Murray's argument is that only 10 - 15% of white students (lower for some other minorities and perhaps higher for others) are intelligent enough to handle college material. He says that encouraging everyone to attempt college wouldn't be a problem if there weren't high costs attached in terms of time & money. Young people who aren't smart enough to handle college but are encouraged to attend by their parents and their counselors are the victims of a callous system.
quote: The advocates of college for everyone seldom mention those who try and fail, but in fact the college dropout rate is extremely high. In a longitudinal study sponsored by the Department of Education, 42% of those who entered college in 1995 had not obtained a degree within six years. That is almost exactly the same as the 41% of white youths in the 1979 NLSY cohort who dropped out of four-year colleges and never got a B.A. For whites in the 1997 cohort who were at least 24 years old in the 2006 survey, 39% of those who had entered a four-year college had not yet obtained a degree.
quote:In a longitudinal study sponsored by the Department of Education, 42% of those who entered college in 1995 had not obtained a degree within six years.
I didn't obtain a degree within six years either. It took me seven, and then four more years to get the next one.
Of course, there were many other things in my life besides school during that time period (a 2-year mission, getting married, 2 children, buying our first house, etc.).
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My husband, who teaches college courses at a local community college, looked over my shoulder and saw only the thread title and said "yes."
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I don't know that intelligence has as much to do with it as you would like. My husband is very intelligent, but also interested in too many different things, so it took him some 15 years to settle on and get a degree. Approximately 10 of those years were actually spent in school (you don't want to know how many credits he has in his transcripts).
In my case* I found after a couple of years in college that I didn't actually want a degree and that I would be better off doing other things. College isn't for everyone, and although sometimes it might be intelligence related, it can also be because of personality and background.
*I'm not interested in bragging, but I've got a whole list of high school accomplishments if you don't believe that I would be grouped amongst the "intelligent" college students.
posted
I found the opening anecdote interesting because when dealing with a student who makes average grades, is motivated, but is without direction and would dread an office job...I would say its not a matter of intelligence but rather a problem of the system.
As I get older I'm seeing how ridiculous it is that we celebrate the four-year institution which in many cases is more of a life experience rather than an education, and stigmatize community colleges.
I sat through four years of my small liberal arts college professors talking about the value of education. And it was of great use for my many of my classmates who went onto graduate programs. But being put on the four-year college train isn't always the best course REGARDLESS of intelligence. I scored higher on IQ and the SATs than the majority of my college friends and I'm one of the few who doesn't have her BA yet at 24 years old.
My goal, when I do graduate, will be attend the local community-style college and get a degree that is actually useful.
I do like the idea about certifications. And I love the idea of elevating the value of alternatives to the BA. The four-year college program is great for some people who it shouldn't be eliminated but I think as a society we'd benefit by appreciating those who don't fit the model and giving them an opportunity to prove their worth in other ways.
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It is certainly the case that too many students are attending college. This is largely because employers are lazy.
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It is even more true that many high schools are not adequately preparing their students. That doesn't make them dumb -- it makes them ill-prepared.
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dumb or smart,necessary or not, thank god we have the privilege to send so many of our society on to higher education.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: It is even more true that many high schools are not adequately preparing their students. That doesn't make them dumb -- it makes them ill-prepared.
I think this gets at the heart of the matter far more directly.
I'm often shocked at the lack of some very basic skills from the students around me, particularly the younger ones right out of high school. I'm shocked when professors have to put in a syllabus that it's inappropriate to ask for a specific grade because so many students have begged for a passing grade over the last couple years. I'm shocked when a professor spends two weeks doing a mini-lecture on basic writing skills because kids can't even edit their own papers for basic grammatical errors and profs are sick of reading the messes turned in to them.
The number of complaints that I've heard from profs about the quality if incoming freshman has increased yearly since I entered college, which was way back in 2002. I graduate this May, so it will have taken me 8 years to get my degree.
