Dumbing Down

There's a connection.

But first, the impact of dumbing down college is not limited to "black and hispanic applicants". It is a nationwide trend, one that occurs in predominantly white areas as well.

Locally, it can be seen in the "colleges that advertise on the subway": No admissions requirements. Questionable accreditation.

...because tuition is paid via grants (Pell, TAP, etc) and loans, the schools profit.

The benefit to the students, however, is less clear. The low income, inner-city "educated", 18 y/o doesn't know that a degree from Monroe (for example) is not respected, yet ends up owing lots of financial aid, regardless of whether they graduate.

It's all built on the faulty assumption that "everyone should go to college". The assumption has led our economy to have a nationwide surplus of overpriced "entitled workers" who won't do manual labor. ...a factor behind the US economy to be unable to compete in manufacturing.

Some college graduates even came to believe that despite earning a household income of 70k, that it was their right to have 400k home with granite countertops, and a $3k TV, despite the country's economic foundation being built on sand. (housing bubble...)

To fix it, colleges would have to be rigorously regulated to ensure that their graduates end up with a skill set. Whether to genuinely help students or simply take their financial aid, some colleges pursue open admissions (aka "get your GED while you learn"). This would be ok, but they would need to have incredible remedial support system ...or else expect that huge numbers would simply be unable to meet the standards for remaining enrolled.

As we all are likely to agree, with many colleges, this is not the case. Because colleges know that students will lose their financial aid if their GPA's fall below a 2.0, low grades are never given.

...all of which may play a part in the creation and demand for Fox News, which preaches:

Let's blame the fact that we can't have everything we desire (and believe we are entitled to) on the immigrants (aka diversity)!

whynot_31 wrote:
It's all built on the faulty assumption that "everyone should go to college". The assumption has led our economy to have a nationwide surplus of overpriced "entitled workers" who won't do manual labor. ...causing the US economy to be unable to compete in manufacturing.

Actually, I think that's a good assumption, to a first approximation. And the current surplus of workers of all kinds, manual, clerical, and creative, is a temporary situation. Like all rich Western democracies, manufacturing and manual labor as a share of the US economy has been falling steadily in recent decades, and rising in poor countries, because of globalization. That's a good thing, because manufacturing beats subsistence farming as a job, but it's no match for creating and selling know-how. The idea that the US should have a heavy manufacturing sector trying to compete with China is rather quaint -- in fact, they're welcome to it. The real competitor to the US is the EU, which is maximizing its human capital by making health care and tertiary education universal and heavily subsidized. The US gets around this temporarily by better economic integration and mobility (being one country and 1-2 languages helps), by having higher immigration, including of skilled workers, and by just writing off a large slab of poor people. Not such a sustainable way to go.

doctorj wrote: I wonder what Linda Chavez thinks the reason is, that the skills of black and Hispanic applicants don't measure up according to entrance exams. If it's because they're born of genetically inferior stock, or because it's the irreversible fault of their parents who chose an indigent lifestyle, making them more suited to janitorial than professional careers, then she's absolutely right -- there should be no measures to boost their representation in higher education; it would be unfair to them, unfair to the superior caste, and a waste of resources. If rather than being innate or immutable, it's because there was a combination of socioeconomic factors during their upbringing that meant they had less opportunity to acquire skills to perform well on those tests, then it makes sense to try to boost their access to and representation at the best learning environments _at_every_level_ (of which university is just one necessary but not sufficient component) until the representation parallels the population; not to do so would be unfair and a waste of resources.

Excellent point. However, it would be a better idea to offer some type of "pre-college" program to bring students up to an appropriate level before starting college rather than either throwing them into work for which they are woefully unprepared, or giving them a bogus semblance of a college education and a certificate while never actually challenging them with college-level work. Really, the best solution is to improve opportunities and education much earlier in the process. Although some exceptional individuals can turn things around when given the opportunity later in life, for many it's just too late by the time they're of age to go to college.

Vocational schools may be a better option for some who can't handle college work to get focused training that can get them a skilled well-paying job. The college experience of many students (whatever their background) could be viewed as a ridiculous indulgence, with little applicability to their future lives and careers.

Carnivore wrote:
Vocational schools may be a better option for some who can't handle college work to get focused training that can get them a skilled well-paying job. The college experience of many students (whatever their background) could be viewed as a ridiculous indulgence, with little applicability to their future lives and careers.

Sounds sensible to me. I should point out that I have only the very vaguest notion of what Americans actually do at college. In all the other OECD countries I'm familiar with, most people go from secondary school into some kind of 2-5 year tertiary education (university, technical, or trade) that's 80-100% vocationally focussed, 20%-0% general/liberal. Either straight through, or with a gap year to work/travel/etc.

