Maggie's Farm

“We don’t so much have higher education, as merely longer education.”

Steve Balch, via Phi Beta Cons

From Why Asian Students Are So Important on Campus:

Despite the alleged benefits of "diversity" in the American educational system, in the actual behavior of pre-adolescents and adolescents, diversity does not appear to be the most important characteristic that youngsters themselves use in their choice of friends and companions. If you observe college students walking, eating or choosing where to sit in a large lecture hall, you are far more likely to see males with other males and females with other females, blacks sitting with blacks and Asians with other Asians. But Asians, despite their reputation for remaining aloof on campuses, seem good at finding commonalities based on shared interests. They are visible, not segregated in Asian enclaves by prejudice against them or by choosing friends exclusively from their own ethnic group, and they excel, on the average, on academic accomplishments.  It is almost inevitable for them to be role models for less academically single-minded students to emulate.

The comment section is good: The Stereotypes About Math That Hold Americans Back

I see no reason to accept the author's assertion that math education in the US is broken:

We need to change the way we teach math in the U.S., and it is for this reason that I support the move to Common Core mathematics. The new curriculum standards that are currently being rolled out in 45 states do not incorporate all the changes that this country needs, by any means, but they are a necessary step in the right direction.

What do readers think? What was Isaac Newton's math education like?

Over the past decade or two, the marketing of higher ed has been to sell it as a financial investment. Of course, financial investments are about supply and demand, and when the supply goes up and demand goes down, the proud grads with their marketing-inflated grades are SOL.

What is the economic value of a college degree today?

If they want to market higher ed to the masses, they need to either market as adolescent sex resorts as Club Ed, or as an opportunity be become a citizen who is more deeply rooted in their culture. I suspect the former, "the college experience", sells better to the youth.

As I think about it, there's also the social angle (non-college grads like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan have trouble getting invitations to the nice parties and clubs) -  and also the networking angle, but that mainly works well for high-prestige and high-visibility schools: Ivy League, Little Ivies, Big Ten, UT, MIT, Va. Tech, and so forth but many other colleges have established very tight networking for their grads. I'm thinking of USC, Connecticut College, Georgetown, Kenyon, and there are plenty of others where loyal alumni will do anything to help grads find a career track they want.

Just the euphemism "unprepared" exposes the college diploma fraud that is sold to so many American kids and families. As I have asserted many times, if you can't handle calculus, statistics, college physics, Econ, Plato, and Thomas Aquinus, you do not belong in a serious 4-year college.

There are immense other learning opportunities in the US for anybody who wants them, for motivated scholars. Public libraries, for one example. They do not close at 5 pm. Useful community colleges have sprung up all over America to provide some of the basic and remedial education that was not done in government high schools, and to teach practical skills that used to be learned in apprenticeships or on the job.

"Unprepared" is a euphemism for unmotivated, uninterested, or unable for personality or intelligence reasons. Not everybody can play in the NFL either.

Remember the shocking reality that half of Americans have below-average IQs. College curricula have been aimed at well-above average IQ and well-above average curiosity and self-motivation levels. Some "experts" opine that only 5% of a population are really able and interested in the demands of traditional and rigorous higher ed.  I'm willing to admit that, of that 5-10%, only about half would be motivated to self-educate without the structure of a school. That's simple lazy human nature.

Were I (God forbid) a college admissions officer, one thing I would care about is what the applicant learned outside of school on their own initiative. As I have often said, learning is not something that is delivered, it is something that is taken. You can lead a horse to water, etc. Even the "worst" schools, whatever that means, offer huge opportunities for anyone who wants them. Teachers want nothing more than motivated, capable, and respectful kids, and will respond to them. Yes, even unionized teachers.

People can dumb higher ed down all they want to fill seats, collect tuition, etc., but it doesn't mean a thing anymore.

Anyway, this prof gives a dismaying report from the front lines of higher ed today.

Somebody commented recently that we should be grateful that our founding fathers were all home-schooled.

