> An electrical engineer who has helped design robots. An organic chemist who, during the pandemic, worked on COVID-19 drugs. An education researcher, a sociologist, several political scientists, economists, physicians, and medical researchers.
Diverse? Over-educated university graduates is possibly the least diverse set of thinkers one could hope to find.
> Dozens of them come from the academic world, and more than half have a Ph.D. or M.D.
Lord help up. This is going to be demonstration of hubris and an exercise in arrogance.
Whatever it is going to be it will hardly be worse than what we had for past 14 years of SNS / Vučić dictatorship.
It's always funny to me when people say "overeducated", as if knowing things is only good up to a point. If you know too much, you suddenly turn bad.
When people use the term, it is obviously not a reference to just "knowing things" but rather 1) the distinct socialization one gets in academia that leaves one rather divorced from the real world (and I say that as an academic), and 2) hyperspecialization to the point one loses the big picture, a problem in education today.
I knew one or two profs like that when I was studying, but the vast majority of people in academia are just regular people with families and interests outside of academia. It's kinda disheartening to see the anti-intellectual bent this discussion has taken.
> but the vast majority of people in academia are just regular people with families and interests outside of academia
If most people realized that, we would have much less problems: academics are often shrouded in an aura of virtue and wisdom they don't deserve in the least. Like what you see in this thread, that their narrow (or worse, illusory) knowledge will somehow help them being good rulers/leaders.
This is probably a much better way of putting it than mine.
However, scorn and ridicule are also reasonable at times. And it started a conversation.
I've worked and known many, many academics in my life. I'm sorry, but if you think this is anti-intellectual, then there are some basic things you don't understand about people.
Academics really are naive and out of touch people. In a weird sort of way, being an academic means sacrificing your personal growth for either a) a deep love of their area of research or b) love of teaching. This means that the wider life skills one gains as an adult, they never get. They get to avoid consequences for being wrong but at quite a price. One of the worst things I have seen are what happens to academics who leave for the private sector later in their career. When they can't make it in the private sector, it is pretty crushing to many of them.
That being said, one of the prices of being an academics is being very "out of touch" with the rest of society. And that will take away your ability to read political situations or govern things well. Academics injecting themselves into such situations will almost always be disastrous as a result. Its just a consequence of how academia works. It doesn't have to be that way, but unless academia changes profoundly, it will be.
As an OP here, I'd like to mention that I don't agree with this characterization at all. When I said academics are divorced from the real world, I was speaking of them largely conforming to particular demographics that make them a bit blind to broader trends in electoral politics and culture.
Academics do just fine picking up "adult life skills". Only a small minority of academics find academic employment from their mid-thirties or so on, so everyone moves to other sectors for the rest of their lives. It is not as if they are just hapless misfits or on the dole for the rest of their lives.
That seems like the definition of anti-intellectualism because you're making an implicit value judgement that developing the skills to be successful in a corporate environment is more legitimate that developing the skills to be a successful researcher and/or teacher. Many people who began their careers in the private sector would make lousy academics, but few would hold that against them as evidence they failed to develop broader life skills.
Although in reality it probably doesn't make sense to talk about the private sector as some homogeneous representation of the rest of society in the first place. Many people outside of academia famously struggle to adapt their presumably well developed "wider life skills" to significantly different environments, like switching industries or going between large companies and small ones. There's really no universally applicable life skills or experience that everyone except academics pick up.
> there are some basic things you don't understand about people.
> Academics really are naive and out of touch people
That's a hilarious juxtaposition of sentences.
Seems entirely congruent.
The first sentence seems to suggest: you are naive.
The second sentence indicates the writer believes many academics are naive.
Where is this contracts you allude to?
I definitely agree existing in a particular silo gives you a narrow view of the world, but I've never understood the idea that the silo of academia is somehow worse or less representative of the broader world than small town living or being in the military or any of the other silos many people exist in. The real world almost by definition is made up of the combination of all the things people do and the environments in which they exist.
Obviously being a truck driver is different than being a physics professor. But I'm not sure there is much of a coherent argument supporting the idea that the former exists in the real world while the latter does not.
People use the term to manage their cognitive dissonance. They do not want to put the work in to become educated, and do not want to admit that this puts them at distinct disadvantage in many ways that matter.
> distinct socialization one gets in academia that leaves one rather divorced from the real world
It is absurd claim. Academia is part of real world. It is not an isolated island cut off from everything else.
It is no more divorced from real world then any other group of people. No more divorced then rural farmer are divorced from it, businessmen are divorced from it, sports fans are divorced from it. They are all having limits of understanding other groups.
Tech workers as likely more divorced from average person even.
At this stage, one would have to be intentionally ignorant of the history of academia and its current trajectory to believe that, or lying.
Rural farmers are responsible for whatever the fuck this is supposed to be:
Course name at Melbourne University:
Global Intersections: Gender, Race, Class - What is the relationship between gender, globalisation and identity?
Queering Europe -investigates the social and linguistic contexts, cultural production, and representation of LGBTIQA+ communities in Europe.
Gender, Care and Everyday - How do we care for ourselves, others and our environment? What are the dynamics of gender, race, sexuality, class, ability, and citizenship in relation to care?
Have you bothered to look at the literature the whack jobs who take these courses put out?
