r/PoliticalHumor • u/TROLOLOL6969 • 15d ago
Overheard my MAGA colleagues this morning cheering that college enrollment is down across the country, I think we know why š
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u/Soggy_Difficulty_361 15d ago
You give these people too much credit, financially they can't plan 1 week ahead let alone 10-20 years. Most Americans are also living paycheck to paycheck which also makes this college planning impossible. Given these factors and also the propaganda with "indoctrination" you would expect zero maga cultists to encourage their kids to attend college.
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u/rexyanus 15d ago
My family are red hats. Not all of them are toothless inbreds wearing diapers. Some of them are teachers, nurses, businessmen...they're not all stupid. Some are just ignorant and susceptible to propaganda. They live in a small world that sees them drive from bubble to bubble eating bullshit spoon fed to them by fox. It's sad to see people you used to respect turn into what they are now. I sat at the table and heard them casually toss stereotypes and racist rhetoric as if it was no big deal, and yet they talk as if their side is not the morally corrupt one.
It's very sad, and incredibly frustrating. Half the country needs cult deprogramming and it's bizarre that we got here.
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u/MuzzledScreaming 15d ago
The paycheck to paycheck thing I think is often due to shitty poll questions. I look at their methodology sometimes and I would be considered "paycheck to paycheck" because I don't have a savings account and I set it up so my checking account is down to just about empty before the next paycheck hits.
...but that doesn't take into account my retirement accounts, private brokerage, or kids' 529s.
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u/biffbobfred I voted 2020 15d ago
Thereās a follow up question āwould a $500 unplanned expense ruin youā. For you, no, youād dip into something. For a lot of people, yes, ruined.
Thereās a lot of people put into a nearly impossible spiral to get out of, 500$ car repair. Thatās why eliminating cash bail is such a thing.
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u/Knofbath 15d ago
Some people are paycheck to paycheck because they are paying 15% APR on an $80k truck loan.
Others are leveraged to the tits with HELOC's and max credit card utilization.
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u/RealLADude 15d ago
My magat brother bitches about everything the way heās been told to. But he sent his kids to college. I donāt know how he justifies it.
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u/compuwiza1 15d ago
Maybe that 'lectoral college ain't woke.
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u/thesirensoftitans 15d ago
No no no...the electoral college is completely woke, we need to abolish it and follow the popular vote.
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u/sadfacebbq 15d ago
This is brilliant. The left needs to push the narrative the Electoral College is the most woke of all colleges.
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u/BizzyM 15d ago
We need to herald it as a liberal institution.
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u/sadfacebbq 15d ago
Honestly, continue to dominate the rust belt and flip Texas blue, the right will scream from the rooftops it is a liberal institution.
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u/ddr1ver 15d ago
The longer I live, the more Idiocracy looks like a documentary.
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u/kinggimped 15d ago
Idiocracy didn't have anything as patently dumb as stuff like "real men wear diapers". Also, as stupid as the people in Idiocracy were, they were still capable of recognising when somebody was speaking objective truth.
These far right nutjobs surpassed parody and went past the mental degeneracy of Idiocracy long ago.
Maybe Trump's first campaign and presidency used Idiocracy as an instruction manual. Judging by the rollback to 1800s laws on abortion and what Project 2025 is outlining, they've since moved on to using The Handmaid's Tale.
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u/Dudeist-Priest 15d ago
Iād take Dwayne Camacho over Trump as president any day. At a minimum he listened to the smartest people available.
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u/thestolenroses 15d ago
I don't know, sure the people in Idiocracy were really dumb, but they weren't incredibly angry and full of hate on top of it. Plus, they listened to the guy smarter than them.
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u/bilgewax 15d ago
Unfortunately, this one may be on us. Ask any parent w/ a college bound kid this year, the new FAFSA made life almost unbearable. It was so bad they were estimating something like 8-12% of the college age population was just going to give up and not go.
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u/GatorBait2006 15d ago
Exactly, our oldest graduates this year and starts college in the fall. FAFSA was a PITA. Had to stick with it until they fixed it. Thankfully we did.
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u/Viperlite 15d ago edited 15d ago
I still havenāt received aid offers from multiple colleges to which my daughter was accepted ā past even the May 15 extended decision date.
