Idiocracy USA?

[cronus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20154358

Downward mobility haunts US education

An integral part of the American Dream is under threat - as "downward mobility" seems to be threatening the education system in the United States.

The idea of going to college - and the expectation that the next generation will be better educated and more prosperous than its predecessor - has been hardwired into the ambitions of the middle classes in the United States.

But there are deep-seated worries about whether this upward mobility is going into reverse.

Andreas Schleicher, special adviser on education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), says the US is now the only major economy in the world where the younger generation is not going to be better educated than the older.

"It's something of great significance because much of today's economic power of the United States rests on a very high degree of adult skills - and that is now at risk," says Mr Schleicher.

"These skills are the engine of the US economy and the engine is stuttering," says Mr Schleicher, one of the world's most influential experts on international education comparisons.

(continued)

[JimC]

No empire lasts forever...

Yesterday, calculus...

Tomorrow, adding and subtracting (but not too big a number, please, it might cause angst...)

[devogue]

I blame MTV.

[pErvinalia]

....the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)....

Marxists. Just ask Seth.

[Gerald McGrew]

When you have a two party system, and one of those parties decries higher education while simultaneously taking action to make it less affordable, you end up with what the OP describes.

[Gerald McGrew]

Downplaying education apparently ensures the next generation of Republican voters...

Republicans not handling election results well

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.

[Warren Dew]

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "Well, let me say this: The President has been absolutely clear, as have I, that rates have to go up on top earners -- millionaires and billionaires -- everyone making over $250,000.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2 ... on-Wealthy

A billion, a million, $250,000 ... what's the difference?

[pErvinalia]

If you make over $250,000 you can easily afford it.

[mozg]

I'm sure this viewpoint will be unpopular, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Not everyone should go to college.

The idea that success only comes from having a college degree has quite a few negative effects.

It increases the cost of a college education by driving up demand for seats in universities.
It means universities are also accepting people who in the past wouldn't have been qualified for admission.
]It leads to a job market in which employers want an expensive four-year degree for jobs where such a degree isn't strictly necessary.
]It results in a societal expectation that every person with a college degree will also get a lucrative white collar job upon graduation.
It warps the definition of success by implying that only those with college degrees are successful.

Who is more successful: the person with the college degree who's folding sweaters at Bloomingdale's or the person without the college degree who did the electrical wiring for the shopping center?

[Woodbutcher]

I'm sure this viewpoint will be unpopular, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Not everyone should go to college.

The idea that success only comes from having a college degree has quite a few negative effects.

It increases the cost of a college education by driving up demand for seats in universities.
It means universities are also accepting people who in the past wouldn't have been qualified for admission.
]It leads to a job market in which employers want an expensive four-year degree for jobs where such a degree isn't strictly necessary.
]It results in a societal expectation that every person with a college degree will also get a lucrative white collar job upon graduation.
It warps the definition of success by implying that only those with college degrees are successful.

Who is more successful: the person with the college degree who's folding sweaters at Bloomingdale's or the person without the college degree who did the electrical wiring for the shopping center?

Speaking as a lifelong carpenter with a bachelor's degree I wholeheartedly agree with you. While I think that it is important to get kids interested in trades, I also think that people who do go into trades should not be dumb. It used to be that if you could not excel academically you were steered into trades. That was often a big mistake, because that created stupid tradesmen.

[Coito ergo sum]

I agree with mozg and Woodbutcher.

I will add, politically incorrectly, that probably most college educations today are giant wastes of money.

12 credits a semester is now the norm, and dopey degrees abound -- Georgetown University offers a degree in Star Trek. And, huge numbers of college students take lame-ass degrees learning nothing important.

Then, they graduate without any sense of what it means to earn a living or do a hard day's work, and they avoid difficult classes like the maths, sciences and classical liberal arts studies.

[Gerald McGrew]

I'm sure this viewpoint will be unpopular, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Not everyone should go to college.

Sure, but there's a difference between "College isn't for everyone" and making anti-intellectualism and anti-education your ideology and part of your party's identity.

[JimC]

I'm sure this viewpoint will be unpopular, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Not everyone should go to college.

The idea that success only comes from having a college degree has quite a few negative effects.

It increases the cost of a college education by driving up demand for seats in universities.
It means universities are also accepting people who in the past wouldn't have been qualified for admission.
]It leads to a job market in which employers want an expensive four-year degree for jobs where such a degree isn't strictly necessary.
]It results in a societal expectation that every person with a college degree will also get a lucrative white collar job upon graduation.
It warps the definition of success by implying that only those with college degrees are successful.

