The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
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The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
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Re: The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
#2In the spirit of the "things you can (actually) do (without asking permission)" posts, another one is
* create a small seminar of your own for an academic or quasi-academic text or topic that interests you, and meet and discuss it
I'm currently participating in a seminar on
https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/lf-current/index.h...
and some people I know are running their own read-through of Plato's Republic at the moment. No university required!
Re: The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
#3Can someone explain what Vice-President and Climbing wall mean in the context of higher education?
If I had to guess, a Vice-President might be someone who monitors a room full of students or checks their tests, and a Climbing wall might be a hard assignment meant to get rid of less interested students.
This might be a really dumb question. In that case, sorry.
Re: The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
#4Strong recommendation for Zena Hitz's book _Lost in Thought_. As an engineer, it's hard to take a step back and enjoy the pure intellectual pleasures of my work and hobbies, but I found it quite worthwhile to do so, and her book did a lot to encourage me here.
Re: The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
#5[flagged]
Re: The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
#6Can someone explain what Vice-President and Climbing wall mean in the context of higher education? If I had to guess, a Vice-President might be someone who monitors a room full of students or checks their tests, and a Climbing wall might be a hard assignment meant to get rid of less interested students. This might be a really dumb question. In that case, sorry.
I understood "climbing wall" to be a stand-in for a category of amenities which colleges offer to students to convince them to apply, which are flashy and expensive but don't actually lead to anyone learning anything.
Re: The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
#7"We rely on donations from readers and benefactors to pay our staff director and expenses like our Zoom subscriptions."
So begging is your business model?
Re: The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
#8Can someone explain what Vice-President and Climbing wall mean in the context of higher education? If I had to guess, a Vice-President might be someone who monitors a room full of students or checks their tests, and a Climbing wall might be a hard assignment meant to get rid of less interested students. This might be a really dumb question. In that case, sorry.
It's a sarcastic reference to the fact that in the US, as tuition has gone up far past increase in general cost of living in the past few decades, what actually seems to have been purchased with the increased tuition is greatly increasing the number of administrators ("Vice-Presidents") and improving the on-campus dorm comfort, athletic amenities, etc. ("climbing walls"), rather than paying professors more (in fact, they're being paid less and replaced with lower-paid and insecurely employed adjuncts) or actually educating students better or providing a better environment for intellectual inquiry.
Re: The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
#9Can someone explain what Vice-President and Climbing wall mean in the context of higher education? If I had to guess, a Vice-President might be someone who monitors a room full of students or checks their tests, and a Climbing wall might be a hard assignment meant to get rid of less interested students. This might be a really dumb question. In that case, sorry.
I think they're meant literally (actual vice presidents of universities and actually climbing walls in a rock climbing gym) , as examples of the overhead that is present in most universities.
Re: The Catherine Project: A new experiment in liberal education
#10Can someone explain what Vice-President and Climbing wall mean in the context of higher education? If I had to guess, a Vice-President might be someone who monitors a room full of students or checks their tests, and a Climbing wall might be a hard assignment meant to get rid of less interested students. This might be a really dumb question. In that case, sorry.
It's a joke about how universities have become administratively bloated and primarily function as a very expensive resort community for 18-22 year olds. To "compete" with each other, universities hire increase numbers of administrators whose job is to build out a more complete "college experience", including fancier gyms catering to modern exercise trends (aka climbing walls).