This Chronicle of Higher Education post-mortem on the failed “Great Books college for devotees of Ayn Rand” filled me with both Schadenfreude and sadness.
Because I’m a decent human being—at least most of the time—I don’t like to mock failure. But because I’m a despiser of all things Randian, I can’t help but take perverse glee in this tragically hilarious tale.
I was originally going to highlight some choice excerpts and add some snarky remarks, but I ultimately decided to leave it unadorned. I don’t want to sully the experience of reading the article by adding my silly commentary. Though fans and foes of Rand will want to read the whole thing, here are a few of my favorite passages to get you started:
That fall day in 2007 seemed an auspicious start for a college with only five professors and 10 students.
. . .
Founders certainly started with high aspirations. It was the inspiration of Gary L. Hull, a longtime visiting professor of sociology at Duke University and director of its Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace. Mr. Hull has long been a high-profile proponent of objectivism, the philosophy of Rand. And he had wanted to shake up the college market for years. Where most colleges saw degrees, he saw a hodgepodge of classes and incoherent goals. He hoped to create an objectivist college where all students would have the same academic foundation and be taught to think rationally.
However, not all of the students who would end up at Founders knew that. English Tong, who was home-schooled, found out about the college through a friend who had heard Mr. Hull promote Founders as ideal for home-schoolers. “Not until I arrived did I realize it was an objectivist school, so I was thrown into that without really agreeing with it,” Ms. Tong says. “It was kind of weird. They had advertised the college to everyone differently.”
. . .
Instead the campus was opened near the North Carolina border at Berry Hill Plantation, which included an inn and conference center that once landed in The New York Times as “A Hotel Stephen King Might Find Just Right.”
. . .
In retrospect, [enrollment director] Mr. Weiss isn’t even sure he was suited to admissions work. “I didn’t even go to college,” he says. “Do I think I was qualified to say, ‘You belong at this school’? No.”
. . .
None of the students at Founders, with the exception of Ms. Tong, were paying anywhere close to full tuition or room and board. Some were on full scholarships, they say, and others simply weren’t paying, or paying very little, until they heard more about their eligibility for federal aid. Still, in the beginning, the students were living in resort-style rooms and eating gourmet meals.
“Friday nights were jazz nights, and we were able to sit with the public and order filet mignon and scallops,” says Ms. Tong.
. . .
At the end of the first semester, students say, the inn ran low on food. The English professor told students he was resigning because he wasn’t getting paid. “He tells us goodbye and walks out,” Ms. Fogg says. “He gave us a letter that says he will not be conducting final exams.” Ms. Fogg thinks he was finally paid, because she and the other students later took the exam at his home, off campus. He refused to come back to the property, she says. “It was extremely stressful.”
. . .
By Christmas, Founders and the Berry Hill Inn had lost no fewer than 17 employees, including Mr. Weiss and the English professor. . . Still, five students, including Ms. Fogg and Ms. Tong, returned for the spring semester.
Professors sped up classes to finish the year early. Students took economics for six hours each Saturday, Ms. Tong says, because the professor would make the drive from Washington only one day a week. At some point, Founders had arranged for the students to be dual-enrolled at Southside Virginia Community College, so they would have transferable credits. Southside says it reviewed Founders’ curriculum and faculty qualifications and charged Founders for the students’ tuition.
But, toward the end of the year, Ms. Tong says, the students heard that the community college hadn’t been paid—and they were concerned that they’d be left with nothing to show for their work. Whatever the case, the students did ultimately get credit for most of their classes.
Ms. Fuller held a final meeting with the students. “She asked us if anyone was coming back next year,” Ms. Tong recalls. “I was amazed at the delusion.”
. . .
Founders College closed in November 2008. The state never stepped in.
December 8th, 2010 | 9:09 am
How depressing it must have been to attend a college with only ten students. I love me some schadenfreud, but this is so pathetic that I don’t even feel it.
December 8th, 2010 | 11:30 am
How can you call this a failure? Didn’t the students learn the most important lesson of Randian philosophy–you who are weaker are useful objects for the stronger to use to achieve their goals?
And why am I not surprised to see my alma mater’s name associated with the beginning of this…experiment in “rational learning?”
December 8th, 2010 | 11:32 am
It’s not evil to rejoice over the fact that a really bad idea didn’t get off the ground. It’s sort of too bad for the people involved who may have suffered personally, but OTOH they’re not wasting their time promoting bad ideas anymore, which wasn’t good for them in the first place — maybe they can go on to do something better with their lives now.
December 8th, 2010 | 11:33 am
BTW, I assume the Great Books curriculum didn’t actually include any of Rand’s works, because they’re not.
