Not all battles are fought with a sword
After a warm and extremely dry (as in drought sort of dry) winter, we’ve had two major winter storms across Minnesota and Wisconsin in the last week. So a week or so ago the ground was bare, and now we’ve got something like a foot of packed snow on the ground, and much larger plow drifts all over the place.
I never had time to take any photos during the storms, but did get to take a few as I walked into town and back today for a haircut.
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So I was browsing Pharyngula when I should have been getting some lunch, and was saddened to see an ad for the University of Phoenix there next to PeeZed’s lucid and fiery prose. One can make an argument (and Phoenix certainly does) that Phoenix is providing an important service to people who can’t quit everything and spend four years in college. The profit motive clearly confuses things in deep and unfortunate ways, though (much like the college athletics mess in the U.S.), and the recent blistering NY Times article nicely discusses many of the issues at hand.
I realize that the ad was almost certainly arranged through ScienceBlogs rather than PeeZed directly. Still, to see Paul’s writing next to that ad was nearly as jarring as a banner for a church (or Republican Party) fundraiser. He (and pretty much all of us at UMM) have hitched our wagons to a style and philosophy of education that emphasizes personal contact, face-to-face interaction, and an emphasis on ideas, critical thinking and analysis, and our students’ development rather than profit.
Hmph.
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