The Common Core Rabbit Hole

I have mixed feelings about this general topic, but I conclude, at the end, that the federal government has no business in local education. Not in their job description. It always seems to me that, the more jobs they take on, the more costly failures occur.

In this case, the kids did not want to hear Charles Murray. Seems like they did not want to hear fresh ideas. Fresh, thought-provoking ideas are threatening.

If you do not want to hear new viewpoints and new information, what are you doing in school? Murray is always interesting, because he is one smart dude who just follows his data wherever it leads. I have no doubt that he is smarter than those arrogant students. As with Sen. Moynihan, it was data that led Murray from Lefty to Centrist.

To learn, one must become humble because new ideas and new information disrupt comfortable biases. Disruption of biases is uncomfortable.

Yesterday we had a post by Bulldog about colleges as teen fun 'n sex resorts. By coincidence, this morning I chatted with a dad whose daughter is applying to college. She only willing to consider a college with a major football or basketball team, modern dorms with pool,  sauna, and work-out room, and which offers a major in pre-school education. Plus she wants to go out of state to "be independent."

Would "the college experience" cost any more or less without the "education"?

She has high grades but mediocre SAT scores. Clearly the slick college marketing has captured her attention. She wants to try out for cheerleader.

I've been reading Edmund Wilson's A Prelude: Landscapes, Characters & Conversations from the Earlier Years of My Life. Wilson had the real, old-time "college experience," investing himself in a rigorous and vigorous life of the mind at prep school and at Princeton (advanced math, Greek, Latin, French, and his own literary and intellectual pursuits and interests on the side) while inhabiting spartan quarters and making many lifelong relationships.

He writes with such relaxed clarity and innocence that even his musings about aunts and uncles are a delight.

Over the years, higher ed has morphed into a job credential. Whites are more dubious than minorities that a college degree puts graduates on the path to success.

 "The job market is so awful now, and people don't take you seriously with anything less," said Linda Ahlskog, a part-Hispanic graphic-design student in Natchitoches, La. Jordan Machado, a Hispanic from Cypress, Calif., who runs his own business, said he would "support" his daughter if she decided to join the military or learn a trade, but "especially nowadays … in order to get that middle-class money, you need to have that degree." Even Parkinson, the Ohio electrician, although skeptical of the four-year commitment, is working to complete a two-year degree. "I'm more than halfway there, I might as well get it. It never hurts to get an education or degree, but as far as going to a four-year college and taking on major debt, you might not have a job when you get done. I wouldn't do it."

Few of our readers will recall Mario Savio and the (brief) Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. Savio was a Lefty of sorts, but he thought people ought to express their opinions.

In these times, higher ed (and lower ed) reveal ongoing discomfort with dissent and dissenting expression from the bien pensant party line:

The slow death of free speech at Harvard

Even Savio would hate this trend:  Brown U. Students Can’t Handle Free Speech

What is the matter with these people?

Look at this kerfuffle, as Althouse would term it: "The Badger Herald printed a letter from a political science junior titled, 'Rape Culture Does Not Exist.'"

A "rape culture" in America? I don't think so. For starters, it's a felony and I'd guess 100% of Americans think it should be. The letter-writer is right, of course.

Stop Subsidizing Colleges’ 100-Year Debt Binge:

The Barack Obama administration and Congress purport to care about the rising costs of college. Yet the government’s policies are only fueling the higher-education arms race.

What does a "degree" mean nowadays? Nothing.

That is why we do multiple tough, searching interviews of job applicants. We want to know what they know, what they can do, and we want to know whether we would enjoy and be stimulated by their company around ye olde shoppe.

If you can't discuss Plato, Michelangelo, de Toqueville, and Statistics, and display some witty sense of humor and perfect manners, we lose interest fast unless it's a drudgery job.

Some good news, for once: College President Defends Free Speech

People have to draw a line against PC academic bullying. Sometimes it sounds just like the Inquisition. 

Is this the new new math?

‘Reform math’ (aka ‘rainforest math’): Replacing what has worked for centuries with what sounds good to bureaucrats?