December 8th, 2010 | 12:27 pm
“Atlas Shrugged” is one of the best written books I’ve ever read and read many both during college and after. In one poll back (I think) in the 80′s it was the 2nd most favorite book read of all time…second only to the Bible.
Rand’s philosophy is that the economy and politics in general should be (and actually is according to the Constitution..specifically the 1st 10 Amendment + Article I, Section 8) one of freedom and liberty. Mean trade with one another rather than, one the Progressives prefer, have lobbies to push their specific wants with a willing or group of willing legislators.
Most everything one reads in “Atlas” is readily seen to be occurring today. Double-talk from Progressives such as Bernake who say there is little or no inflation. I guess he never buys groceries. He’s one pathetic bureaucrat and bespeaks of characters portrayed in “Atlas”.
December 8th, 2010 | 12:47 pm
Meh. I like Rand. But perhaps that’s because for fiction, I prefer “Good Books” to “Great Books.” Rand, Heinlein, graphic novels, etc.
December 8th, 2010 | 2:16 pm
Sorry to deflate the schadenfreude, but this article–and the school’s failure–have almost nothing to do with Rand. This is just a report on one really, really bad administrator and her circle of incompetence. The original article has comments from students to support that truth.
However, I will give credit to one commentator on the original who merely wrote, “Atlas Failed.” Heh heh. Clever. :)
December 8th, 2010 | 2:44 pm
Yes, the randian types can be nauseating and I make a point to avoid them. I actually do identify with her worldview. I just don’t get carried away with it.
I read “Atlas Shrugged” when in college and have never read it a second time. The novel I like, which is much better than “Atlas Shrugged” is “Voyage from Yesteryear” by James P. Hogan. This is a novel about freedom and openness (even more than Rand) that I have read many times. I highly recommend it.
December 8th, 2010 | 7:39 pm
Ayn Rand & the Great Books – this seems like such a bad idea. I have encountered that particular combination in the wild, typically followed, eventually, by an awkward moment of self-realization. It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone who got anything at all out of Plato and Aristotle (not to mention the Bible!) could ever find Rand other than sophomoric. I guess if you find modern culture soul-crushingly banal – and who doesn’t? – and Rand was the first time you’d run into somebody shaking their fist at it, and Objectivism was the first semi-coherent philosophy providing any sort of platform from which to criticize it, well, OK. Maybe. But once you’ve plowed through the dead white guys – I don’t get it.
December 8th, 2010 | 10:10 pm
Maybe the great book they should have read before they proposed to build a school on a foundation of egoism is The Great Divorce.
December 9th, 2010 | 8:17 am
Whittiker Chambers, in the mid 1950′s, wrote the definitive critique, of Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED, in William F. Buckley’s indespensible NATIONAL REVIEW. The review was so effective, that i read somewhere (cannot recall, right now, way too early…) that Rand refused to speak to Buckley, if i remember right. Also, Rand, amusingly, and naively, stated that Buckley was “too smart to believe in God”. Funny, but one could say the same about certain atheists, not Rand though.
December 9th, 2010 | 12:04 pm
The only valuable thing Rand ever wrote is “We The Living”, a fiction novel through which Rand narrates her terrifying experience in post-1917 Russia.
The rest of her philosophy is just a naive and romantic version of Max Stirner’s, although equally noxious.
December 13th, 2010 | 12:22 pm
“Whittiker Chambers, in the mid 1950′s, wrote the definitive critique, of Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED, in William F. Buckley’s indespensible NATIONAL REVIEW.”
If you’ve read both Chambers’ review and “Atlas Shrugged” you’ll suspect that Chambers read only one.
“The review was so effective…” that, from then to now, most glib, snide references to Rand are quoting it, however indirectly.
Atlas Shrugged has faults, but Chambers didn’t identify them. He was too passionate, sentimental and idealistic a character to evaluate the work of one as passionate, sentimental and idealistic as Rand, more able to be offended by it than to analyze it. For the sake of personal equilibrium, each seems to have settled on two out of the three natures: Chambers on idealism and sentiment, Rand on idealism and passion. Neither would be very able to learn about the other’s idealism without sentiment or passion getting in the way.
As for Stirner, yes, and wouldn’t you rather a world of more easily managed Randians than of Stirnerites? Rand had soft spots for music, children and true love. Remember that she was a plain Jewish daddy’s girl, intensely romantic, desirous of being a writer and everything in her books: exhilaration at existence, love stories, some kind of freedom and clumsy philosophizing, shows it source. Find the video of her speaking of her late husband on the Phil Donohue show (probably towards the end of the show) and see her real feelings about love, life and loyalty. She didn’t have as much internal consistency as she pretended or as her detractors fear.
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