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As college has become more and more emphasized by society and high schools and colleges themselves, many employers have stopped hiring people with only high school diplomas, including many employers who could engage in on-the-job training or even apprenticeships to develop their employees have instead started requiring college degrees. It essentially requires many people to spend large amounts of money on college taking dozens of courses, many of which aren't truly necessary for the career that they want. Apprenticeships still exist but they are much fewer and far between than they were at one point. It's sad, because a true apprenticeship can teach an appreciation for the work that they do that a college education cannot always provide.
In addition, this country (the US) does not value it's workers that are not college educated (or even college educated employees working in jobs that wouldn't require a degree). When I was working for an electronics store, I had a customer come back with a phone she had purchased because she couldn't figure out how to make it stay on the hook. When I offered to show her how, her response was:
quote: My husband is an engineer, my son works for NASA. If they couldn't make it work, you certainly don't know.
She didn't have much to say when I flipped the hook over to the hanging position and demonstrated that it now worked. She immediately assumed that because I worked in retail, I was stupid, and therefore couldn't possibly show her how to do something her "much more intelligent" family couldn't figure out.
Not all Americans are like that, but it does show a lack of respect for those who work in jobs that require a lower level of education, or that provide on-the-job training and development, rather than requiring college. What those people fail to realize is that these jobs are an important part of our economy, and that people working in them, showing up on time every day, and choosing to do that job to the best of their ability, deserve just as much respect as a college professor, or someone with a higher education.
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I'm not sure if referencing NASA as a center for common sense is really the best defense she could make given they're the people who crashed a couple hundred million dollar probe into Mars because of a conversion error (in that they didn't convert it at all).
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quote:Originally posted by dab: dumb or smart,necessary or not, thank god we have the privilege to send so many of our society on to higher education.
We'd do better if we had better options for the people who aren't going to thrive in an environment of essays and complex academic material. We must have de-emphasized vocational training and apprenticeships too much along the way.
There is one advantage to this presumed 'necessity' of college education: it puts the onus on our primary school system to try to make as many students capable for it as possible.
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I think we'd do better to have a system similar to what many European nations have, where some are put on a university track, and others on a trades/craft track. I'm nervous about separating people out in high school and forcing them into one life path or another, but it seems foolish to force the idea of college on a large number of students that are obviously never going to go, or will go and fail.
I think it would also be a great step forward on the national road towards downplaying the be all end all status of universities. We have to end the stigma that says that working in a trade is somehow less than being a college graduate. People in the trades can make excellent money, and even if they don't make great money, they provide incredibly valuable and necessary skills that aren't in the slightest less important than those of a college graduate.
Kids aren't going to want to be blackballed to vocational training however until the stigma ends.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I think we'd do better to have a system similar to what many European nations have, where some are put on a university track, and others on a trades/craft track. I'm nervous about separating people out in high school and forcing them into one life path or another, but it seems foolish to force the idea of college on a large number of students that are obviously never going to go, or will go and fail.
Amen.
Especially since a good vocational training can net well-paying jobs.
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Only degrees from prestigious universities (i.e, the ones that are most selective about the IQ of the students) have the status of what a general college degree indicated four decades ago. As it stands, most students are attending college to merely acquire useful skills. I think we can up with a more efficient system that accommodates them. Because the only winners of the current system are the high IQ/Ivy League crowd AND college professors who have to teach two classes a semester.
More on the importance of intelligence (from a book called "Spent" by Geoffrey Miller):
quote:The irony about general intelligence is that ordinary folks of average intelligence recognize its variance across people, its generality across domains, and its importance in life. Yet educated elites meanwhile often remain implacably opposed to the very concept of general intelligence, and deny its variance, generality, and importance. Professors and students at elite universities are especially prone to this pseudohumility. They socialize only with other people of extraordinarily high intelligence, so the width of the whole bell curve lies outside their frame of reference. I have met theoretical physicists who claimed that any human could understand superstring theory and quantum mechanics if only he or she was given the right educational opportunities. Of course, such scientists talk only with other physicists with IQs above 140, and seem to forget that their janitors, barbers, and car mechanics are in fact real humans too, so they can rest comfortably in the envy-deflecting delusion that there are no significant differences in general intelligence.