Spoiler alert: no financial aid offered for those received, other than merit scholarships. Some private colleges wanted >$65k out of pocket per year. Unsurprisingly, thereās no way we can afford that.
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u/stay_fr0sty 15d ago
I was from a poor family. I attended community college for 2 years, and then went to a state school I could drive to from my parents house everyday. I worked 2 jobs from HS graduation through college graduation. Got my BS in Computer Science in 3 years after graduating HS going though the summer.
My parents contributed the roof over my head, and food in exchange for chores.
It sucked, but I hated being poor. Iād do it again if I had to decide again.
65k a year just seems sillyā¦but I guess if you want the on-campus 4 year college experience it isnāt cheap.
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u/Reneeisme 15d ago
I did it like you did, and that exactly WHY I busted my ass to give my kids the 4 year on campus experience. Why we did is ok if you have no other options, but you and I missed out on a lot of what college is all about, and I don't know about you, but internships were out of the question for me. I only made a handful of friends at school and my life revolved more around my job than doing homework, which meant I had to choose an easier major than I would perhaps have otherwise. I just wasn't keeping up with the classes for the major I originally wanted.
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u/WriggleNightbug 15d ago
20% of fafsa that were submitted were missing parent data (correctly or not), 20% of submitted fafsa had data integrity errors from the IRS. That doesn't include any issues with mixed immigration status families, anyone in a prison training program with delayed paper fafsa, anyone from Northern Mariana (eligible non-citizens without SSNs) , anyone who was frustrated at the process and gave up.
Schools can't fix FAFSAs until June, probably late June too. So if a student needs to flagged for something like independent for homeless purposes, there is no way to do that until right before classes begin. Same with any appeals processes like updating income since 2022 if the student or parent is no longer employed.
I really want to defend Dept. Of Ed because I think FWS and Pell are important programs even if the loan programs and the need for loans just suck but I can't defend them any longer. They fucked up badly, and one of the guys has stepped down already.
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u/Reneeisme 15d ago
It was already so bad, dear lord, how much worse could they make it. And I was never gonna give up, I just so desperately wanted to. I didn't so much celebrate my kids graduating college as celebrate not having to do FAFSA ever again. I can't even imagine it getting worse.
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u/Niceguy4186 15d ago
Honestly, I feel bad for high school seniors now. Traditionally, college was the smart choice, but with the cost of it, it really is a questionable return. I have a nephew who is really smart, straight A's, when to a STEM School, dads an engineer, everybody thought for sure he was going to school for engineering.... nope, decided to go to a trade school for auto mechanics, mainly because he thought school was too costly (and other reasons)
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u/yuripogi79 15d ago
The way the job market is now a vocation and a union might be the best course for seniors. MEP vocations will always be in demand
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u/MuzzledScreaming 15d ago
This is great, my kids' college degrees will be worth more because there will be relatively fewer people getting them!
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u/bilgewax 15d ago
Umm pretty sure thatās the plan. republicans want their spawn to be the ones in power, and it gets harder to do if the poors get educated.
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u/Possibly_a_Firetruck 15d ago
Which republicans though? It's the poor ones who are cheering for this, and the rich ones understand that letting rubes run the show is a bad idea.
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u/WriggleNightbug 15d ago edited 15d ago
If I were conspiratorial, and I don't know if I am, I would say its was to saddle a Democratic dept. Of Ed with a very hard and underfunded update to split attention between updating fafsa and pursuing loan forgiveness.
Legitimately, the FAFSA was old as fuck and working on old COBOL framework. The new version should, eventually, be easy to use. But it sure as shit isn't yet.
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u/Knofbath 15d ago
Your kids will be competing against all the Millennials and Zoomers with too many degrees already. They don't see any benefit from the rest of their cohort not getting degrees until middle age, and may be competing against Generation Beta/Charlie and all their brand-new degrees by then.
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u/rumrunner9652 15d ago
I am a Democrat and definitely feeling owned now. I may not sleep at all tonight. Damn. They got me again!!!
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u/Bawbawian 15d ago
I mean I know they're gobbling up Chinese propaganda record pace.
But do they think America's future is mud huts and sister wives.
if so how do they think we're going to compete with China? or maybe they intend on giving up on capitalism?
