Admittedly, it's been many years since I was a collegian. Still, as I
recall, the real value of the four years, aside from learning how to drink and
how to talk to women without stuttering, was the enforced proximity to the
minds and works of Socrates, Newton, Freud, Shakespeare, Plato, Milton,
Michelangelo, Einstein, Da Vinci and Jefferson, and was neither enhanced
nor diminished by the color or creed of the other students.
The truth of the matter was that my interest in my fellow scholars, and
I don't think my attitude was at all atypical, was limited to wanting to date
the more attractive coeds and wanting to eviscerate those brainiacs most
likely to raise the class curve.
Inasmuch as smart, poor kids already receive academic scholarships,
one can only assume that it's the stupid ones whom the social engineers are
trying to cram through the ivied portals. But, inasmuch as once in, they're
destined to flunk out, I have a better solution. I suggest we take our lead
from "The Wizard of Oz." The Scarecrow, as you may recall, didn't waste
four years boning up for final exams. The great and powerful Oz merely
handed him a diploma, and just like that, Ray Bolger was squaring the
hypotenuse and jabbering away like a young William F. Buckley, Jr.
Why not give diplomas to anybody who wants one? In a day and age
when people are wasting their parents' hard-earned money majoring in
things like Gay Studies, Sit Coms of the 60's, and Comic Books as
Literature, why not do the decent thing and just hand out sheepskins to
anyone who says, "Please"? A built-in bonus of my plan is that with all
those goobers off the campuses, there would be additional parking spaces for
the people studying to be doctors, mathematicians, and scientists.
After all, when all is said and done, most college graduates aren't
really smarter than other people. They just think they are.