Even within my own field, evolutionary psychologists tend to misunderstand general intelligence as a psychological adaptation in its own right, often misconstruing it as a specific mental organ, module, brain area, or faculty. However, it is not viewed that way by most intelligence researchers who, instead, regard general intelligence as an individual-differences construct—like the constructs “health,” “beauty,” or “status.” Health is not a bodily organ; it is an abstract construct or “latent variable” that emerges when one statistically analyzes the functional efficiencies of many different organs. Because good genes, diet, and exercise tend to produce good hearts, lungs, and antibodies, the vital efficiencies of circulatory, pulmonary, and immune systems tend to positively correlate, yielding a general “health” factor. Likewise, beauty is not a single sexual ornament like a peacock’s tail; it is a latent variable that emerges when one analyzes the attractiveness of many different sexual ornaments throughout the face and body (such as eyes, lips, skin, hair, chest, buttocks, and legs, plus general skin quality, hair condition, muscle tone, and optimal amount and distribution of fat). Similarly, general intelligence is not a mental organ, but a latent variable that emerges when one analyzes the functional efficiencies of many different mental organs (such as memory, language ability, social perceptiveness, speed at learning practical skills, and musical aptitude). ...
In the 1970s, critics of intelligence research such as Leon Kamin and Stephen Jay Gould wrote many diatribes insisting that general intelligence had none of these correlations with other biological traits such as height, physical health, mental health, brain size, or nerve conduction speed. Mountains of research since then have shown that they were wrong, and today general intelligence dwells comfortably at the center of a whole web of empirical associations stretching from genetics through neuroscience to creativity research. Still, the anti-intelligence dogma continues unabated, and a conspicuous contempt for IQ remains, among the liberal elite, a fashionable indicator of one’s agreeableness and openness.
Yet this overt contempt for the concept of intelligence has never undermined our universal worship of the intelligence-based meritocracy that drives capitalist educational and occupational aspirations. All parents glow with pride when their children score well on standardized tests, get into elite universities that require high test scores, and pursue careers that require elite university degrees. The anti-intelligence dogma has not deterred liberal elites from sulking and ranting about the embarrassing stupidity of certain politicians, the inhumanity of inflicting capital punishment on murderers with subnormal IQs, or the IQ-harming effects of lead paint or prenatal alcoholism. Whenever policy issues are important enough, we turn to the concept of general intelligence as a crucial explanatory variable or measure of cognitive health, despite our Gould-tutored discomfort with the idea.
You’ve probably heard that IQ tests are now widely considered outdated, biased, and useless, and that there’s more to cognitive ability than general intelligence—there are also traits like social intelligence, practical intelligence, emotional intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. Strikingly, these claims originate mostly from psychology professors at Harvard and Yale. Harvard is home to Howard Gardner, advocate of eight “multiple intelligences” (linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist). Yale is home to Peter Salovey, advocate of emotional intelligence, and was, until recently, home to Robert Sternberg, advocate of three intelligences (academic, social, and practical). (To be fair, I think the notions of interpersonal, social, and emotional intelligence do have some merit, but they seem more like socially desired combinations of general intelligence, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and/or extraversion, than distinctive dimensions that extend beyond the Central Six.)
Is it an accident that researchers at the most expensive, elite, IQ-screening universities tend to be most skeptical of IQ tests? I think not. Universities offer a costly, slow, unreliable intelligence-indicating product that competes directly with cheap, fast, more-reliable IQ tests. They are now in the business of educational credentialism. Harvard and Yale sell nicely printed sheets of paper called degrees that cost about $160,000 ($40,000 for tuition, room, board, and books per year for four years). To obtain the degree, one must demonstrate a decent level of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness in one’s coursework, but above all, one must have the intelligence to get admitted, based on SAT scores and high school grades. Thus, the Harvard degree is basically an IQ guarantee.
