While Fab fumbles around with all this high-tech stuff, let's take one second to notice that the former home of our beloved compound has somehow become an "elite" school. No doubt, this is thanks to CM having hung around there for a few years. Our mere presence makes a place great. Maybe we should be charging the PR people at Oilmont? Five years from now, the previously embarrassing Oilmont will be a goddamned tourist attraction and premier destination for famous ivory-tower eggheads.Either that, or this is the end of times. What else could explain it?
Think on that, would you?
Oilmont will be the next Marfa. But bigger. It will dwarf the Aspen Institute. You'll see.
ReplyDeleteHmm. . .the ends sound laudable (if maybe a bit hyped), some of the means a bit gimmicky. Still, if they do, in fact, manage to get genuine college-prep guidance (not to be confused with college-application-process guidance) to students who might otherwise reach the end of high school underprepared, that's to the good.
ReplyDeleteAnd in the spirit of Campus Equity Week (yes, I can beat a dead horse -- no insult to your actual, non-metaphorical horse, Bubba), I'll point out at the noble aims of this effort, at least on a quick scan, do not apparently include making sure the people who will provide this affordable, accessible education are decently paid and treated. Faculty working conditions do, after all, shape student learning conditions.
CC: You earned a 100 on that comment. A+
DeleteOnly the Sun of Fabulousness earned a higher grade, because he received extra credit for fixing the site and doing all that other wonderful stuff he does.
When I read this, for some reason I thought "our former home" meant "our former online home" and that collegemisery.com was now the site of a for-profit university that was branding itself as "elite."
ReplyDeleteNo such luck. Yet.
Well, we have periodically threatened/fantasized founding a university together. I think the most common vision was some variation on a homeless encampment composed at least in part of vans parked down by the river. But maybe online is the way to go. We'd presumably have relatively happy (if still badly underpaid) faculty, but our customer service would presumably be terrible, since none of us believe in the concept.
DeleteAnd the Office of Student Retention and Appeasement would be conspicuously absent.
DeleteI think I may be ill......
ReplyDelete