Carnivore wrote: [quote=doctorj][quote=Carnivore]
Vocational schools may be a better option for some who can't handle college work to get focused training that can get them a skilled well-paying job. The college experience of many students (whatever their background) could be viewed as a ridiculous indulgence, with little applicability to their future lives and careers.

Sounds sensible to me. I should point out that I have only the very vaguest notion of what Americans actually do at college. In all the other OECD countries I'm familiar with, most people go from secondary school into some kind of 2-5 year tertiary education (university, technical, or trade) that's 80-100% vocationally focussed, 20%-0% general/liberal. Either straight through, or with a gap year to work/travel/etc.
That seems much more sensible.

agreed.

In the US the problem seems to be multi-fold:

1. An almost exclusively college-bound HS curriculum (in NYS this is manifested in the phasing out of the local diploma in favor of the Regents Diploma).

2. A culture that simultaneously overpays (i.e. dying union contracts) and underpays (i.e. un-enforced minimum wage laws, absence of health coverage) manual labor. Australia, for example, pays its service people a living wage ...one that is not dependent upon tips. AU is able to do this partly as a result of a restrictive immigration policy, one that effectively allows only certain numbers of skilled people in each year.

All of this is compounded by the expectations of Americans that they -as a result of birthright- should have the highest standard of living in the world. ...oddly, many actually continue to think they have the highest standard of living in the world. (to make this tangent short, I believe that native born Americans would not need to fear immigrants if they were willing to do the work presently done by them. Over time, this will have to happen ...a lot of folks are not going to be able to afford to turn those manual labor jobs down).

3. A student loan system that is biased toward 4 year colleges. ...Each year you are in school, you get more financial aid.

4 - 10,000. Factors I am too lazy to list at the moment.

Carnie, can you change the title of the thread? It has the potential to be a reasonably intelligent topic and we could benefit from some teacher input, and I know we have a bunch (gaggle?) of teachers on the board.

whynot_31 wrote: We will never compete with the low wage, low skill labor of China.

Not in the near term. The only way the heavy manufacturing is coming back is if the US descends below the level of China, and Chinese companies move their factories here instead of Africa.

whynot_31 wrote:
...and I, too, would love it if we were able to enjoy the income (albeit not the government) of someplace that simply sells "know how" like Singapore.

It's a good idea to remember that a typical rich country's economy is around 75% domestic sector, 25% trade. You cannot globalize a haircut or a plumbing job or childcare. But there's no reason why the US can’t have healthy growth with a trade sector composed mainly of IP, high-tech and niche products, and primary industry (agriculture and minerals). That’s the mix it already has, in fact.

whynot_31 wrote: Call me a pessimist, but the economy of the world can't grow continually over the long term.

Yes it can. This is not a zero sum game. Even once world population stabilizes at 9 billion, economies can continue to grow as more infrastructure gets built, technology continues to advance, trade and activity continue to increase. The hard part is that it will require some major changes, particularly on the energy front, to avoid environmental catastrophe and dieback by next century.

whynot_31 wrote: The US has long had inflated wages on the basis of its military power and its (now failing) manufacturing advantages. The US has had a good run. ...but as it adjusts to being simply "one of several world powers", as opposed to "the world power", it's standard of living is going to have to fall in line with that of the rest of the world.

Agreed about the military power. The manufacturing advantages were pretty much over by the 70s. Since then, the economy has been more driven by high tech advances like computing and pharma/med/biotech. I agree there will be a realignment, and the US will be one of several world powers, the dollar will continue to fall in value, and growth will be sluggish for a while (not necessarily with absolute falls in living standard) as others catch up.

whynot_31 wrote:
Our economy is built on debt.
Debt we don't own.

Wouldn't worry too much about that debt, domestic or foreign -- economic recovery, long-term inflation and a falling dollar will mean that its real size eventually diminishes. And in the mean time, just look how low the yields are on T-bills -- the markets and the world still have as much faith in the long-term strength and durability of the US as anywhere else, or they wouldn't keep paying so much for those bonds.

whynot_31 wrote: The country lacks a distinct skill set or advantage.

Well... apart from being the world's largest economy and having 5% of the world's population, ample primary resources, sophisticated financial markets, fair to good infrastructure, a flexible labor force unhindered by internal borders and major language or cultural differences, many of the world's top universities, a tradition of entrepreneurship and social mobility, a comparatively well-functioning legal system and the rule of law, convenient geographic location with direct sea lanes to all other major population centers, range of climates from arctic to tropical, maritime to mountainous with a predominance of arable land, a lack of ethnic tension or tribal violence, a fairly stable and open democratic system with less corruption than average, a stable rather than rapidly aging demographic profile, etc. etc. No one distinct skill set or advantage in particular I suppose. But not a bad place to do business.