Elite universities do not want to be undercut by competitors. They do not want their expensive IQ-warranties to suffer competition from cheap, fast IQ tests, which would commodify the intelligence-display market and drive down costs. Therefore, elite universities have a hypocritical, love-hate relationship with intelligence tests. They use the IQ-type tests (such as the SAT) to select students, to ensure that their IQ-warranties have validity and credibility. Yet, they seem to agree with the claim by Educational Testing Service that the SAT is not an IQ test, and they vehemently deny that their degrees could be replaced by IQ tests in the competition for social status, sexual attractiveness, and employment. Alumni of such schools also work very hard to maintain the social norm that, in casual conversation, it is acceptable to mention where one went to college, but not to mention one’s SAT or IQ scores. If I say on a second date that “the sugar maples in Harvard Yard were so beautiful every fall term,” I am basically saying “my SAT scores were sufficiently high (roughly 720 out of 800) that I could get admitted, so my IQ is above 135, and I had sufficient conscientiousness, emotional stability, and intellectual openness to pass my classes. Plus, I can recognize a tree.” The information content is the same, but while the former sounds poetic, the latter sounds boorish.
There are vested interests at work here, including not just the universities but the testing services. The most important U.S. intelligence-testing institution is the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers the SAT, LSAT, MCAT, and GRE tests. ETS is a private organization with about 2,500 employees, including 250 Ph.D.s. It apparently functions as an unregulated monopoly, accountable only to its Board of Trustees. Although nominally dedicated to the highest standards of test validity, ETS is also under intense legal pressure to create tests that “are free of racial, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, and other forms of bias.” This means, in practice, that ETS must attempt the impossible. It must develop tests that accurately predict university performance by assessing general intelligence, since general intelligence remains by far the best predictor of academic achievement. Yet, since intelligence testing remains such a politically incendiary topic in the United States, it is crucial for ETS to take the position that its “aptitude” and “achievement” tests are not tests of general intelligence. Further, its tests must avoid charges of bias by yielding precisely equal distributions of scores across different ethnic groups, sexes, and classes—even when those groups do have somewhat different distributions of general intelligence. So, the more accurate the tests are as indexes of general intelligence, the more biased they look across groups, and the more flack ETS gets from political activists. On the other hand, the more equal the test outcomes are across groups, the less accurate the tests are as indexes of general intelligence, the less well they predict university performance, and the more flack ETS gets from universities trying to select the best students. ETS may be doing the best it can, given the hypocrisies, taboos, and legal constraints of the American cognitive meritocracy. However, it may be useful for outsiders to understand its role in higher education not just as a gate keeper but as a flack absorber [should be "flak catcher"]. ETS throws itself on the hand grenade of the IQ test controversy to protect its platoon mates (elite universities) from the shrapnel.
Before a lot of people started going to college, most highly gifted students were spread around the country and probably went to a college/university in their state. Now they're pretty much concentrated in about 15 schools.
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If you're an employer, one "qualification" that's very easy to use as a baseline is a degree of some kind. If you have 200 applications and really only have time to seriously look at, say, 80 of them, and 60 of them have Bachelor's degrees, it's really a matter of a minute to decide that you're only going to consider the people with Bachelor's. (Of course, in business, the MBA is generally the point of entry, and that's even more expensive; an MBA is basically a simple financial transaction nowadays, consisting of the exchange of lump sums of money and time for a piece of paper entitling you to incrementally more money thereafter.)
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quote:Before a lot of people started going to college, most highly gifted students were spread around the country and probably went to a college/university in their state. Now they're pretty much concentrated in about 15 schools.
I'm sorry, but that is just wrong as is most of the article you quote. One of the unique things about the US University system (compared with other countries) is that there are excellent students all over the place. If you look at lists of the top ranked programs in any field, you will find that most of them are at public Universities, not elite private schools. I challenge you to go into any public University around and look at the top 10% of students, you will find that they are every bit as good as the students who go to places like Harvard and Stanford. That is not speculation, I've taught at those Universities. I've sat on scholarship committees. I've written letters of recommendations for graduate schools. The best students I've taught had the grades and SATs to get into places like MIT. Many of them have gone on to graduate school at places like MIT and have been every bit as good, if not better, than people with Ivy League educations.
Most people in the US, even most very smart people, attend state Universities. There are 30 times as many students in the University of California system as attend Stanford. The University of Washington has more undergraduate students than Brown, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia combined.