From Higher Education: The Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong:

 Individuals with a lot of intelligence and drive are, overwhelmingly, drawn to college, but it is their intelligence and drive that brings about their later success, not the fact that they passed enough courses to get the credits necessary for a degree. John Mackey of Whole Foods, for example, took a number of college courses before dropping out to concentrate on his business. He would be no more successful if he had earned his degree, or less successful if he hadn’t ever taken a single course.

On the other hand, we lure great numbers of young Americans into college these days with the idea that by getting their degree, they’ll enjoy a large earnings boost. A figure that is often, carelessly thrown around is the million dollar earnings premium for college grads.\

The problem is that, increasingly, high school graduates do not have even the most basic academic tools – they don’t read well, don’t write well, and can’t do basic math – and also expect that college will be like high school, only more fun. Any increase in college enrollment will overwhelmingly come from such academically marginal students. Going to college rarely transforms those disengaged kids into highly productive adults.

From the article by Ron Paul:

The goal of academic regulation is to limit the supply of schools that compete against public schools. This is done in the name of guaranteeing the educational quality of the school, thereby protecting the students. Yet the academic performance of the public schools continues to decline, and has done so since the early 1960s. The scores on the SAT and ACT exams continue to fall. The high point was in the early 1960s. So, regulation has not been successful in guaranteeing the quality of education. But it has been quite successful in restricting entry into the field of education.

They are confused about what to do about sex, Obsessed with it. Clearly, homosexuality is nurtured, but what about heterosexual interests?

 “We are working with the fraternity on a multifaceted remedy that will require training and other measures be successfully completed before the fraternity can resume its recruitment efforts or host social events to ensure that our values are upheld, and that such a situation will not recur,” Liliana Rodriguez, associate dean at Swarthmore, told The Huffington Post on Wednesday.

"Their values"? This is the college with a co-ed nude masturbation club. That's higher ed in the USA. However, the "training and other measures" sounds like S & M fun. I think this lady dean has whips in her closet. That sounds more exciting than Physical Chemistry but perhaps at Swarthmore they might find a way to call it physical chemistry.

You know that painting. I don't need to tell you or any Swarthmore kid.

"Gilmour’s off-hand statements highlighted not misogynist tyranny but the
lockdown by academic feminism on even the most flippant and marginal
deviations from the correct line."

Having lost faith in the discipline they are (over) paid to teach, literature instructors have enthusiastically embraced their roles as the guardians of progressive pieties about women and the Chinese.

This is not to suggest that Gilmour himself is any kind of resistance hero. He has long since apologized for his remarks and will almost certainly never make any such again.

Mau-mauing works. Even tough guys like male profs of literature are intimidated.

Why tough teachers get good results and why it’s time to revive old-fashioned education.

Ditto to that.

Sol Stern explains education wonk Ravitch's dramatic change of heart.

Now she thinks school choice is a capitalist plot.

Yale Prof and Maggie's hero David Gelernter: Back To School - A reclamation project for higher ed.

He wants more conservatives involved with higher ed, but nobody even knows what higher ed means anymore, much less a Yale prof. It can mean anything, but most of what it can mean nowadays is a lot of money for a useless piece of paper.

Just back from an extra-long weekend around my old haunts in Oxford (UK). Same old, same old, and tourist-free in September.

But here in the USA, we have New! Improved! Education’s shiny toy syndrome.

A while ago, I mentioned how my math education was almost destroyed by New Math. Even my math teachers didn't get the point of it even though they were required to teach it. Base Nine. Base 11?  WTF? I am not an Einstein and do not need my math deconstructed. Base 10 is plenty enough to keep my brain challenged.

Once I recovered from the now-discarded New Math (it took me 3 years), I was fine. One regret I have with my career, among others, is that it does not require any sophisticated math. I still believe that the Calculus is a beautiful gift from God and the real shiny toy of education.

And statistics remain a perfect tool to fool juries with no math knowledge.

The article is here.

My guess that the decline in the average is due to more "unprepared" kids taking the exam, dragging the average down.