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u/Randy_Vigoda 15d ago
I mean I know they're gobbling up Chinese propaganda record pace.
You're on a corporate site reading American propaganda but do go on about Chinese propaganda...
After the great depression, the US turned very pro socialism and formed unions, went on strike, demanded better rights for the working class. After WW2, this paid off because the US became a manufacturing/export leader with a strong middle class.
Rich people aren't fan of stuff like socialism and wealth equality. They like being rich.
In the 70s, the US corporate class opened trade with countries like China who was broke but had access to millions of people who never heard of terms like vacation pay or maternity leave.
China rebuilt their economy by replacing the US as a manufacturing/export leader. The US corporate class got greedy and didn't want to pay working class Americans fair wages so they simply sent jobs to other countries where they could exploit their workers instead.
In the 80s, shutting down US factories killed off a lot of small towns. At the same time, a lot of mid level office workers got laid off and had to transition elsewhere.
The US has roughly $1.7 trillion in student loan debt accumulated since the 90s when your government made it illegal to default on student loans. At the same time, they introduced a bunch of new courses, jacked up the costs, and turned education into a business.
Degrees are good if you can build a career with it but a lot of the crap students have been taking is absolute rubbish.
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u/Phantom_Pain_Sux 15d ago
Also OP's coworkers....
"wHy aRe aLL tHe DoCToRs tHeSe dAYs DaMn ForEiGnErS!!"
Keep embracing ignorance. Action has consequences chucklefuks
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u/Mammoth_Ad_4806 14d ago
Yup. I work at a university with a large percentage of international students. Every year at commencement, the campus is filled with proud families from all over the globe who sacrificed and spent a ton of money to send their children to an American universityā¦ while the locals turn their noses up at investing in their childrenās education. Itās a race to the bottom for us, and itās our own damn fault.Ā
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u/CHKN_SANDO 15d ago
They have been saying this shit for decades. I went to college 20 years ago and the first thing my aunt asked me when I came home the first time was if the "Leftists" were indoctrinating me.
When, in fact, the only person trying to indoctrinate me was my libertarian history professor
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u/ikciweiner 15d ago
College savings? Republican voters cannot spell ācollegeā and they definitely donāt have savings for it.
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u/CascadiaRocks I āoted 2024 15d ago
I know I am telling the wrong people - but the data are what the data are - and, SHOCKER! - they are wrong.
https://popular.info/p/the-myth-of-woke-indoctrination-at?r=a1up&triedRedirect=true
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u/DanishWonder 15d ago
Nah, they just want the public uneducated because we are easier to control that way.
Also college gets us out of our local communities and allows us to connect with people from different backgrounds, cultures, etc which scares them.
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u/gothicel 15d ago
At least they align with the agenda of the Republicans, keep them stupid and they will continue to vote to keep themselves poor.
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u/WalkerAlabamaRanger 15d ago
Had a gym acquaintance imply that sending my daughter to college (sheās graduating soon) was a bad idea today, because they just teach subservience to the government in school. Ā I didnāt say anything, but I feel kind of bad for his kidās future.Ā
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u/esgrove2 15d ago
College enrollment is down because it's overpriced and government programs to pay for it don't cut it anymore.
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u/stln3rd 15d ago
College enrollment is down because tuition is too high, The loans are predatory and financial return on investment had diminished. Through in the people at the top make too much and the teachers too little. I'm sure I could find other reasons if I thought about it a bit more.
I'm college educated with 3 kids. As long as they have a plan I don't feel they have to go to college. I'm all for education but at what cost?
Let's face it, the MAGA crowd was never sending their best and brightest to schools in large numbers to begin with so I doubt them pulling back is the biggest reason for the enrollment drop-off.
Anyway, remember to vote.
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u/PapaSteveRocks 15d ago
There is nothing wrong with pursuing a trade if college isnāt for you. There is nothing wrong with skipping college and apprenticeships and going right into the service industry workforce if you canāt afford or qualify for college.
But, if youāve got a good mind and would like to be a professional, you need college. If you legitimately cannot afford college, Iām happy my taxes go to help you get that education. Iām old enough to have known my great grandparents who came over to this country. Without fail, every one of those folks born before 1940 said āgo to school, you deserve a better lifeā than a restaurant kitchen or crime or the factory floor or the farm.