Schools like Columbia have 2 - 3 times as many students in their graduate schools as in their undergraduate programs. Where do they get all these good grad students. Simply answer, they come from every state University in the country because many of the best students study there.
[ October 26, 2009, 11:38 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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I agree with Rabbit on this one. While there are unquestionably better and worse 4-year schools, many -- maybe most -- state schools are on the "better" list.
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A Bachelor's degree - even from a highly ranked university - isn't what it used to be. If you want a career in a "field", more often than not, you need an advanced degree. Or as one academic recently put it, "An MA is the new BA". Often, too, an MA is thought of as a step toward a doctorate which, for many fields, is only useful if you want to be an academic.
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I think a more accurate description of the problem is that there are too many people attending who aren't really interested in learning.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I think we'd do better to have a system similar to what many European nations have, where some are put on a university track, and others on a trades/craft track. I'm nervous about separating people out in high school and forcing them into one life path or another, but it seems foolish to force the idea of college on a large number of students that are obviously never going to go, or will go and fail.
Amen.
Especially since a good vocational training can net well-paying jobs.
*hops into the rivka/lyrhawn clique*
That would have certainly helped several people I know of whom college just was not the best environment for them, but trade school likely would have been.
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quote:I think we'd do better to have a system similar to what many European nations have, where some are put on a university track, and others on a trades/craft track. I'm nervous about separating people out in high school and forcing them into one life path or another, but it seems foolish to force the idea of college on a large number of students that are obviously never going to go, or will go and fail.
At least in Norway, the vocational track is not a life sentence. There are mechanisms for going back later and doing the pre-college stuff if you want, although I admit I'm slightly hazy on how it works. Note further that Norwegian universities have to take anyone who has what's called "studiekompetanse", basically a passing grade in all the academic subjects. That's not to say that you'll get into the major you want, of course. For med school you need something a bit more competitive. Which is how the sciences end up with a lot of people who wash out in math 101.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I think we'd do better to have a system similar to what many European nations have, where some are put on a university track, and others on a trades/craft track. I'm nervous about separating people out in high school and forcing them into one life path or another, but it seems foolish to force the idea of college on a large number of students that are obviously never going to go, or will go and fail.
Amen.
Especially since a good vocational training can net well-paying jobs.
*hops into the rivka/lyrhawn clique*
That would have certainly helped several people I know of whom college just was not the best environment for them, but trade school likely would have been.
*joins clique*
I also wish that there were more [public] specialized high schools. My high school was rated highly for a non-magnet public school and offered a wide variety of electives but I still felt suffocated by all of the core curriculum courses. It would be nice if students had more of an opportunity to experiment with courses and career paths before college since it's expensive to pursue the wrong major and even more expensive to discover that college isn't the best life path after already attending and paying tuition.
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I'm in full agreement that the US needs more vocational schools. Universities definitely have a problem dealing with the growing population of students who want job training rather than education. A University education should be just that "education" which isn't the same as training for a job.
But the arguments Murray makes for this alternative are simply factually inaccurate.
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Murray's argument is that only 10 - 15% of white students (lower for some other minorities and perhaps higher for others) are intelligent enough to handle college material. He says that encouraging everyone to attempt college wouldn't be a problem if there weren't high costs attached in terms of time & money. Young people who aren't smart enough to handle college but are encouraged to attend by their parents and their counselors are the victims of a callous system.
I have no data to back it up, but in my personal experience, many people I went to grade school with spent upwards of six years attempting to complete some form of tertiary education, and a surprisingly many failed.
However, what interests me is that I went to grade school in an economically lower-middle class area, whereas I went to high school in an upper middle class area and a private (religious) school. Of my classmates there, many of whom were no smarter than my grade school classmates, most attended and completed degrees at 4 year colleges. The poorer people I knew went to junior colleges and spent 4 5 and 6 years planning to transfer to 4 year schools, and only a few managed it.
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quote: That would have certainly helped several people I know of whom college just was not the best environment for them, but trade school likely would have been.