DrJ wrote: Well... apart from being the world's largest economy and having 5% of the world's population, ample primary resources, sophisticated financial markets, fair to good infrastructure, a flexible labor force unhindered by internal borders and major language or cultural differences, many of the world's top universities, a tradition of entrepreneurship and social mobility, a comparatively well-functioning legal system and the rule of law, convenient geographic location with direct sea lanes to all other major population centers, range of climates from arctic to tropical, maritime to mountainous with a predominance of arable land, a lack of ethnic tension or tribal violence, a fairly stable and open democratic system with less corruption than average, a stable rather than rapidly aging demographic profile, etc. etc. No one distinct skill set or advantage in particular I suppose. But not a bad place to do business.

whynot then wrote: Have you thought about Marketing as a profession? Uncle Sam could use some help lately.

While we have a relatively low population density, the population isn't particularly educated and ready to join the world economy. It's largely monolingual and untraveled.

The financial markets seem to be in a state of disarray at the moment.

I can't think of much to brag about in terms of infrastructure, but like some of the ideas of Obama re: high speed trains, etc. ...I've read the air control system could use an overhaul since 1975.

I've give you that the land is good, and we've been the "bread basket to the world" for a long time. With genetic engineering and widespread fertilizer use (aka "foreign pollution"), I'm not so sure that we'll be able to continue to hold that status.

Ethnic tension has thankfully decreased over the last 40 years, but there seems to be some some growing tension (not to mention distance) between income classes ...not based on race this time around.

The center of the country continues to de-industrialize, while the coasts seem to careless about it. I'm not saying we should attempt to re-industrialize, just that folks in the midwest are getting pissed that they've been left behind, and I haven't seen much action to help them adapt to the new economy.

As you mention, most countries have a 75% domestic - 25% trade split, but has post-1950 has US ever had this mix? Establishing it ain't gonna be easy.

DrJ wrote: The hard part is that it will require some major changes, particularly on the energy front, to avoid environmental catastrophe and dieback by next century.

whynot then wrote: We are screwed. We aren't screwed to the degree that we'll become 2nd world anytime soon, but this adjustment to "just another first world country" is going to be a bitch.

Yes, we are presently good at pharma/med/biotech and our colleges and universities effectively support these fields (due in large part to much needed partnerships between the companies and colleges).


My main argument is this:

The US has been slow to adapt to the new world because it has a lot of folks who feel they are entitled to jobs where they live, and at their former pay rate.

...and, to top it off, some believe that should not have to learn a new skill (or have no idea of how to go about the process).

...they could move to where jobs are, but for whatever reason, they don't.

And, although it would be great if human stubbornness/stupidity wasn't the problem of the government, but in a pesky democracy (sarcasm) it always ends up as such. The disaffected end up voting or protesting, etc. They have their representatives demand that jobs come to their districts.

As a country, we do little to dissuade such beliefs. We pass out aid based on what state you live in, not where jobs are. For example, we tie unemployment insurance to your state. Became unemployed in Michigan? You can only get unemployment from Michigan if you continue to live there. ...not much incentive to move to the new plant in GA.

To make a long story short, yes, we could have a mobile, entrepenurial (sp?) workforce, but we don't. People love their home states. They rarely leave them. ...all those stats about people rarely moving from that state in which they were born.

Lot of folks in this country have myopic views of the world; where's that stat about us having a small percentage of people who have ever left the country? ...Dubya fit right in.

I can't say I have a lot of faith in the government's ability to make us green (much less "educated" to participate in the world), and haven't seen the infrastructure investments that would be required for either.

...perhaps the free market will finally get folks out of the cars and have them live closer to where they work. ...or perhaps we'll just try depend on ourselves for what we need, and start a trade war with China over tires so we can keep Arkon alive ...and pursue idiocracy.

hey, this should have the title "education reform and national economic re-organization in one"

just sayin

e wrote: Wow- not one person agrees with Linda Chavez... What a biased place this board is. Do you all just love agreeing with each other and patting yourselves on the back?

