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National Review
The Deflation of the Academic Brand
By Victor Davis Hanson
August 14, 2018
EXCERPT:
"When self-professed experts are wrong over and over, for decades, what’s the value of a university degree?
Trumpism is sometimes derided as an updated know-nothingism that rejects expertise and the input of credentialed expertise. Supposedly, professionals who could now save us tragically have their talent untapped as they sit idle at the Council on Foreign Relations, the economics Department at Harvard, or in the offices of the Brookings Institution — even as Trump’s wheelers and dealers crash and burn, too proud, too smelly, or too ignorant to call in their betters to come in and save Trump from himself.
But do the degreed classes, at least outside math, the sciences, engineering, and medicine, merit such esteem anymore?
Anthony Scaramucci’s Harvard Law degree seemed no guarantee of the Mooch’s circumspection, sobriety, or good judgement.
Bruce Ohr’s similar degree did not ensure either common sense or simple ethics. Or, on the contrary, perhaps at Harvard he learned that progressive ends justify any means necessary to obtain them. In any case, Ohr thought there was nothing wrong in keeping quiet about his spouse’s work on the discredited Steele dossier, or indeed in aiding and abetting the seeding of it, while he was the fourth-ranking official at Trump’s Department of Justice."
The Deflation of the Academic Brand
By Victor Davis Hanson
August 14, 2018
EXCERPT:
"When self-professed experts are wrong over and over, for decades, what’s the value of a university degree?
Trumpism is sometimes derided as an updated know-nothingism that rejects expertise and the input of credentialed expertise. Supposedly, professionals who could now save us tragically have their talent untapped as they sit idle at the Council on Foreign Relations, the economics Department at Harvard, or in the offices of the Brookings Institution — even as Trump’s wheelers and dealers crash and burn, too proud, too smelly, or too ignorant to call in their betters to come in and save Trump from himself.
But do the degreed classes, at least outside math, the sciences, engineering, and medicine, merit such esteem anymore?
Anthony Scaramucci’s Harvard Law degree seemed no guarantee of the Mooch’s circumspection, sobriety, or good judgement.
Bruce Ohr’s similar degree did not ensure either common sense or simple ethics. Or, on the contrary, perhaps at Harvard he learned that progressive ends justify any means necessary to obtain them. In any case, Ohr thought there was nothing wrong in keeping quiet about his spouse’s work on the discredited Steele dossier, or indeed in aiding and abetting the seeding of it, while he was the fourth-ranking official at Trump’s Department of Justice."