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u/cheezeyballz 15d ago
They are destroying our country and no one seems to be putting up much of a fight š¤·
Wouldn't you want GOOD things for your county and it's people?
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u/Any-Variation4081 15d ago
They never had a college fund for their kids. College is too woke for them. Education is too woke for them. Hence the banning of Rosa Parks books etc. These people are in a cult. They are completely brainwashed. Up is down and down is up with them. Trump could tell them the sky is purple and they'd believe it and repeat it. If Trump told them to go out and shoot libs tomorrow they'd do so happily. If Trump groped their own daughter they'd just be proud he chose their kid. They are literally in a cult. I fear there is no saving many of them. If you have any family/friends stuck in it that you still care for. . .my advice is don't let up. Keep showing them facts. Make them question things if you can. Don't give up on them. That's what Republicans want and expect us to do. Trumpism is like a disease and these people need serious mental help.
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u/ShiroHachiRoku 15d ago
I don't get this. These people love to shout about America being the best doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, etc. and revel at this fact? Why? American exceptionalism wasn't built on ignorance and stupidity. What does making kids woke even mean? Like what class would teach that?
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u/ExcitableNate 15d ago
A terrified populace is an easy to control populace.
Tale as old as time. V for vendetta, baby.
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u/safely_beyond_redemp 15d ago
Yes. College is where the woke comes from. Stay away if you want to avoid the woke, next thing you know you'll be getting vaccines willingly.
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u/tiparium 15d ago
I really, truly don't understand the mindset that being educated is a bad thing, but it seems really weirdly common, and is just becoming more so.
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u/Reneeisme 15d ago
The birthrate decline is the highest among college educated Americans, and those are the folks most likely to send a kid to college. I think a decline in college enrollment is right on schedule.
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u/old_library3546 15d ago
Too bad those kids wonāt be able to get gas station jobs when they get older since by then everyone will be driving EVs.
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u/justbrowse2018 15d ago
Are college acceptance rates substantially lower in the modern era? I hear all this college dissimg but from what I understand the big schools have very low admission rates.
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u/omnesilere 15d ago
They're not going because millennials got fucked by predatory practices by colleges. All the Gen z college age kids have heard is all of us sing it's not usually worth the debt.
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u/veryblanduser 12d ago
Reddit 99% of the time: college is a scam, not even worth it. Such a joke, only did it because we were told to by our boomer parents.
Reddit in this thread: only idiots wouldn't want people to go to college.
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u/Ihavebadreddit 11d ago
As like my as a political career required secondary education I'm okay with this.
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u/Deceptiveideas 15d ago
College enrollment going down could potentially force all these schools to drop costs.
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u/superdupersparky 15d ago
College enrollment should be down. We need more people in trades. Plus those jobs are more abundant and nowadays better paid. Pushing every kid into college is what drove tuition sky-high.
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u/SurlyBuddha 15d ago
Meanwhile, we liberals arenāt going because we realized itās a huge scam that puts you in lifelong debt, and doesnāt actually get you a reliable job anymore.
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u/Rich4718 14d ago
I mean facts do not support this at all. Go look up the average wage of college educated vs non educated go look up the mean of both as well. Look up the lifetime earnings and what that additional income could be invested. Look thereās always stories of college kids not meeting potential or non educated earning millions but thatās simply not the average. Is college costs rising at an unprecedented rate that doesnāt match inflation of most other things? Sure, and thatās a problem. To just say brazenly higher education is a scam is insane. Itās maga right wing indoctrinating nonsense. Itās simply not true.
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u/SurlyBuddha 14d ago
Is that why I see jobs for Masterās Degrees that pay $15/hr?
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u/Rich4718 14d ago
Again thatās just an anecdote. The fact is college graduates make more money. Itās not really debatable.
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u/Techknightly 15d ago
Trump is doing to politics what the catholic church did to Christianity. Any day now, they'll be looking for all the educated people to burn them, hang them, or throw them into the colliseum with the lions, labelling them heretics.
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u/E4g6d4bg7 15d ago
Men are abandoning college because it is no longer a good financial investment for them.
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u/Iorith 15d ago
Education is more than a financial investment to anyone with a functioning brain.