This redacted is paid for, supported by, and student loans granted by our governments here in Australia.
The worst marriage of government and academia modern democratic society has seen.
I dont see any issue with those courses. There is nothing wrong with studying any of those topics.
And I dont know what your remark about rural farmers is meant to be. My point was, they are in general fearful of cities and are out of touch with cities where majority of people live, academia and basically any not-rural-farmer subculture.
That is true.
The problem is not in that they are divorced from the real world. The problem is in the model that science get financial support, which leads to the existence of filtering that eliminates from the science anyone who is not far-left loyal dog and supporter of the "current thing".
Does that include all the money spent on military resesarch?
I don't know that I'd characterize the military industrial complex, especially the private parts, as being made of up far-left types.
It seems that funding has become much more political lately, the problem getting worse.
> far-left loyal dog
Is this how a 60-day old account has negative karma?
Maybe the problem is that your ideas don't withstand any academic scrutiny, since they aren't based on sound research or well-reasoned arguments.
> Maybe the problem is that your ideas don't withstand any academic scrutiny
My ideas do withstand the reality. Unlike their so called "sound researches" or "well-reasoned arguments".
So negative karma? I was banned on several platforms simply for saying that all available to me evidences point out that covid was developed in the lab, while ALL the scientist licked the communist China's boots and said that it is SCIENTIFICALLY impossible. So what does the karma means in front of the truth?
Yes, that is the worst part about that letter. It destroyed a lot of credibility. It may have done more damage to public health than COVID - and in the long term almost certainly will.
That is just not true. By not true I mean "a lie".
Yes, this was, obviously, my intended usage.
Not the wet lettuce straw man usage posited by the other comment.
A Jack of all trades is a master of none, but better than a master of one because he has broad, intersectional knowledge. Academia is designed for specialization and the more you specialize in something the more you lose the forest for the trees.
Everything looks like a nail if you are a hammer and all that.
https://www.oglaf.com/labyrinth/
While the extreme "master of one" exists, most academics I know have cross-cutting interests.
We also shouldn't forget that the vast majority of politicians today are lawyers by education. To whatever degree your assumption holds, it is true of the status quo today as well. Even in that case, having a more diverse set of "masters of one" would be an improvement.
I was only addressing what "overeducated" refers to. Politicians of western democracies I know of have the problem that each leader is afraid to surround himself with people more capable than themselves, for the people around him are competitors for his position.
Unfortunately, eventually one of the people selected for being less capable get to be at the top and continue the whole play again, getting rid of anyone that is not less capable than themselves.
This is one disadvantage democracies have over monarchies, for a king can surround himself with more capable people all he wants as they are not direct competitors.
Slight correction (can't edit): law education is most common for politicians in Western countries, but not the majority.
For the US, 32% of the house and 47% of the senate holds a law degree.
Academic credentials and knowledge have very little correlation. A master electrician knows things. So does an airline pilot in charge of hundreds of lives. Yet neither has letters after their name.
Aren’t the letters after their names essentially signifying their level of understanding on a subject?
Just like “Master” before electrician or “Captain” or “PIC” for airline pilots.
Yeah, there's plenty of high-profile academic politicians in Europe with debatable legacies including Thatcher and Merkel. Time will tell.
A quick search suggests the economists associated with this movement are fairly 'mainstream' institutionalists of the type that's popular with government these days in the west. I don't think there will be big changes soon beyond dealing with corruption/nepotism.
Later on, I imagine they will push for faster EU integration on possibly slightly worse terms. Serbia may become marginally less independent in terms of fiscal policy at least and the markets might become even more exposed/beholden to foreign capital. This process has been in motion for years now and I don't expect the student movement to care - the upsides are broadly popular with younger people globally. Personally, I think it is deeply ironic that in the age of tariffs and huge government spending by the superpowers, small countries like Serbia are still signing up to be bound by the 'free market' consensus which is rapidly disintegrating globally.
Thatcher was a scientist, but no more an academic than most politicians.
She had a honors bachelors degree. An Oxford MA is awarded three years later on application, and is not an earned master’s degree. Unusually for a politician, it was a science degree (chemistry), and she worked in a lab at school and after school briefly, but she got a law degree later, which is a typical politician thing.
If that bachelor’s degree was in humanities, like almost all elected officials, no one would refer to her as an academic.
In contrast, Merkel earned a PhD, and some of these newly elected Serbian reps are long-time professors.
There are more ardent second amendment supporters among tenured professors in US universities than you think.
it is the only amendment there is in the USA, all others are just for show. fourth amendment gotta be the biggest joke at this point that it even “exists” on paper so-to-speak. 2A holds it together though to make us feel like we are “free” :)
Still beats the alternative of corrupt career politicians.
Alternative? The corrupt career politicians in the US mostly hold JDs.
> Still beats the alternative of corrupt career politicians.
Are you sure? After the covid and position of the scientific community on it's origin it is evident that most scientist are ready to do the exact things that corrupt career politicians are doing, but for free, purely for the love of the game.
Average professional politician is a psychopath fighting for power no matter what.
At least these guys might be honest about their hubris and arrogance and won't smile to you while slaughtering your future or robbing your family.
[dead]
Why are russian bots always so easy to spot?