American Colleges Still Lead The Way In Global Moron Production

Do kids really need to be told to "party?" How valuable is this advice? I can understand paying Snooki to speak at Rutgers, but ultimately, for me, a letdown. I was hoping for something about Schopenhauer or maybe the dialectic between man and machine. "Party hard." Almost anyone could say that. Telling college students to party is like telling fish to swim.

But check this out. Toni Morrison has been writing books for 40 years. Do you know how many books she's written? Twenty. I counted. Fiction, non-fiction, plays, kids books. Twenty. That's one book every two years. Now don't get me wrong, she's won seventeen major book awards, so when she writes a book, it's GOOD, but still, not really that much work. And they aren't books like Stephen King writes, that you could use to safely absorb a subway stabbing, like a thousand pager, they are generally shorter books.

Snooki has to go to work every day, or at least every week, so I guess the typical Rutgers student really might get more out of Snooki's hard working TV type career advice than Toni Morrison's I'll-write-a-book-when-I-feel-up-to-it award winner type advice. Plus Snooki gets hassled by the man, she's not living this academic limousine lifestyle. Either way Rutgers could have saved money because a lot of smart people are slumming right now and would speak for food. I'd even pay them to speak because these kids would not be willing to listen to the heavy truth I would lay out there but I feel like it's my resposibility to tell them what I know, and I would pay to do that. Next year I'm going to call them.

The pouf is mightier than the pen when it comes to speaking fees at New Jersey's largest university.

The Rutgers University Programming Association paid Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi of the reality TV show "Jersey Shore" $32,000 Thursday to dish on her hairstyle, fist pumps, as well as the GTL — gym, tanning, laundry — lifestyle.

That's $2,000 more than the $30,000 the university is paying Nobel-winning novelist Toni Morrison to deliver Rutgers' commencement address in May.

Money for Polizzi's appearance came from the mandatory student activity fee.

Freshman Adham Abdel-Raouf told The Star-Ledger of Newark he thought the price was a bargain given Snooki's popularity. Another freshman, Dan Oliveto, said it was a waste of money.

Snooki's advice to students: "Study hard, but party harder."

[Associated Press]