I majored in English and Music in school, and I have to say one thing I regretted about the system was the number of students there, particularly in music, who represented a drain on department resources without adding value to the community. Perhaps it was just more noticeable in a small music program where the working of the department essentially required the involvement of students beyond simple class attendance, but if even one person was there *just* to attend classes and "get the degree" that person was an obstacle, rather than filler. I suppose it happens in every department that there will be people attending the department who do the bare minimum requirements and graduate. But we really noticed those people because with our very small class sizes, and the need to fill various ensembles and study groups with reliable and competent people, somebody who wasn't very familiar with the community, but needed the courses and performance credits to graduate, required extra time and effort from everyone else.
I recall particularly a guy who was in my year, who was very smart, but was more interested in studying economics and business than music (but was triple majoring, seemingly out of vanity). Occasionally someone would be paired with him for some presentation in a high level theory class, and because he was technically passing the courses, but had little interest in the material, that person (once it was me) would end up doing his portion of the work just so that they wouldn't look bad. So in that case it was not just pressure to get a degree, but pressure to get *three*.
Perhaps I'm just an elitist prick, (that's where your quote should start, if you're being uncharitable), but a lot of students entering from junior colleges who were technically third year students ended up retarding the progress of our small classes for people who had been in the same university program for two years already. The system in California that practically guarantees admission to a top school to anyone who can scrape together a 3.0 in a community college always struck me as utterly stupid. I worked my ass off in high school to barely get in the door of a top school, and here were people who had cruised through school with a 2.0 (one guy told me he graduated high school with a 1.8), and then made easy grades at a JC to get into the same classes with me and the other people who had worked for years to get where they were. It never added up, but because it was technically an unimpacted major, and because California had set up this system years ago to accommodate the large numbers of students going to public schools, we had to take people who simply hadn't made the cut the first time, and most of whom, frankly, wouldn't have made the cut the second time, had there been one.
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I'm going to jump in here and espouse what may be a slightly unpopular opinion.
I don't think everyone needs to go to college, but I do think that everyone needs an education equivalent to what a liberal arts degree in the humanities (history, government and or English) gives. Maybe not a full major, but certainly the equivalent of a minor in each. I think our high schools ought to supply this. I'd like to through in philosophy and world religion too, but there is a certain hope that they would be covered in the first three.
The reason for this is that I think that level of knowledge is what is required to intelligently participate in government. To vote smart as it were. I also think that level of knowledge leads to more tolerant, open minded and generally better off people. If you understand where we as a species have been, you have a better understanding of many many things. It may seem like it has no bearing on anyone's immediate trade - but I think it's hugely important just to be a human being and citizen of the world. And definitely to be a voting citizen of one of the most powerful countries in the world.
And also, I don't think gaining that knowledge requires a special level of intelligence. It is possible to teach those subjects as story telling and discussion. Anyone can grasp history, and anyone can learn to write at least decently.
Anyway, that's just my two cents quickly thrown in.
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quote:I don't think everyone needs to go to college, but I do think that everyone needs an education equivalent to what a liberal arts degree in the humanities (history, government and or English) gives. Maybe not a full major, but certainly the equivalent of a minor in each.
I think that everybody should get that, but I don't think that you need to get it while at school.
At the university, once I figured out what I was doing, almost all my energies were applied toward a couple of a "job training" degrees. I watched with envy as my liberal arts friends got to take all the fun classes while I was taking heat transfer and fluid dynamics.
Once I was done with school and had the job I was shooting for, I started my liberal arts education in earnest.
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quote:Once I was done with school and had the job I was shooting for, I started my liberal arts education.
I did and am doing a similar thing. I double majored in Computer Science and Physics while at a liberal arts college. Now that I've graduated and have a job doing computer programming I'm doing a ton of reading about history and government and also reading literature.
But I think we should get that education in high school and not have only those who happen to stumble upon a realization of it's value sometime in the course of their lives have to seek it out.
I understand you can't force an education in any thing on the unwilling and that high schoolers are largely unwilling these days. But I really think that this stuff is very nearly universally interesting when taught right and also necessary for the health of a democracy.
How can you expect someone who has little knowledge of a country's history or even its existing laws to vote for people to write its future?
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quote: I think we should get that education in high school
Honestly, I don't think I would have gotten nearly as much out of such an education in high school. I wasn't ready for it.
