My main issue with this is that it's hard to do in such a setting. If you know you're being watch or you're waiting for something to happen ... you're likely to be nervous. I love to be alone with my thoughts. It's one of my favorite things to do. But I can imagine the experiment - if you're sitting in a room because you're told to, and you're waiting for something ... it's not exactly the same. I'd be nervous. I'd be nervous talking to people in an experiment, I'd be nervous sitting by myself. I'd be trying to figure out what they want and I'd be worried that the moment I start to truly relax I'd be shocked out of it by an intrusion. So ... it seems like a hard experiment to pull off. In such a situation, it's not a "thinking period" but rather a waiting period. And waiting sucks. I relate it to waiting in a doctor's office. I'm a person who loves to just be alone, stare at the ceiling (or at a river or creek or ocean or tree or whatever else) and think. I love it. But in a doctor's office, I'm constantly on edge, knowing I might be called at any moment. I have to be aware. Same thing with the experiment. It's not so much that the person would have to be aware, but rather that if they don't pay attention, their daydreaming might be rudely interrupted. For me, that's enough of a threat to put me entirely on edge. Probably not enough to make me shock myself, but enough to make me think of the whole thing as a negative experience.

Not to mention we're the only computer lab on campus that's open until midnight during the school year (and until 2 am the week before finals). So if you're talking about academic services ... we're not just the place with the books. We also have classrooms which are very heavily used. But still, a new gym is more important than something that actually supports learning. And buying a new house for a new president is more important than paying professors. I guess maybe they'll sell the house the last president lived in? Don't really know. But why should we provide the president with a house in the first place?

Very true. And that's why we need to reform the whole system.

The college I work at lives off of adjuncts. Now, we're slightly cheaper than other colleges. Sadly, that means tuition and fees are about 30,000. We definitely don't have perma-docs (which you say aren't even paid out of the budget, so irrelevant) and I know that all the library staff is underpaid, and there are only 8 of us anyway ... so where's the money going? Not to professors or anybody supporting the academic mission.

True, but in my area, the teachers don't last long enough to become veterans. Our schools are funded by property taxes, so only the rich areas have decent, experienced teachers. I have to say though, the college I work at trains a lot of really passionate people to work in schools and they do their student teacher stint usually in poorer areas. So, that's good. But my brother worked as a special ed teacher and after five years felt he couldn't do it anymore and now works in an entirely different field. So a lot of the good ones are driven away. I don't even want to think about administrators. We are the most understaffed library in our area. But we can buy a fancy new house for the fancy new president?

I work at a college and I don't believe this. First of all, what most students learn in college is what they should learn in high school. I've met people who went to high school in Germany and France and know more about most things than American college graduates. The problem we have is that pretty much every job requires a college degree and pretty much every education system is underfunded. It's particularly bad in my home state, Pennsylvania, where underfunding of education just might be the issue that gets us a Democrat as governor. At the college where I work, some students get a point of education. Which is basically to be qualified for jobs.When I was a student, such people annoyed me because all I cared about was knowledge itself. But now, I understand and respect their perspective. For example, I proofread the paper of one kid who wrote in response to Plato. Now, he misunderstood what Plato said - but I have to blame the teacher for that, not the student, as his response was appropriate and clever. He responded to the idea that people are of different types - and interpreted it as meaning that a "gold" person is one who comes from influential parents and a "silver" person would come from military parents - whereas of course Plato actually envisioned a world where the children were separated from their parents because birth was not a determinant. Plato was still wrong, of course, because he had children judged far too early, but he never implied it was genetic. But what the student wrote was that he felt he shouldn't be held back just because his mom worked at walmart. Astute and true. Why is he going to college? Probably because he wants something better in his life. Not for reasons of loving knowledge, although it seems he does .. but that's not why. You don't pay that much money just for the love of knowledge. If you did, I'd have about 20 advanced degrees by now (I love coursera ... and udacity ... and all the rest). Our students are not generally partiers. Sure, some are, but most are disadvantaged city kids who want an education. They come to us clueless because Philadelphia schools are absolutely terrible and getting worse by the second. And yes, a lot of them annoy me because they don't seem to care about what they're studying. They ask me for help finding articles and play on their phones while I try to help them. So it goes. They're in it for jobs, not because they care, but ... well ... that's the world we've created. In my opinion we should fix k-12 education so that it's enough for most jobs and should also provide government funded university education, but with higher standards.