Posted 9:02 AM by Gene

What is the purpose of spending trillions on HYER ED if the students are going to spend their classroom time listening to their boomer profs' favorite records?

Students say critics fail to grasp the band's importance and legacy.

"They don't understand," said Kate O'Connor, a junior from Worcester who, with a nose ring and hair falling in her eyes, had a '60s air about her. "A lot of students say, 'How can that be a class?' But the Grateful Dead influenced an entire generation."

Like many students in the class, O'Connor, who first heard the band's landmark album "American Beauty" while baby-sitting as an 11-year-old, loves not only the Dead's music but also what she believes it stands for: a peaceful, utopian spirit that unites and elevates.

If that sentiment sounds like a '60s throwback, it is because many of the students have embraced the era's freewheeling idealism through its music, fashion, and political activism. Many are nostalgic for a decade they never experienced and wish they hadn't been born too late to see the band play live. (The Grateful Dead stopped performing after the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995).

TRANSLATION: Will these boomer profs EVER retire?

FURTHER TRANSLATION: Since we shrewdly imply opposition to such taxpayer- and parent-fleecing schemes is con-SER-va-tive -- after all, the critics include the National Association of Scholars, which is VERY con-SER-va-tive -- this must be good.

FURTHER FURTHER TRANSLATION: You trying for a twenty-year low, Your Royal Highness PINCH?