This is the manuscript as it was submitted to a New York publisher. It arrived in a brown paper wrapper tied with string and wrapped in Scotch tape. It was soggy and battered, and the return address and half the cover letter were missing. For this reason, we did not know who the author actually was . . . An extensive search has convinced us that the name Michelangelo Schwartz is a nom de plume meant to shield him from the wrath of his friends and colleagues. And make no mistake about it, wrath there will be. Join us for a roller coaster ride across American higher education that takes us from the top graduate schools to an online university whose motto is "Welcome to a college that has no class" Meet Dr. Michelangelo Schwartz, a drunken and philandering Dante scholar who descends into the same circles of hell he bored his students with. Meet Sister Bill, the dean of discipline at a Catholic women's college. The good sister carries a metal ruler-and is not afraid to use it. Meet Jim Bob Rules, president of Lee Harvey Oswald Community College in Sheets, Texas, who only has the job because his father-in-law is chairman of the board. Meet Senator Brandon Stubblefield, who wants to clean up higher education-that is, until he finds himself in a sticky situation. If you ever wondered why so many people are mad at higher education, wonder no more. Enjoy your stay at The University of Last Resort.
The University of Last Resort
The story of a college that has no classBy Michelangelo SchwartziUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Dr. Michelangelo Schwartz
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-4093-3Contents
Chapter 1 Call Me Ishmael ... at 555-3647 ... after Seven..........................1Chapter 2 The University of the Southern Region....................................15Chapter 3 Nun Greater..............................................................30Chapter 4 Lee Harvey Oswald Community College in Sheets, Texas.....................50Chapter 5 The Seamy Underbelly of the Ivy League...................................61Chapter 6 The University of Last Resort............................................68Chapter 7 A College That Has No Class..............................................73Chapter 8 Bored of Education.......................................................85Chapter 9 Big Lulu Redux...........................................................88Chapter 10 Don't Buy a Degree from Someone without One.............................92Chapter 11 You Have Toupee.........................................................98Chapter 12 Steroid University......................................................102Chapter 13 High Finance (In Both Senses)...........................................105Chapter 14 Sari, Wrong Number......................................................110Chapter 15 The Hotter the Water, the Stronger the Tea..............................116Chapter 16 Jack Daniels, Motel 6, and the Big O....................................123Chapter 17 Much Like the Dog.......................................................133
Chapter One
Call Me Ishmael ... at 555-3647 ... after Seven.
Heedless Parody in Topless Bar
It was supposed to be a harmless parody of what might happen at a bachelor party. But an event at the campus pub at Toronto's HumberCollege turned raunchy when some female exotic dancers, who had been instructed to remain clothed, instead doffed their tops. The student audience loved it. The administration did not. Officials made it clear that henceforth strippers are not suitable campus entertainment, especially when student government funds are used to pay them. Chronicle of Higher Education January 16, 2004
Call me Ishmael. No, that doesn't work. Let me use the name Michelangelo Schwartz. Mine is a sad story. At the end of my career, I begin a tale so lurid and shameful it is all but impossible to use my real name. What follows is a tale of higher education, scholarship, lust, drunkenness, and countless bad career choices. But amazingly enough, near the end of my working life, my career took a turn that was so unlikely you will think it was fiction. But we get ahead of ourselves, for the tale is in the telling. First a little bit about me.
My name, Michelangelo Schwartz, has always been a great way to open a conversation. I was born in Newark, New Jersey, in the last years of the forties. Newark was a typical city of that time. We all lived in wards, which is code for places where certain other ethnic or religious minorities are not welcomed, to say the least. I lived in the North Ward that was predominately Sicilian, which means we had great delis, great restaurants, Catholic churches, and a certain organization that I am told does not exist. I am part of that "huge goat moving through the python of American capitalism" known as the baby boomers.
I come from a Sicilian mother and a Jewish father. My father, Schlomo Schwartz, was a tailor from Minsk, and my mother's father was an olive oil salesman from Palermo. We lived in a simple two-bedroom apartment house that was stifling hot in the summer and stifling hot in the winter as well. Every floor running up to my place smelled of garlic and olive oil. To satisfy both families, I was raised both Jewish and Catholic. Now, you might well ask how that could be done in the fifties. It was simple. We just didn't tell anyone, and they never asked. The Italians and Jews kept to their own sides of town, and we chose a Catholic church close by and a synagogue on the other side of town. So I got two absolute truths from two chosen people. You can imagine my confusion until I realized, quite early on, that both of them were making it up. For them, it was a story. So I became interested in stories and thus in literature. I had the good fortune to learn early in life that the absolute truth isn't.
Because I met so many people who talked as if they had all the answers to life's questions, I became convinced early on they were making it up as they went along. This had a great impact on how I lived my life. I remember hearing stories from the Catholics about how the saints suffered terrible tortures for days instead of giving up their faith. I thought to myself, I would have said, "Where is the statue of Caesar? I will bow down to that right now!"
I also remember Jewish holidays (which are not much fun when you think about it) that centered on how hard it was to be a Jew, all of the bad stuff that happened to us, and how, even though it sucked, we should not give it up. I have to admit the Catholics had better miracles. Catholics told me about people being raised from the dead, the crippled who began to walk, and the blind who could later see. For the Jews, the biggest event was that oil in some lamp that was supposed to last two days lasted eight. They both had their virtues. The Catholics had more colorful church clothes but the Jews were funnier. So I came into adulthood with the idea that any stand on principles was usually based on some confused logic and emotion. I vowed to go through life quietly, without getting burned at the stake for some heresy only three people in the world could figure out.
Thus it was a mistake for me to live much of my life as a college professor. College professors are constantly taking moral stands on all sorts of issues and have been known to become furious if you disagree with them. Being absolutely sure you are smarter than everyone else is an occupational hazard for college professors, and it is easy to see how it happens.
Imagine you spend your life teaching Medieval History to freshmen in college. You have a PhD and you have studied the subject for twenty or thirty years by the time you get it down. You can read Latin, Greek, maybe a little Anglo-Saxon or Middle English, and you know your medieval world like a Mr. Goodwrench knows a Chevy engine. Then you stand for ninety minutes in front of eighteen-year-old kids who are there to get a degree so they don't have to work at McDonald's and who have a hard time writing sentences in basic English. Over time, this gives you the illusion that you are a deity among lesser beings. You mistakenly begin to think your peculiar expertise in some esoteric subject qualifies you to be an expert on all subjects in all venues. Thus, after years of always having all of the answers, a college professor gets in the habit of always being right in the classroom, and this translates to the mistaken belief that anyone who disagrees with him outside the classroom is an idiot. Now imagine a modern college where you may have two or three hundred of such geniuses, and realize that to get anything done they all have to agree. You can see the humor of such a set up before we get very far into our tale.
Modern college professors and administrators are defenders of the same system that...
