Higher Education
Ever since Shalampaxians first connected with the outside world we’ve been hearing that higher education is the path to sustained national wealth. This may be true but, if so, it is, as we’ve proved conclusively, only one of at least three paths. Healthy spam and cult religion industries are two others.
Despite already having discovered two of our own exceptionally successful routes to riches, we in Shalampax will never be satisfied until we have all of the money in the world. Consequently, about 15 years ago we started our own Institute of Higher Education.
To say the least, the results to-date have been disappointing. A recent survey showed that the average income of graduates of our higher education program is 87 percent lower than the average personal income in Shalampax overall.
This puzzled our educators until recently. But a detailed review of the worldwide literature on education strategies provided the answer. Much to the surprise of the education community in Shalampax, “higher education” has nothing to do with either altitude or drugs.
Our Institute of Higher Education is located on the top floor of our building and teaches students how best to employ various drugs to get high. It seems that, instead of worrying about how high up in the building it is or how high it gets its students, our Institute of Higher Education should have been teaching students subjects like mathematics, physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, medicine, computer science, literature, fine arts, languages and so on. Who knew?
This form of higher education is considered to be impractical here because no one in Shalampax knows anything whatsoever about those subjects, so they certainly can’t teach others about them.
Because of our new understanding of the term “higher education,” the Shalampax Institute of Higher Education is being closed effective immediately. The room will be turned into a bingo hall.
From my observation of the “youts” (thank you Cousin Vinny) in colleges these days, while it is not an official part of the academic curriculum, being high is an integral part of the higher education experience. Methinks that Shalampax has closed the institute prematurely – some on-line classes could have provided some academic validity for the high-performing students.
@David: That may be so, but I’m guessing that most colleges have an academic curriculum to augment the experience of getting high. At ours, getting high was the only component of the curriculum, and it wasn’t the least bit academic.