Sunday, Sunday

normblog: Sunday, Sunday: "Indeed. But there is joy and there is illusion, and the two don't have to be shackled together. Liberals, democrats, people on the left, who could not yesterday, and cannot today, find it in themselves to rejoice about what Iraqis, in their millions and after all they've been through, bravely did... how miserable, what unfortunates. Just think how many of these same people would have been overjoyed had, say, George Bush lost last November to John Kerry. Would they have foregone immediate expressions of that joy for cautious, hard-headed analysis of the upcoming Kerry presidency? Would they hell. They would have been whooping it up from New York to San Francisco, from Auckland and Sydney to Berlin. The analysis, in that event, would have waited until tomorrow or the day after, or else been allowed to stand side by side with fulsome sentiments of celebration. But for the people of Iraq, different rules.

No, the truth, the thing that so many cannot digest or stomach, is that the road to what happened yesterday was opened by a Republican US president whom they despise and a New Labour prime minister whom they hold in only slightly higher regard than that, while they themselves were marching and otherwise disporting themselves in a way that would have closed off that road for who knows how long. Well, if you could not take pleasure from what happened in Iraq yesterday, I extend my commiserations. For Iraqis and a lot of other people who felt able to share in their celebration it was a very good day."

Dennis Prager: Professors as inquisitors

from Dennis Prager's weekly column:

In the year 2005, nearly four centuries after Galileo was forced to recant observable scientific facts about our solar system, the president of Harvard University was forced to do a similar thing. He was compelled to apologize for advancing an idea about men and women supported by scientific research and likely to be true.

But for most professors, neither finding truth nor seeking wisdom nor teaching is the primary goal of the university; promoting leftist ideas is. Most Americans know this to be true -- hence the chasm between most Americans and the university. But many Americans do not wish to acknowledge this. To come to realize that the highest institutions of learning often do not value learning but seek to propagandize their children (largely against everything they, the parents, believe in) is too painful. Most people can't confront the fact that, unless their child is studying the natural sciences, they have paid huge sums of money for their child to be able to share bathrooms with members of the opposite sex, read columns in college newspapers about American evil and tongue techniques for better oral sex, binge drink and, with a few noble exceptions, be propagandized.

What is most amazing about the Harvard story is that by and large neither the Harvard community nor any other university seems to be embarrassed by it. And one can only weep for America over the president of its most prestigious university fully caving in and apologizing for saying what he knows to be true.

Imagine the good that could have been achieved had Lawrence Summers said this:

Under my tenure as president of this university, never will a capable woman be turned away from teaching at Harvard. And we will scour the earth for women who will teach math and science at Harvard. But under this same tenure, no serious idea will ever be censured and its author forced to apologize. The motto of this university is 'Veritas,' 'Truth,' and I will not allow it to be changed.

No wonder the Democratic Party is so keen on sending billions more dollars of taxpayer money to universities through tuition tax credits. They know that the university is a factory churning out leftists.

As readers are aware, this year I am writing a series of columns making the case for Judeo-Christian values. The secular university provides one of the most cogent arguments for those values: This institution, which is the most opposed to Judeo-Christian values, is also the least committed to truth."

Of course they'll teach in class that Christians are narrow minded. Sigh.

The Finger

www.daybydaycartoon.com

Jarvis Iraq Round Up

Jeff Jarvis sums up reaction:

The Eeyore Analysis of Iraq

: I'll be on MSNBC in the 5p hour with Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, who tries to wrap-up blogger reaction to the election from the antiwar camp (I won't call it the liberal side).

Problem is, there isn't much. Oliver did the Chicken Little dance yesterday but hasn't acknowledged the success today. Jerome Armstrong of MyDD argues that this opens the door to an Iranian-like rule of fundamentalists but doesn't say how he makes that prediction when the clerics decided to stay out of the Iraqi government and every poll makes it clear the people don't want that. Armando at Kos does the Eeyore thing (see also Juan Cole, below); Kos is still silent, as is Atrios.

Whether it's Kerry or any of these bloggers, it would be the grownup, mature, generous, humanistic, caring -- yes, dare I say, liberal -- thing to do to be glad that people who lived under tyranny are now giving birth to democracy.

Democracy isn't a right-or-left thing, folks. It's a right-and-left thing, remember?

The Election in Pictures

WHERE WERE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING!? THE MEN, THE WOMEN, THE CHILDREN! WHY IN THE WORLD ARE THEY ALL STANDING IN LINE!

They are voting. Compiled in a wonderful slideshow, aptly set the "Theme for the Common Man".



I may paste my finger in purple, to stand with Iraq, and to honor the American Soldiers who helped make it possible.

Loving Mark Steyn

You've got to love Mark Steyn! Quoted at Instapundit.

