Joel Warren Lidz Ph.d.

Pork Barrel Education: on the Lowering of Higher Education Standards Joel Warren Lidz Ph.d.

Most persons polled believe that higher education is doing a good job, but numerous studies show that American students lag behind foreigners. Dr. Lidz examines higher education?s low standards in light of the following: 1) the disparaging of so-called humanistic education, which seeks to improve those abilities which make humans unique in the animal kingdom-self-reflection and rationality. 2) the application to colleges of a business model which focuses exclusively on the enrollment and retention of students. 3) political correctness in the form of a affirmative action, sensitivity training and speech codes which impose on schools a vision of what they should be. 4) the movement of thought known as postmodernism.

"This work is a voice for excellence in education. Political correctness and multiculturalism are the inverse of excellence and have failed completely as proper standards of human education. These false standards of teaching and learning coupled with a business model of the administration of colleges and universities have brought American education to a point of ineptitude. Postmodernism, predicated on the overturning of objectivity and human knowledge, has provided theoretical justification for such developments." - Donald Philip Verene, Candler Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy, Emory University