Seems like quite a few people agree with some fraction of what Linda Chavez said, and disagree on a range of details regarding social and education policy amongst ourselves. My visceral first reaction to claims of "'dumbing down" are "in my day, they average schmuck starting college was pretty hopeless too, and every generation complains about this"... despite the widely documented Flynn Effect. And naming blacks and Hispanics as the underskilled unsuitables without much further nuance seems rather gauche. But on reflection it sounds like there are specifics to this particular University's entrance policy, that make it somewhat harebrained if not part of a nationally coordinated plan to make access more equatable at all levels, and tertiary education more vocationally oriented for many, with a wider range of accreditable options beyond a more-or-less fixed 4 year one-size-fits-all general academic program.

Or is 'bias' a synonym for trying to discuss specifics and not immediately descending into an ad hominem flame war these days?

whynot_31 wrote:
To make a long story short, yes, we could have a mobile, entrepenurial (sp?) workforce, but we don't. People love their home states. They rarely leave them. ...all those stats about people rarely moving from that state in which they were born.

Still, I would argue that the linguistic and cultural differences and barriers involved in moving from e.g. Connecticut to Arizona are less than e.g. Schleswig-Holstein to Baden-Württemberg, let alone Portugal to Finland, Lombok to Aceh, or Xinjiang to Guangdong; no matter how static it may seem, I bet if we compared the numbers it would be less so than other similar-sized federations.

huh? is it really true that we're less mobile? i would have thought the opposite -- certainly my anecdotal evidence is filled with people and families moving all over the country for jobs. i've made 3 fairly large moves (not all for jobs, but still), and by the standards of my family and the people i grew up around, i feel quite stodgy. (this may be because my family has a tradition of getting kicked out our home countries early and often (who did you think was on the mayflower?), then being encouraged to build careers in the navy, so we aren't actually on the new land often enough to bother anyone. more recent generations also include the peripatetic educated classes -- doctors, for instance, who go wherever the match sends them, and academics who are lucky to have jobs at all.)

if it really is true that americans move less, i put forth the lack of government "safety net" programs -- okay, mostly i mean health care -- as one factor keeping people in place. moving without a new job seems (and maybe is) very dangerous compared to staying in a place where your own private safety net of friends and family can help you. i don't know very much about applying for factory jobs, but i'm guessing that it's somewhat uncommon to be hired at a distance and paid to move.

My argument isn't that people don't move; it's that they don't move as much as they should, and that there are lots of obstacles behind it.

The system enables, if not encourages, people to remain loyal to places and industries that are obsolete.

...which prevents the "free movement of labor".
...which makes labor and production more costly
...which causes the US to lose a lot of jobs that it does not have to.

(Note: China etc will likely always beat the US when it comes to producing labor intensive products)

While the country will always have characters like my uncle, I argue it could do a lot more to get them into a Uhaul truck, and put their skills to use where they are needed.

The US version of democracy/capitalism has made it a lot more complicated then 50 geographically diverse states without passports.

In addition to portable health care, maybe we could give him:

Free satellite access so he could watch his favorite Indiana sports teams play from his new living room in North Carolina.

...many of those fine damns were built in the depression by the WPA ("learn masonry or starve") but let's not go there.

How about this:
"The US has advantages, but they are declining."

Clearly, the boom that the country experienced from approximately 1940 - 1980 was due to the advantages you describe (it can't all be attributed to something like "military power").

I admit it: We kicked butt.

...this boom, although it ended 20+ years ago, still effects our psyches, and it's end has yet to be truly felt as a result of all the debt we've incurred. As a result, a lot of us are fat, and feel entitled to be so.

We think that everyone is moving as slow as we are, while transferring our former wealth overseas on a daily basis.

P.S. Before you mail me Lexapro:
All is not lost, the US is rich enough to keep giving our money away for a few more decades.

...and we can always burn "clean coal" again. I hear the fish and trees love the ash.

Lot's of opportunities presently exist:
Fox News might be a good place to invest.
...after credit card companies, and Walmart, of course.

(just invest in the stuff my uncle consumes)

I've never worried about Japan. ...they lacked cheap labor.

Hey, don't mess with Bjork. She's hot.

doctorj wrote: [quote=whynot_31]I've never worried about Japan. ...they lacked cheap labor.

Their labor was cheap to begin with. How else did they get rich?

whynot_31 wrote: Hey, don't mess with Bjork. She's hot.

When I saw her antics up close, I thought she was a stuck-up nutcase. So did the members of the music press, whom she allegedly defecated in front of at an interview when she was visiting that town. Iceland in general though, is hot.

Japan used robotics, not labor, when we were still using my overpriced uncle with sodering gun.


Ok, maybe she's only nice to look at, not hang out with.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=bjork&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10

Hey, you are dodging my question about John Cougar Mellencamp!
Why to we listen to this fool?