I'm with you James

James Lileks on the elections in iraq:

"I’m just glad I’m stupid enough to be hopeful. I’m glad I’m naive enough to suspect Iraqis actually wanted to vote. I’m very glad I’m not so aslosh with solipsistic hatred that any success in Iraq makes me trot out a cynical riposte so the rest of my buddies on Olympus will nod in wry assent. I’m glad that a picture of a mother holding her daughter to cast the ballot reminds me that this is number two in a series. All other things aside – which is a difficult thing to posit, I know – I’m glad to be on the side of holding elections. In the end I’m glad to be glad. And now I will go skip through the daisies and sing happy songs about bunnies, because I am obviously a fool. What was the cover story of the Village Voice I saw in the library today? “Bush’s plan to destroy the world.” Destroy it some more, George.

Then again, things can’t be going that well, if New York artists have been mocking it with welcome mats. Next thing you know they’ll be weaving dish towels that show Iraqi women’s pay disparity increasing after the invasion, if you look very closely at the pattern. Or it could be just some figs."

I'm with you James.

The Election

Roger Simon is blogging the Iraqi Election. Of course Instapundit will have links and analysis.

This is a historic day. May God grant peace and safety to the people of Iraq.

Starbucks for Lent

LarkNews.com has this important idea, just in time for the Lenten season.

Looks like I'll be spending Mardi Gras with a caramel Machiatto.

Turin Shroud may be 3000 years old

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "A chemist who worked on testing of the Shroud of Turin says new analysis of the fiber indicates the cloth that some say was the burial linen of Jesus could be up to 3,000 years old.

The analysis, by a scientist who was on the original 1978 team that was allowed to study tiny pieces of the cloth, indicates the shroud is far older than the initial findings suggesting it was probably from medieval times, and will likely be seized on by those who believe it wrapped the body of Jesus after his crucifixion.

'I cannot disprove that this cloth was the burial shroud that was used on Jesus,' Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the University of California-operated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in a telephone interview Friday from his home.

'The chemistry says it was a real shroud, the blood spots on it are real blood, and the technology that was used to make that piece of cloth was exactly what Pliny the Elder reported fort his time,' about 70 A.D., Rogers said, referring to the naturalist of ancient Roman times."

Interesting.

CU Churchill 2: Welcome through the Looking Glass of your local Univerisity

The Daily Camera: Sports Columnists: "Woelk: Does Barnett have less rights than professor?

January 29, 2005

Notes, quotes, queries and observations heading into the weekend ...

A question for CU prez Betsy Hoffman and her regent pals:

Just last year, Hoffman suspended a football coach for saying, 'Katie was a girl and not only was she a girl, she was terrible.'

But less than a year later, the CU administration defends the rights of a professor to call the victims of the World Trade Center attacks 'little Eichmanns.'

Gary Barnett was immediately suspended for his comments and prevented from doing a very important part of his job.

Ward Churchill, however, is protected by the First Amendment, according to CU administrators, and is allowed to continue spewing hate speech whenever and wherever he chooses.

My question is, what's the difference (other than the fact that Barnett told the truth and Churchill voiced an opinion)?

Is Barnett also not protected by the First Amendment? Or, do some folks have more constitutional rights than others? If you make Hoffman mad, does that limit those constitutional rights? Is political correctness a factor in gauging those rights?

Or, could it be that when Barnett made his statement, Buffalo Betsy's job was also on the line?"

Let's not forget that CU is a school were hundreds of students publically smoke pot in the center of the campus every April 12th at 4:12 in the afternoon.

Yeah it's the football coach who needs to be disciplined. Off with his head!

Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper

LILEKS (James) The Bleat:
"I bought some, because it seemed unlikely that so many flavors could be jammed into one receptacle without creating some new uberflavor that opened new dimensions and let through the howling minions of hell. It’s as if they didn’t know when to stop. Cherry is no strangers to cohabitation with other flavors; vanilla has a new role as an ingredient adjunct for Coke. Cherry Vanilla sounds like the name of a 60s model who worked with Warhol. Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper throws it all up in the air – literally, perhaps – when you consider that Dr Pepper itself is the flavor that cannot be readily identified, but you wouldn’t be surprised if it’s prunes. Any additional flavor will simply smother the Pepper flavor. It’s like Cherry Vanilla coffee. No one ever takes a sip and says “boy, you can really taste the coffee.”

LOL!

CU Churchill Controversy

Instapundit.com: "Still more on Churchill here. And perhaps the best take comes from reader Harvey Schneider:

The irony of the Churchill episode is that Colorado University gets federal money. You would think with his radical Anti-American outlook, The money he makes as an instructor would burn in his hands like Holy Water in a demons hands. He seems to be guilty of the same crime as many in the WTC that day. Being a part of the system."

This from Instapundit's roundup on the Ward Churchill controversy.

The Party of Kennedy

HughHewitt.com: "The party of Truman and JFK has a problem when its advance media guard does not celebrate the rise of a democracy from the ashes of a dictatorship. More than a problem, actually, a collapse at the core. It is now, at best, the party of Henry Wallace and Teddy Kennedy, and that's not a party remotely close to the American mainstream."

This is Hugh's conclusion regarding the silence of leftist bloggers on the importance of elections in Iraq. He has a roundup of links so that you can see for yourself.

