Posted: Sep 08, 2019 3:18 pm
Fenrir wrote:rationalityiscorrect wrote:Fenrir wrote:viocjit wrote:I'm shocked to read pseudo-sciences are still taught in some universities.
If an university that is an authority figure teach pseudo-sciences.
How can we fight against these false and harmful beliefs ?
You can't. Not through University funding.
Universities these days are businesses. Businesses exist to make money now.
Offer some universities enough money and they will teach any crap you like. Or form a lobby group to hassle politicians. Same thing really.
I don't know of anyone offering universities money to not teach crap.
There are public universities in Brazil...
I'm talking about public universities.
Public universities do not exist simply as a public good any more (whether they ever did or even mostly did is another topic entirely). These days they are seen by governments as a liablilty and forced to operate as businesses. Their success is largely if not entirely judged on their economic performance. If they can sell a course to enough students they will run it. If lobbyists convince them there is a demand for a course they will run it. Whether the topic has any basis in fact can get lost in the process.
And no, I'm not talking about whether students are charged tuition or not, they are still consumers of a product.
Least that's how I perceive the situation here. Don't know much about Brazil, but I doubt things are much different there.
I'm Brazil things are very different, for example, engineering here is one of the worst courses possible along with law courses, in the sense of getting a decent job, Medicine is an exception, here, opening a course is something that is in the choice of the university, and we are not very smart in that sense. Most of us are going to work in the government, if we manage to pass the public exams, to be fair, private universities in brazil are the worst.
Brazilian education has a lot of problems, only 8% of the population is considered fully literate, and 7% of the population believes the earth is flat, at least, things are getting better here.