January 7, 2024
Higher Education: DEI and Cargo Cultism
By Clarice Feldman
“Cargo cult” is the term used to explain how primitives imitate technological symbols in the belief that doing so will allow them to reap the benefits not otherwise available to them. The most famous examples are the balsa wood airplanes and boats created in Melanesia with the thought that real planes and ships would once again supply them with the developed world’s gifts that were dropped on these islands during World War II. The notion that everyone should get a college education and the related ideology of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are just as foolish. The underlying idea is that if you give everyone a college diploma, they will reap the benefits of what used to take high-level natural talents and hard work. Their adoption has diminished the value of higher education, substantially raised its cost, saddled thousands of students with large college loans they will not be likely to repay because the course of study they chose will never result in the high salaries they imagined the receipt of a diploma would yield. Until these ludicrous notions took hold, the average IQ to perform at college level was 115 to 130. At the present time, the mean IQ of college students is the same as the general population -- 102.
In the pre-affirmative action/pre-diversity America of the mid-1900s, the average undergrad IQ was above 115. Expanding the student population by creating incentives for underperforming groups and individuals to apply has resulted in reduction of academic rigor, grade inflation and the decline in the value of a bachelor's degree. Affirmative action admission policies manage to be both racist against high-performing groups and also destructive of academic excellence. If there's a more poisonous set of policies in America, I don't know what it is.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/higher_education_dei_and_cargo_cultism.html