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I am all for jumping on the "Any education is good" bandwagon, especially the idea that "any education that you find useful is much better than an bigger education you hate."
But I have one worry about the utility of a vocational education in our economy.
Lets take an example. In the 1980's computers were the key to a rich and rewarding future. Many bright dedicated parents pushed their kids into computer classes in high school. Then as the 90's bloomed those same kids took the all important Computer Programing classes at their community colleges, Universities, and from their friend Mort.
They became experts in programming--in Basic. In Cobol. In Fortran.
Some went after the big bucks and specialized in hardware--especially the big bucks to be made in Main Frame Computers.
As the web came to life, Web Site Design flourished.
As networking became a reality Novell Experts, Unix Wizards, and Certified Microsoft Dos Networking Engineers prepared to take the world by storm.
And all that vocational education is not worth the paper its stored on today.
If the students learned how to learn, if they learned never to rest but always master the new program, the new language, the new software and hardware they might, might, be working today.
That is if their programming job wasn't outsourced to India.
And if they fell behind on their code skills, their education is wasted.
While computers show the largest difficulties in vocational education, it is not the only sphere where voc-ed or on the job training falls short. How many Chevy and Chrysler and Dalco employees, trained to be experts in their manufacturing equipment, are now hoping for a job in food service since their skills are useless? The Air Conditioning classes taken 10 years ago are worthless now that new environmental regulations have changed the way we cool our air. Even the plumbing classes and the long years of toilet plunging experience are outmoded with new water-saving devices.
We must update the adage.
Give some one a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach them to fish and you feed them for a year. Teach them how to learn, and keep learning, how to fish, and you feed them for ever.
And learning how to learn and the importance of learning is all that a Liberal Arts Education is supposed to be about.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:I think we'd do better to have a system similar to what many European nations have, where some are put on a university track, and others on a trades/craft track. I'm nervous about separating people out in high school and forcing them into one life path or another, but it seems foolish to force the idea of college on a large number of students that are obviously never going to go, or will go and fail.
At least in Norway, the vocational track is not a life sentence. There are mechanisms for going back later and doing the pre-college stuff if you want, although I admit I'm slightly hazy on how it works. Note further that Norwegian universities have to take anyone who has what's called "studiekompetanse", basically a passing grade in all the academic subjects. That's not to say that you'll get into the major you want, of course. For med school you need something a bit more competitive. Which is how the sciences end up with a lot of people who wash out in math 101.
I know France has an escape mechanism too, where you can study on your own time and take exams later on in your studies that allow you to switch from the vocational to the university track, but I've heard that it's extremely difficult to do. If such a system were to be taken up in America, I'd like to see some serious discussion of what such an escape mechanism would look like, how difficult it would be to employ, etc.
I think America, just because of how our education system is set up though, would make it very hard to pigeonhole a determined student. It's not like a place like France, where education is more guided over your entire young adult life, rather than like in America where you get dumped after 12th grade to figure it out yourself. I think that nature of the system would make it hard, even for a student who received vocational training in high school, to be stuck without options for university if that's what they truly wanted. That's part of what puts me very much at ease with regards to a two-tiered education system. It'll give a head start for those who need it or want it, and won't close any doors to those who don't wish to pursue those careers.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: That's part of what puts me very much at ease with regards to a two-tiered education system. It'll give a head start for those who need it or want it, and won't close any doors to those who don't wish to pursue those careers.
It would also, I think, help us find ways of eliminating the warehouse mentality that some public schools seem to have- like if a particular student isn't with the college-prep program, they can just kind of become a ghost in a school that's geared towards that, and only that. How do we not recognize when one kid is destined for college, and the other is destined to do something else- especially since these days it seems a college graduate has to compete for the same jobs as people without degrees, if only because there aren't that many jobs out there.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:The reason for this is that I think that level of knowledge is what is required to intelligently participate in government. To vote smart as it were.
I'm sorry, but I see that as a bit elitist and perhaps an attempt to justify a degree that has little or no market value.
Perhaps you can give me some specific examples of what you learned in your history or literature classes that significantly influenced the way you voted in the last election?
