Anyone who talks about the ROI of a degree without talking about the type of degree, or the relative value of one school over another, is either profoundly ignorant, or fraudulent. The fact is that there are a lot of degrees for which one would have to be a fool to put themselves deep into undischargeable debt to obtain. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t understand that, and are the most likely to get those worthless degrees.
Category Archives: Education
A Defense Of The Humanities
This is not what Chad Orzel wants.
I think that he misses another point — that what “the humanities” have gotten badly watered down over the decades, since the New Left took over campi, lacking rigor and polluted by all the “studies” majors.
[Afternoon update]
This seems related: Ten questions for Camille Paglia. She is a national treasure.
Climate Skeptics
Are you now, or have you ever been one?
Don’t know why I didn’t make the cut.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: Climategate, and the smearing of Willie Soon:
…the New York Times and other pro-government sources assume that government funding of research is lily-white, while corporate funding is inherently suspect. This is ridiculous. Put aside, for a moment, the fact that the American environmental movement is funded by Russia’s state-controlled oil company. Also the fact that Greenpeace gets money ($203 million) from the American Petroleum Foundation,
with another $214 million coming from the Chamber of Commerce. [This has been reported, but the Chamber says it is not the case.]That isn’t the real scandal. The real scandal is that the overwhelming majority of money spent on climate research comes from governments. Governments, most notably ours, fund climate hysteria to the tune of billions of dollars per year. Why? Because the whole point of global warming alarmism is to persuade voters to cede more control over Western economies to government. (No one actually cares about CO2 emissions from India or China, which together vastly exceed ours.)
Governments fund climate research–but only climate research that feeds alarmism–because they are the main parties in interest in the climate debate. Governments stand to gain trillions of dollars in revenue and unprecedented power if voters in the U.S. and other Western countries can be stampeded into ceding more power to them, based on transparently bad science.
Yup.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Thoughts from Judith Curry:
This is the first time I have been ‘attacked’ in a substantive way for doing my science honestly and speaking up about it. Sure, anonymous bloggers go after me, but I have received no death threats via email, no dead rats delivered to my door step, etc.
I think Grijalva has made a really big mistake in doing this. I am wondering on what authority Grijalva is demanding this information? He is ranking minority member of a committee before which I have never testified. Do his colleagues in the Democratic Party support his actions? Are they worried about backlash from the Republicans, in going after Democrat witnesses?
I don’t think anything good will come of this. I anticipate that Grijalva will not find any kind of an undisclosed fossil fuel smoking gun from any of the seven individuals under investigation. There is already one really bad thing that has come of this – Roger Pielke Jr has stated:
The incessant attacks and smears are effective, no doubt, I have already shifted all of my academic work away from climate issues. I am simply not initiating any new research or papers on the topic and I have ring-fenced my slowly diminishing blogging on the subject. I am a full professor with tenure, so no one need worry about me — I’ll be just fine as there are plenty of interesting, research-able policy issues to occupy my time. But I can’t imagine the message being sent to younger scientists. Actually, I can: “when people are producing work in line with the scientific consensus there’s no reason to go on a witch hunt.”
Punch back twice as hard.
Asians Are Figuring Out The Score
When it comes to discrimination against them in academia, they’re the new Jews.
Blatant Anti-Semitism
…at UCLA.
There is nothing “liberal” about this in any way.
Climate Skeptics
How and when did you become one?
A lot of interesting responses.
As some note there, to me the biggest deal with the release of the CRU data five years ago wasn’t (just) the duplicity and unscientific behavior revealed in the emails, but the utter crap that was the source code of the computer models. It was clear that it was not done by anyone familiar with computer science, numerical methods, or modeling, and the notion that we should have any confidence whatsoever in their output was societally insane. In terms of Matthews’ paper, I’d put myself somewhere between “lukewarmer” and “moderate skeptic.”
[Update a couple minutes later]
Starting to read through the comments. Here’s just one horror story:
Most of the claims being made by climate change advocates appear to run contrary to basic meteorology. As I’ve been attacked personally and professionally for offering contrary views, I decided to leave the field. I will defend my Atmospheric Science PhD thesis and walk away. It’s become clear to me that it is not possible to undertake independent research in any area that touches upon climate change if you have to make your living as a professional scientist on government grant money or have to rely on getting tenure at a university. The massive group think that I have encountered on this topic has cost me my career, many colleagues and has damaged my reputation among the few people I know in the field. I’m leaving to work in the financial industry. It’s a sad day when you feel that you have to leave a field that you are passionately interested in because you fear that you won’t be able to find a job once your views become widely known. Until free thought is allowed in the climate sciences, I will consider myself a skeptic of catastrophic human induced global warming.
Yup. Totally, totally politicized. It’s not a science any more. Unless you think that Lysenko was a scientist.
Scott Walker
…could usefully break the national myth about our “Ivy League elites.”
Actually, it’s only a myth among the self-proclaimed “elites.” I don’t think the country at large has ever bought into it.
The Tulsa Totalitarians
This is outrageous:
Without affording him the hearing he was entitled to under TU’s University Student Conduct Policies & Procedures, and despite his husband’s affidavit, Tanaka found Barnett responsible for “harassment.” Tanaka also found Barnett guilty of retaliation and violating confidentiality requirements for speaking about the disciplinary charges with his husband—who was also his exculpatory witness.
Less than two months before Barnett was set to graduate, Tanaka not only suspended him until at least 2016 but also permanently banned him from receiving a degree in his major even upon his re-enrollment. Barnett was forced to wait two months for TU to respond to his appeal, which the university summarily denied on January 9 without explanation—leaving Barnett unable to earn his theater degree as planned.
I don’t think a theater degree is worth all that much, but he probably paid a lot for it, and he should at a minimum be reimbursed (though one can’t give him back the lost years of his life). But actually, as Glenn notes, this insanity won’t end until universities suffer legal and financial severe pain for it.
Why The Media Hates Scott Walker
They think he has a time machine.
It would be nice if he did. That would be the best way to fix ObamaCare. Of course, the best use of it, at least in the recent past, would be to shove some sticks in the spokes of the 2008 Obama campaign, knowing now what we didn’t know then.
[Update a while later]
“Our most intelligent presidents have often been our worst presidents.” I think it’s a mistake to conflate “intelligence” with amount of “education.” Barack Obama (or Bill Clinton) has never struck me as particularly intelligent, unless by that you mean “cunning.” They’re certainly not wise. But yeah, Wilson was pretty bad, just as Obama is.
Scott Walker Didn’t Finish College
And…?
I, for one, am glad Howard Dean went to medical school before becoming a doctor. But most liberal arts degrees are overrated as a precondition for success and they are indisputably overpriced — hence the current student loan crisis. In the Internet era, there are many, many new ways to become educated. This sudden suspicion of Scott Walker seems a product of the fact that higher education is a world that liberals control utterly, and the entire economic model supporting it is on the verge of collapse.
Also, it seems to be the only “dirt” they can find on him.
If you think that a college degree is a critical requirement to be president, you're likely an overcredentialed fool.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) February 13, 2015
@robfit If there was any serious dirt on Walker, the public-employee unions would have found it years ago. @chasrmartin
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) February 12, 2015