How to con the daft people

I will use a simple example to illustrate how easy it is to con the daft people. As Sun Tzu wrote, know your enemy know your strength, winning is assured. Take the case of education, knowing that the daft people are all for glory, to be Number One for the right or wrong reasons,  and better still if this can be bought by money, just sell the glory to them. You can find it in many fields. Let me show you how it can be done.

Tell the daft people you can make their universities ranked among the top universities in the world, practically for free.  Whatever that means, no need to bother with the cost and returns and any adverse consequences. And tell them with a little effort their universities can even rank higher than Cambridge or Harvard, you can put them into your pocket. But don’t tell them there is no free lunch. They did not know there is no such thing as free lunch although their idol founding father had told them many times. And to tell them that they could get it for free, my goodness, you can literally see their saliva turning into ponding.

The method is like this. Tell them to subscribe to your ranking system. Tell them it is an internationally recognized system, reputable some more. And if their universities are ranked among the tops, it is something to be proud of, very prestigious, never mind if the students turned out to be duds, unemployable. That is the students’ problem, not your problem.

Once they are sold, tell them to hire foreigners, at least 30% or more, to give the universities an international feel and look. Foreigners are always seen as better than the daft locals. The grass is always greener over the fence. Then tell them to bring in foreign students also, 30% or more the merrier. Con them to believe that with the presence of foreigners, somehow their students would become smarter or appear to be smarter and the universities will somehow become better or more reputable. And the universities would also be more desirable.

When they swallow this line of conning, they would go back and do all the silly things without thinking. They would sack their own citizen lecturers and hire foreign lecturers at higher pay to turn the universities into foreign universities to serve foreign interests. Never mind, it is OPM. And if their citizen lecturers lost their jobs, tell them they are not good enough and they themselves are to blame. See, providing employment to foreigners against the interest of their citizens they would also do.  Maybe they also think that the country belongs to the whole world, so what is the problem of the universities belonging to foreigners. Whose money is being spent to feed the foreigners, who cares? Then 20 years forward, they would find out that they don’t have local talents in the universities like in the banking and finance industries. Then they will start to talk about planning ahead for a citizen core like real.

What about foreign students? Who cares? As long as they are good for the university’s ranking, if no foreign students want to come, they would use taxpayer’s money to pay for the foreign students to come. And they would not even spare a thought at the thousands of places they are snatching away from the children of their citizens. As long as the university ranking is high, they would claim they have achieved something, done well, for who never mind. Our universities are world class.

The net effect would be the hollowing of local lecturers in the universities and many children of the citizens being deprived of university places. And the foreigners will be laughing themselves silly for the easy money they are getting. Where in the world got govt allowing universities to pay, train and nurture foreigners using tax payers’ money? How would all these affect the interests of the citizens is of no concern. And they may even put up letters by grateful foreign lecturers and students saying thank you for their generosity in their notice boards. And these daft would be so elated, feeling so good that the foreigners really appreciate what they have done for them, throwing money at them.

See the recipe for the daft? Daft people easy to con or not? It sure works one. For the sake of a little superficial glory, they would do anything, sacrifice the interests of their citizens and use the taxpayer’s money with no qualms about it. The citizens, the parents and students craving for a place in the universities can cry their hearts out, who cares?

See, under my watch the university is world class in ranking! Paid for by OPM. The trick is to look for a silly country to put this into practice. Which country in the world would allow this to happen? Which country’s top academics would be silly enough to be conned by this formula? Can it really happen?

The above is of course a fantasy. It would not happen. It can’t. Top academics and govt leaders are all top talents and would not dare to waste taxpayers’s money on foreigners at the expense of the taxpayers for a cheap glory scam.

An easier method would be to follow what the football leagues are doing. Buy up top universities and change their names to the name of the country buying it. Instant world famous universities!