"What has Michael Moore got to say? A big picture of Saddam, an artilce on former Baathists running in the elections, and a letter about his 9/11 picture winning a People's Choice award --I kid you not."

Beer - Is there anything it can't do?

Ananova - Man peed way out of avalanche: "A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains.

He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out.

But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through.

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He said: 'I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I'm glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there.'"

This man is undoubtably, the greatest hero in world history.

More quotes from Chrenkoff

Chrenkoff:

"Sheikh Fawzan Al-Fawzan, a professor at the Al-Imam University in Saudi Arabia confuses Christmas with season's holidays:

'These great tragedies and collective punishments that are wiping out villages, towns, cities, and even entire countries, are Allah's punishments of the people of these countries, even if they are Muslims.

'Some of our forefathers said that if there is usury and fornication in a certain village, Allah permits its destruction. We know that at these resorts, which unfortunately exist in Islamic and other countries in South Asia, and especially at Christmas, fornication and sexual perversion of all kinds are rampant. The fact that it happened at this particular time is a sign from Allah. It happened at Christmas, when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion.'
It came as a shock to me, having been brought up as Polish Roman Catholic that it was really supposed to be all about fornication and perversion. Thanks to Sheik Al Fawzan, at least I now know the true meaning of Christmas."

I guess the Sheikh would have us believe something innappropriate about the term "stocking stuffer".

What are we going to do about underpopulation?

Foreign Affairs - The Global Baby Bust - Phillip Longman: "Summary: Most people think overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe. In fact, the opposite is true. As countries get richer, their populations age and their birthrates plummet. And this is not just a problem of rich countries: the developing world is also getting older fast. Falling birthrates might seem beneficial, but the economic and social price is too steep to pay. The right policies could help turn the tide, but only if enacted before it's too late."

Wait a minute, I thought we were supposed to be working hard to solve the terrible problems of overpopulation. Does this mean everything else I learned in school is false?

Hmmm.

Sex Blogging Part 2

Years ago, before my children were able to understand the English language, I was a huge addict of the Simpsons. I still love the show but my kids are not yet old enough to appreciate the satire and sarcasm, so I don't watch it much anymore. But now that I have Tivo I can watch the Simpsons on my time. Anyhoo...

I was watching the Simpsons tonight and as usual they summed up a cultural issue with more truth and brevity than Shakespeare himself. Marge and her two sisters were watching TV and Patty and Selma announce that "Nookie in New York" is about to be on BHO. "It's about four single women behaving like gay men." Patty and Selma, claim to love the show because "that is so like our lives!"

Devastating.

One of the startling revelations in "Taking Sex Differences Seriously" is the revelation that promiscuous women who are happy, like those depicted on "Nookie in New York" (or as we all know it "Sex in the City") almost don't exist, statistically:

"Seventy-one percent of teenage girls report being in love with their last sexual partner but only 45 percent of boys do. And teen girls are far less likely than boys to report being happy with their sexual experiences and far more likely to report that they wished they had waited longer to have sex. On the other hand, married women report that marital sex is the best they ever had, and far more regularly than men they say the sex is better two years after marriage than it was on the honeymoon.

The picture doesn't get prettier for more mature singles. The Samanthas of the world are few. According to the research of Syracuse University anthropologist John Townsend, the most sexually experienced single women, while still believing that casual sex is fine, find that their feelings will not cooperate. They feel used, hurt and demeaned after sleeping with men uninterested in relationships. Many of the most sexually active men, on the other hand, regularly engage in pleasurable sex with women they barely know and sometimes don't even like.

The real world of thirty-something, single women bounces from books like How to Heal the Heart By Hating to those with advice about How Not To Stay Single. In 1999, 29 percent of 35-to-44-year-old females were unmarried; in 1960 fewer than 13 percent were. These facts are best explained by men enjoying unencumbered sex while hoping that a more appealing and equally willing woman may be right around the corner.

Too often, in today's culture, women stroll off to the playground of casual sex only to be hurt. They conclude, wrongly, that they are too sensitive to enjoy what their favorite female TV characters seem to love. Rather,the feeling that casual sex makes them unhappy is too common among women to be idiosyncratic. It's a normal, healthy reaction to a bad idea. To get what they want most -- a committed, loving relationship and good sex -- women should start by saying, "No."

I guess Patty and Selma are closer to the truth than "Sex in the City" There are indeed promiscuous women, but apparently precious few are happy about it. I guess that reality is too hard hitting for BHO. That's why the Simpsons will go on and on. Sometimes it takes a cartoon to show the real world.

And the part about gay men is right on the money. I don't have time to go into it right now but I've said it before and I'll say it again: I as a heterosexual man have far more in common with a homosexual man than with a woman. Because men and women are different. I take that seriously. As Billy Crystal said to Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally : "Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place." If it weren't for women providing a brake to the runaway male libido, men would have sex all the time. There is sex in the city but it doesn't look like the TV show would have us believe.

I love the Simpsons.