A business idea for these times, in which higher education is seen as a commodity, and students are treated like customers: a university modelled on #CrossFit. (And no, this is *not* about Greg Glassman’s idiotic views on COVID or racism.) #HigherEducation /1
From the point of this university “your education is just our warm-up.” Students will have to suffer (every single day) to increase their depth of thinking. Daily existential crises are part of the programme. Only this kind of learning builds sustainable cognitive muscle. /2
Cognitive nutrition will be strictly regulated. No greasy writings are part of the curriculum. Only Spartan intellectual rigour. No literary intoxication. Only Henry-Rollins style straight edge. No romantic poetry, just analytic prose. /3
You will not be allowed to chicken out. If you stay home, we’ll come and get you (well, figuratively, at the moment). You will be tied to a chair with your eyes clamped open. Rugs will be pulled from under your feet, and nobody will help you get back on your feet again. /4
And the best thing is: you’ll pay lots of money for this, because it fills an existential void. It’ll lift you out of the dark tea time of the soul that is our current age. You’re buying yourself a new you, transformed, a phoenix from the ashes of angst and confusion. /5
This education will be good for absolutely nothing. It will not teach you *any* practical skills (apart from those of intellectual survival). It will be Nietzschean at its core. Darwinian. Red in tooth and claw. The straight road to enlightenment. Just perfect for our times. /6
And here is where I need your help: after the recent Glassman shitshow (theguardian.com/us-news/2020/j…) I don’t want to call it #CrossFit University (may infringe a trademark anyway).
So please, oh hive mind, give me suggestions for what my university should be called. /7
Also: I need a few million to realise my concept.
*** Sponsors wanted! ***
You’ll get a free existential crisis for every donation above €1,000. /END
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