Ragnarǫk at the University of Copenhagen

Sadly, the Danes, of all people, are scrapping their Old Norse and Old Danish university programs. Madness!

From Ragnarǫk at the University of Copenhagen:

It is very obvious that the managerialist, pro-business, pro-free-market assault on universities is the major contributing factor ... One might try to address the KPMGs and PricewaterhouseCoopers of this world on their own terms, and make a case for why studying a small language does make you a better employee. But I’m not terribly interested in doing so:

1) I’m not at all convinced that captains of industry really know what they want

2) even if they did, I’m not convinced they would stick to it – the Tony Blair government in the UK spent years getting universities to offer vocational courses, often working closely alongside industry to design them, and many industries now aren’t interested in students who studied those courses,

3) even if they did know what they want, even if they could stick to it, there’s no reason to believe that what’s good for capitalism would be good for human happiness.