Who is more successful: the person with the college degree who's folding sweaters at Bloomingdale's or the person without the college degree who did the electrical wiring for the shopping center?

Our secondary school has a large attached trade centre, with facilities for serious training in carpentry, construction and electrical work. In the last 2 years of secondary school, an increasing number of our students find that (along with an apprenticeship) an attractive pathway, rather than our standard VCE, which prepares for university. I'm very glad we have this centre; it helps to fit the right shaped peg into the right shaped hole...

[Seth]

I'm sure this viewpoint will be unpopular, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Not everyone should go to college.

I agree. In fact most people should NOT go to college, as they are unqualified and unprepared to take full advantage of a college degree, which should be reserved for the best and brightest who have the drive and determination to excel at college and turn that education into economically and socially beneficial work.

The idea that success only comes from having a college degree has quite a few negative effects.

Sure does

It increases the cost of a college education by driving up demand for seats in universities.

Yup. Pure free market economics. The looser the admission requirements become, the greater the demand on the available resources, and the higher the price. Also, government subsidies directly and enormously inflate the cost of a college education because colleges pay close attention to how much money students can get in loans and they tailor their fees and tuition so as to take maximum advantage of the government subsidy as essentially a pass-through from government directly to the school, and they, as any seller of a product does, try to minimize the overhead by providing an inferior education through the cutting of corners on faculty, staff and facilities.

It means universities are also accepting people who in the past wouldn't have been qualified for admission.

Yup. They accept any warm body that can qualify for a student loan and don't give a fuck if they succeed or not, they just want the government subsidy money.

If colleges and universities actually had to COMPETE in the free market for students by providing the very best possible education for the very lowest possible amount of money because government was NOT subsidizing student loans, there would be fewer colleges, fewer college students, and a higher class and better educated output from the programs because when a student has to pay for their education all ON THEIR OWN DIME they are going to demand the highest quality education they can get. The whole phenomenon of government-subsidized colleges is all about the colleges sucking at the public teat and vying for taxpayer largess.

That's why a "physician" educated in Russia or Ukraine (which appears to be about every third person if Match.com and the Russian dating sites are to be believed) cannot practice medicine in the US without many more years of medical school. "Free" public higher education has just lead to a dumbing-down of the curricula so that the state universities can successfully graduate people even though they are unqualified to receive a degree (and will not receive one that any credible business will recognize anyway) just so that they can employ idiots as faculty and make grand promises of a "state-sponsored education" as a propaganda tool.

It leads to a job market in which employers want an expensive four-year degree for jobs where such a degree isn't strictly necessary.

...using the theory that a college graduate might actually be able to spell and construct a cogent and logical sentence after four years of remedial education for the primary education foisted off on them by the Marxist teacher's unions.

Sadly, even that's a unrealistic expectation these days, as many college students with degrees are still functionally illiterate, and far less literate than a fifth-grader in 1890, who at least learned his or her multiplication tables by rote and was required to express proper grammar and spelling.

It results in a societal expectation that every person with a college degree will also get a lucrative white collar job upon graduation.

Yup, an unrealistic societal expectation that leads to discontent, dissatisfaction and reduced productivity because the worker is "overqualified" for the ditch digging or burger flipping job that's available. Why anyone with a degree would admit to having a degree when applying for work at McDonalds to keep on eating is beyond me. Much better to claim to be a ditch-digger or car-wash attendant.

It warps the definition of success by implying that only those with college degrees are successful.

Yup.

Who is more successful: the person with the college degree who's folding sweaters at Bloomingdale's or the person without the college degree who did the electrical wiring for the shopping center?

My idol is Bill Gates, who has no college degree and is now one of the richest men in the world because he had what college cannot teach: entrepreneurial drive and dedication to success.

We'd be far, far better off dumping the property tax support for primary schools and ALL subsidies for college and institute taxes on businesses and corporations to pay for primary education and then a massive expansion of vocational training after high-school.

Business, after all, is who wants educated and skilled employees, so business should pay for the primary schools and vocational and trade-school training to meet their employment needs, while college should be reserved for those who have the intelligence, drive and desire to make proper use of an advanced education who are either willing to pay for it themselves (thus giving them better motivation to succeed) or by convincing some employer of their potential and winning a scholarship from that business.

The world needs electricians, plumbers, welders, ditch-diggers and potato pickers, and someone with a college degree isn't going to be happy doing any of those trades...which is why Wendy's doesn't hire out-of-work PhD.'s.

Somebody's got to flip the burgers and pick up the trash.

[Seth]

Downplaying education apparently ensures the next generation of Republican voters...

Republicans not handling election results well

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.

Except of course it still DOES exist, under a different set of names.