I haven't attended Texas A&M, and am basing this on conversations I've had with many Aggies (I can spot an Aggie ring at 50 feet) having always wanted to attend.
I think the reason for A&M attracting so many Cs is because of the Corps, the image and tradition of the school. If you were a C and had the choice of A&M, UT, Baylor, Houston or Tech, where would you go?
This would have a difficult time standing up to facts. It's well documented that Universities have a D to R ratio of something like 10:1, so the idea that there's any type of diversity on most campuses is untrue. In fact, it's quite necessary to silence "diverse" viewpoints be it denying tenure to Conservative leaning professors, shouting down Conservative guest speakers, de-certifying Conservative organizations, or destroying student run conservative publications.
Although it's kind of tangential to the OP, I'd very much like to see more REAL diversity on campuses and let different viewpoints stand or fall in the marketplace of ideas.
Well, this is definitely true. Look at Scoop Jackson and Zell Miller or Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chaffee.
Still, it is a pretty good general rule of thumb when you look at the planks usually associated with the parties.

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The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? - Psalm 27:1

Why do you think my kids are not going? I'm encouraging them to investigate the trades, or apprenticeship programs. The only way I would consider college for them is if I could find a highly conservative one. Unfortunately, most of the ones I've found so far are also highly Christian.

I rather have college educated liberals, then non college educated conservatives, plus once liberals get a few bucks in their pockets, and find out what liberalism is all about, they turn into conservatives. So in effect the conservatives have the best of the college educated liberals on their side.

When I was younger, I dated a number of college students, and also knew some adults who were what I called "perpetual students".

The younger college students seemed to spend most of their time doing what I call "PDD" (partying on Daddy's dime), and the older ones tended to use "taking more courses" as a way of avoiding having to find a job and support themselves.

Consequently, I've had little regard for the college degree that is supposed to be the do-all, end-all and be-all. Not to mention the fact that I have met numerous people "with degrees" who could barely speak using proper 3rd grade grammar and correct spelling (and no, I do not mean typos!)

A degree means nothing to me. The men who designed the Nazi death camps had college degrees, and Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death at Auschwitz, who consigned many to their deaths, had a medical degree from a highly respected German university.

So that is no guarantee of ethics, or much of anything else. I'm not saying a degree is not useful, it can be, but it doesn't imply the person is ethical, nor does it guarantee a job upon completion. I know MANY college grads who drive taxis.

I think you have to admit that you are over generalizing. Yes, there are many students in the college for all the wrong reasons, these are the ones you see at wet T-shirt contests on MTV and GGW. I think for the most part most college students are there for the right reasons, even if they are mercenary.

Being Jewish, I can understand your feelings toward these men, but the fact that they went to college, shouldn't cause you to look at college degrees with such disdain. Hitler was Catholic, do you feel the same disdain for all Catholics?

Very true, but the ones that are driving cabs had no right going to college in the first place.

For your kid's sake I hope they do go to college. Not to knock trade or apprenticeship programs - those pay good money if you can get a job doing that, but it's harder and harder to do. Even in today's economy, let along 5-10 years from now, it'll just get harder and harder to achieve financial success without a college degree.

Despite all the moaning about lack of diversity, when I was in college I was exposed to ALL diversity: not just black vs. white but liberal vs. conservative, Christian vs. Jewish vs. Muslim, and rural vs. urban vs. foreign upbringing. And these days, most major college campuses (including Delaware) have Chabad houses where you can be quite active in Orthodox Jewish activities, not to mention Hillel houses which cater more to mainstream Judaism.

Anyway, it's a little hypocritical to bemoan the "silencing" of conservatives on American campuses while at the same time not allowing your children to even be exposed to those same "liberal" campuses. Is their faith that weak that they cannot be exposed to alternative viewpoints?

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Boom, boom, acka-lacka-lacka boom.
Boom, boom, acka-lacka boom boom.

I disagree with your last point here in that most campuses really are little more than liberal echo-chambers. Sure, there's campus Republican/Christian/Jewish/etc. groups. However, there's still an extreme liberal slant in campus life and when a tenured professor who's been teaching a subject for 15+ years delivers a truly slanted opinion as fact, few 20 year olds are going to be brave enough to challenge it. EVEN if a student was, look, they're still 20 year olds, and most intelligent 40 year olds can defend a topic they're familiar with against a kid, even when they're dead wrong.

On the topic of the necessity of college: All college really does is teach you where to find the answers, and gives you some basic tools (terminology, broad theories).
UNFORTUNATELY, it's also "The Secret Handshake" that opens so many doors.
I've worked with plenty of really bright, capable, driven, responsible, mature individuals. And with few exceptions, if they didn't have a degree of some kind, there was little to no chance they'd advance (or even enter) the corporate world.
Right or wrong, that's the fact.

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The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? - Psalm 27:1

No, I do not have disdain for the Catholic church bcause of Hitler. Because knowing history as I do, I know that Hitler was just as anti-clerical as he was anti-Jewish. He had many Catholic priests and nuns murdered in the death camps as well as Jews.

My only real problem with the RCC has to do with the Spanish Inquisition, but even that was largely orchestrated by Catholic monarchs.

My kids can choose to do whatever they want once they are 18. But if they want to go to a liberal college, I won't foot the bill. They'll have to find a way to do it themselves. I refuse to give one dime to those institutions.

Now, there are a number of very conservative colleges, but those are almost all Christian. I know my kids would be fire-proof theologically, so perhaps that would an option IF they decided they wanted college. I have far more against secular humanist liberalism than I do against Christianity. For one thing, orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews are almost totally on the same page when it comes to moral issues.

However, I have never been of the opinion that parents "owe" their children a college education.

.....or game boys, ipods, cell phones, cars etc etc etc.