Matt Forney at times says some truth. He’s recently confronted the fellow manospherians and told them that their jargon is getting too weird. And he points out the aim of his site and many others — self improvement. With the goal of picking up chicks, but self improvement.

Matt misses the point. A wise man acquires skills, trades. For they are portable, and they are not fungible. If your job can be done over a computer line, it can be outsourced somewhere cheaper. A medical example: radiology firms will hire Indian radiologists because they are cheaper than US radiologists for interpreting films: US radiologists have had to become proceduralists (doing arteriograms and similar) — and they generally do not mind this because there is far more money in procedures.

Until they become redundant, which happens: Ulcer surgery has become a historical footnote during my career.

Yes, this links with scripture.

Proverbs 8:1-21

¹Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? ² On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; ³ beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out: ⁴ “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live. ⁵ O simple ones, learn prudence; acquire intelligence, you who lack it. ⁶ Hear, for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right; ⁷ for my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips. ⁸ All the words of my mouth are righteous; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them. ⁹ They are all straight to one who understands and right to those who find knowledge. ¹⁰ Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold; ¹¹ for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. ¹² I, wisdom, live with prudence, and I attain knowledge and discretion. ¹³ The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. ¹⁴ I have good advice and sound wisdom; I have insight, I have strength. ¹⁵ By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; ¹⁶ by me rulers rule, and nobles, all who govern rightly. ¹⁷ I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me. ¹⁸ Riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and prosperity. ¹⁹ My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than choice silver. ²⁰ I walk in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice, ²¹ endowing with wealth those who love me, and filling their treasuries.

As I’m writing this son one has left home for his first lecture of the day. He’s attending university with aims at practical courses. But Casa Pukeko is a male Geek Cave, your mileage will vary. The current liberal arts system is clearly broken. A lot of the scholarly talent that should be on tenure track is emigrating because that is where the jobs are.

And, given the current political nature of the academy, you can get a better education with a library card.

So what is the role of the university? Well, firstly it is discovering knowledge. This may be politically incorrect, but the elite are a bunch of blind fools: the rest of us sweat over double blind trials and survey data, testing if an hypothesis has been supported, or if a new treatment works and is safe.

Secondly, it is training. A fair amount of this is practical training: how to do a profession, and how to learn within that profession. The liberal arts are but a rump, full of the last hippies and their poisonous post-modernism.

However, I recommend that most young people don’t go to university. For it has a third purpose: a sheltered workshop for the geek spectrum. The less practical, the absent minded (it’s not a cliche). A university should have a tolerence of the eccentric, the frankly weird and odd. Brilliant people who have both great insights and long periods of psychosis should be supported.

But most people would be better getting apprenticed into a job, and getting credentials when needed. The British Empire became great sending but five percent of their young people to university, and half of them wasted their student years. But the British ensured that there were other ways a man could rise — from the Army to the Unions.

If you are young, seek practical skills — at work, and around the habits of holy discipline. Work on self improvement, for skills lead to wisdom. And do not get caught in the college culture: it is dying, inevitably, for it as educated the west to effeteness, and that drains the very energy and hope required to make and raise a child.

A waning number of high school graduates from the Midwest is sparking a college hunt for freshman applicants, with the decline being felt as far away as Harvard and Emory universities.

The drop is the leading edge of a demographic change that is likely to ease competition for slots at selective schools and is already prompting concern among Midwestern colleges.

“You can’t create 18-year-olds in a lab,” said Brian Prescott, director of policy research at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education in Boulder, Colorado. “Enrollment managers are facing an awful lot of pressure that they can’t do much about.”

Nationally, the high school Class of 2012 ushered in a first wave of declines in the number of graduates, according to a report by the commission. The trend will worsen after 2025, when admissions officers face the impact of a drop in births that began with the 2007 recession. Over the next two decades, the biggest drain in graduates will be in the Midwest and Northeast.

The college edifice is crumbling. You do not need credientials as much as skills and a love of hard work, young man. You do not need credentials as much as a willing and obedient spirit and the ability to run a frugal home, young women.

Let the college join Babylon on the dust heap: for the medical schools, the nursing college and the theological training institute will survive (losing schools of education is no loss: losing schools of mining or surveying is).

And, perhaps, the monastery will again become a seat of learning. For the university no longer does that.