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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If that's an open question, I suppose I can add my reply. My studies of literature and history helped me to understand the positions, but more importantly the attitudes of the candidates and their own views of the world as it was reflected through what they wrote and said. I don't know that I would have as easily appreciated Barack Obama's speech on race, for instance, if I had not studied anthropology and the history of colonialism and institutionalized racism in university. I suppose I believe that my training in the analysis of political and sociological arguments helped me to assess whether or not Obama was sincere, and to recognize how he thought. The same was true in reverse for Palin, and to a lesser extent for McCain, both of whom proffered weak and cynically pandering arguments to their constituents, which did not hold up to my own tests of veracity, or sincerity.
That's what I think anyway. It would be easy enough for you to claim all of that as a bias on my part for a particular political ideology.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote: Originally posted by rivka: It is even more true that many high schools are not adequately preparing their students. That doesn't make them dumb -- it makes them ill-prepared.
It was a bit disconcerting today to see a lesson I did with fourth graders was being repeated in a high school class. The lesson was identifying, in a sentence, parts of speech, verb types, subject/predicate, sentence type. Basically, diagramming a sentence without all of the fancy diagramming that used to be done. Then, on the news tonight a segment was being done on education and a short clip showed a high school classroom doing the exact same thing, but with an easier sentence! Yikes.
Posts: 315 | Registered: Dec 2005
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Orincoro, I'm not sure I accurately stated my question. I'm not anti-liberal education. In fact, quite the opposite. My problem is that I think Alcon grossly overstated the necessity of a liberal education for meaningful participation in society.
So let me phrase it this way, do you think its possible for someone to understand the basic racial issues at play in the US without ever haven taken a University level history class? How uncommon would that be?
How common do you suppose it is for some one who has taken a University level history class to fail to understand the basic racial issues in the US?
Do you think its possible for someone to assess the sincerity and reasonability of a candidate without had formal training in argumentation?
Certainly a solid liberal education should improve ones reasoning ability, but liberal education isn't the only way to do that. In fact, the specific content of liberal arts classes is almost irrelevant to good citizenship.
G.W. Bush has a B.A. in History from Yale. Sarah Palin holds a B.A. in Communications from UofI. So its pretty clear that a liberal education is neither sufficient nor necessary for development of critical thinking skills.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:And learning how to learn and the importance of learning is all that a Liberal Arts Education is supposed to be about.
Yes, learning how to learn is far more important than mastering any specific subject matter. My objection is to the assertion that a Liberal Arts Education is a good way to do that. I mean, its a nice assertion and I'm sure it makes people with Liberal Arts degrees feel good, but is it true?
The simple fact is that study after study has found that undergraduate programs in the liberal arts are profoundly unsuccessful in teaching higher order learning skills. Tests of critical think ability show very little improvement between entering freshmen and graduating seniors.
The people I know who've done the best job adapting to the rapidly changing technological world, don't have college degrees at all. They are self taught, which is very likely the best way to develop life long learning skills.
The problem is "teach yourself" isn't a plan for producing a highly competent society. It works for a very small number of unusual individuals.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: G.W. Bush has a B.A. in History from Yale. Sarah Palin holds a B.A. in Communications from UofI. So its pretty clear that a liberal education is neither sufficient nor necessary for development of critical thinking skills.
ba-zing!
Otherwise, what Sala said about diagramming sentences is worse than that. Not once have I been taught anything other than the most basic grammar structures. As a high-school senior in AP English I could not even start to show you how to diagram a sentence.
In reality I probably have learned more about grammar from being ridiculed here on hatrack than in school.
What makes me the most upset about the people in my school is that they are just going to college because there is nothing else they can think of doing. I have been told about how people are "Just apply to all the good ones." When I ask people what they want to go for they normally reply with a version of "I don't know, it's not like I have to know for 2 years anyway."
The kids at my school make me want to just say screw college, but unfortunately I am one of the few people who know what they want to study, and it requires college.
I have been made fun of for the schools I am applying to, because they were "crappy" schools. Apparently crappy means not 50,000$ a year.
Posts: 549 | Registered: Feb 2008
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