Rutgers prof in hot water over racist statements

And they go to colleges with lower admissions standards - as has been true from the beginning of time. Not every kid who wants and deserves to go to college is automatically accepted into Harvard. The professor's beef is with underwriting star athletes - the ones who care nothing about scholastics - at the expense of smart kids who can't afford to go to a good school. I'm not sure how, but you're actually taking the opposite meaning from what's present in the story.

 

And that's your reading. But is says more about you than it does about Dowling.

And everyone can't go to college. And we all agree that it shouldn't just be the top 1 percent either scholastically or economically. Where the line gets drawn -- at any particular school -- is a matter of constant debate. Arguing that any one school has drawn that line too far on the side of admitting almost anyone isn't, by definition, elitist.

Richard Hofstader has written extensively about the issue -- and I don't necessarily agree with him about everything, mind you -- if you're truly interested in the topic.

 

What is offensive about it?

 

Rutgers doesn't present itself as a Harvard type of school, though, not here in New Jersey. It actively markets itself as the place EVERY New Jersey student should want to attend and it has going back to when I was in high school 25 years ago.

 

That's a good statement. My beef is that people are calling the prof's statements racist. Not in the least.

 

Then I guess I am reading the story wrong. I just get the feeling from the story that he is one of these people who believes college should only be for the top 1 percent. That's all.

 

You use a key term: Markets itself.

We're off the page of the argument that Dowling actually makes, but many folks point to the reneging of states in their committment to providing funding for land-grant institutions -- thereby forcing those schools to market themselves and, perhaps, accept students unprepared for college that has lead to a great brain drain on college campuses.

Of course, things like the GI bill and rise of the middle class were also big factors, but land-grant universities did not start out as for-profit enterprises that had to market themselves or lower standards across the board to gain more admissions and more tuition dollars.

 

And I didn't say he was being racist. I just get the feeling that he looks down on everyone but that top echelon as being unworthy.

 

Not you saying he was racist. The original contempt for the prof is that he was being racist with his comments. Thems are serious charges, whoever levied them.

 

I think most students are unprepared for college. I was, and I graduated 13th out of a class of 325. And I went to the original land grant university, Michigan State, no scholarships, no grants, and I worked.

As I said, I get a sense that where Dowling draws the line of who's worthy of going to college and where that line should be drawn are separated by very large distances, distances that shouldn't exist. Educating people is how we fix some of the stuff that's wrong with our world.

 

And can you point to where you're getting that from Dowling's comments?

Because I don't see the same thing.