An Unusual College

...Before this quarter is over many of you will appreciate the importance of this fact...

...This unusual drama is being played out on the rolling Nebraska countryside in the little town of Wahoo...

...Other more familiar student activities, such as car washes and bake sales are undertaken for the sole benefit of the college...

...Students have even gone so far as to refund their own checks received in payment for campus jobs The student body as a whole decided to do without a student yearbook, thereby freeing $6,000 of desperately needed funds This in a time when student governments are financing bus trips to Washington for demonstrations and lobbying...

...They have not demanded irrelevant courses and phony departments...

...Keep this in mind at all times: you are expendable, the system is not Externally and officially, the function of the University is the one described half a century ago by the great German sociologist, Max Weber...

...To view the University as anything more than a specialized institution for weeding out candidates for bureaucracies is to see it in terms of secondary goals--creating well-rounded citizens, expanding a body of knowledge which is a task useful in itself, preserving a great tradition of objective scholarship, etc.--that are really peripheral to the overarching task of getting through the system of examinations and obtaining a degree You may get an education in the old, classical sense...

...A Freshman's Guide to Academic Survival By Gary Nortb As for liberals...

...Among other things, this means that he will recognize the necessary interrelations between the omnipotent God of the Judeo-Christian faith and the unprecedented and unparalleled political freedom of Western societies A student with a true education will appreciate the contribution to the preservation of this heritage made by America Such a student will understand the theoretical underpinnings of the free market and see the connections between the unequalled productivity of this system and the political and social freedom of limited, constitutional government...

...p Lawrence Pratt is a practicing ontologist and encounter group mullah of The Moon Mullins Study Group...

...In short, a true education leads to the grasp of true individualism--an individualism based on the person whose sovereign is God, not man (or the state, or the environment, etc ) Such an individual 5 plans his own future, and requires the most freedom possible consonant with an order which prevents this fallen creature from preying on his fellow man Such an individualism is a far cry from the "Now" generation's glorification of the complete and total maximization of individual self-gratification...

...Now, it cold be argued that most other universitities have a central point of view, but it has to be admitted that that view, is radically existentialist, nihilist, irrational--in fact, if not spelled out in the handbook...

...The inspiration for the college's First of all, freshmen must realize that the University is a bureaucracy...

...The students have not voiced the wellpublicized romanticisms of the irresponsible and immature hippie and New Left types...

...What is so unusual about that these days' Simply that not only do the students not have the President's office under siege, they are doing their level best to keep this small liberal arts college running...

...On the other hand, the system breaks down if too many applicants for bureaucratic posts are cranked out This is what has happened to education departments in California colleges, there are too many degree holders and too few posts The monopoly returns to the holders fall rapidly as the supply of applicants goes up So the University must also restrict the supply...

...their function ought to be to provide new ideas, and they don't come up with any...

...The University's most important operational principle, like that of any bureaucracy, is self-perpetuation...

...No wonder the students want to help build that college, not burn it...

...The college degree grants a partial monopoly of employment to the bearer, which is why the Ph.D degree is euphemistically referred to as a "union card " Its economic function is identical to a union card: the artificial limitation of a particular labor supply The companies which hire people save themselves a lot of time and energy in investigating the capabilities of a large number of applicants, merely by limiting jobs to degree holders...

...In such a world, competition is inevitable, the question is how best to make that competition peaceful Only an educated man can maintain a society in which this condition is most closely approximated...

...Such demands would be firmly rejected by the administration anyway...

...Kennedy College is not on the federal dole, it has no alumni support since it has been operating only a few years, it has no large endowments, and it is faced with an inherited financial burden that threatens to pull it under...

...The University is supposed to weed out candidates for various bureaucratic positions...

...This kind of education can only be obtained in a true university...

...The Secretaries These people make most of the decisions which will affect your lives in a first-hand way They run the school, as far as you're concerned These all-important secretaries must either be placated or short-circuited...

...But the students have been actively involved in "doing their thing" to try to alleviate the financial crisis facing the college...

...Simple...

...There is no goal so large, no obstacle so great, that it cannot be sacrificed to achieve institutional permanence...

...John F. Kennedy tuition is vital if the school is to stay open...

...The students evidently believe that Kennedy College will continue, for they themselves have begun the financing of the student union building which they will build themselves--on a pay as you go basis As unusual as is the student body support of the college, even more unusual is the philosophy of education at Kennedy According to this philosophy, knowledge is not dust an endless stream of random dates and pieces of information Instead, knowledge is seen as all related to a central point of view...

...The sophisticated student may have already sensed the contradictory nature of the two goals of the University One, selfperpetuation, is based on the ability of the system to turn out "qualified" graduates over long periods of time, this means that the school must produce graduates (i.e., people must actually stay here long enough to graduate...

...With your survival in mind, I offer a few suggestions for your benefit You must learn how to play off one University goal against the other Remember, you must maintain a C average to graduate Even more importantly for most students, you must maintain a C average to transfer out...

...A true education produces men who not only want to work within the system, but who realize why the system is worth working within The John F Kennedy College aspires to offer that kind of education...

...An education is expected to produce more than a technician There are plenty of institutes to train technicians, but there are few colleges where a person can get a true education...

...You may also marry Raquel Welch's look-alike cousin, too Don't count on either...

...With a genuine academic freedom and balanced curricula, it is the hope of Kennedy College that the student will be able to get a true education...

...The most impressive endorsement of student support for the college is manifested in their own intensive efforts to recruit other students, where at Kennedy, Great American Series educational philosphy derives from the conviction that an educated man is not simply a walking, fact-filled computer...

...A true individualism keeps a man from being deceived into confusing his daydreams of living on The Great Candy Mountain with the reality of life in a world of fundamental scarcity...