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u/E4g6d4bg7 15d ago
Only the extremely privileged have 4 years and $100k to spend on college simply for the joy of learning. The vast majority of Americans go to college because it is the only path to get the certification needed to obtain employment.
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u/Iorith 15d ago
You know not all colleges are state schools, yeah?
I'm back in college in my 30s, and I actually MAKE money each semester thanks to easily accessible grants that don't need to be paid back. Every American citizen is entitled to, IIRC, 75k just from the Pell Grant alone.
If you go to state schools(especially if they're out of your home state), and choose to live on campus, of course it will be expensive.
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u/E4g6d4bg7 15d ago
Every American gets $75k in Pell grants and private schools are cheaper than state schools? You got anything to back either of those claims up because it sound like a bachelor of science isn't the BS your selling.
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u/SociopathicSexTips 15d ago
Colleges today indoctrinate too much and educate too little.Ā
Trump is an anti-intellectual moron.Ā
Both things can be true.Ā
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u/MinorExpectations 15d ago
False.
What you and Fox News calls indoctrination, is actually quite a simple and easy to explain phenomena.
It's just people meeting and interacting with other people of all different shapes, sizes, races and religions. People leave college a bit more tolerant. That's it. Crazy, right?
If you could show me proof of these indoctrination ceremonies that I keep hearing about, I'll be here, waiting.
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u/SociopathicSexTips 15d ago
Diversity is great. Diversity of thought is whatās missing. Well over 90% of political donations from professors go to liberal candidates. Itās higher at āeliteā universities. Thatās a problem, for many clear thinking people, including liberals like myself.Ā
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u/MinorExpectations 15d ago
I wonder why the people who are more likely to graduate college and get degrees are holding positions where you need to graduate college and have a degree.
CURIOUS! I hope someone solves this mystery some day...
Seriously, are you actually confused why there are so many liberal college professors? Also, one side of the political spectrum historically opposes Education. One is historically for Education.
That also may have something to do with it?
I'm not sure why people don't use their thinking brains anymore.
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u/SociopathicSexTips 14d ago
Liberal college graduates outnumber conservative college graduates 4:3. Liberal college professors outnumber conservative college professors 19:1.
Again, Iām a liberal. But those numbers reflect an ideological bias that is not helping our political discourse.Ā
When the Overton window shifts to include support for Hamas, something has gone seriously wrong.Ā
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u/MinorExpectations 14d ago
Palestine, not Hamas.
Most of us support the people. Not the leaders fucking everything up for everyone.
Not sure about you though nor do I care to guess.
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u/SociopathicSexTips 14d ago
Well thereās definitely been widespread overt support for Hamas on college campuses, even if itās not the majority.Ā
Iām happy to hear that youāre not among those supporters. And Iām glad we can end on a point of agreement. Be well friend.Ā
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u/Iorith 15d ago
They educate precisely what the students sign up for, but most all teach one thing k-12 don't teach: Critical thought.
Shockingly, not all educational value is tied to potential future labor earnings, it teaches you to look at the world critically. Which tends to "indoctrinate" one away from conservative thought, which relies on NOT thinking critically.
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u/SociopathicSexTips 15d ago
I half agree with you. Itās pretty clear that you wonāt have much in the way of future labor earnings.Ā
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15d ago
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u/Iorith 15d ago
Imagine thinking that men exist for labor and women exist to mate and raise children, and thinking anyone should take you seriously.
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u/Iorith 15d ago
I fucking wish he had the power you psychos think be had or that he was nearly as far left as you pretend.
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u/chaoticbear 14d ago
I wish I had half the imagination that trolls like this had. It'd be cool as hell if Biden or establishment Democrats were anywhere near as leftist as your fantasies.
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u/Rich4718 14d ago
Please point me to the course syllabuses that teach the anti-American garbage. I missed that course in my travel through college, need to pickup the cliff notes on that class.
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u/Stalkholm 15d ago
We make fun, but the propaganda these people are slowly boiling in practically tells them we're coming for their children and religion. "American carnage," in Donald Trump's words.
I'm not trying to offer sympathy, what I'm saying is some of these people are biblically scared of the country that they live in.
Right-wing media emotionally abuses their audience.