Category Archives: Education

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Bachelor Of Arts Degree

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The new high-school diploma:

Obviously, if Beaudry et al right, this is ferociously depressing news. It suggests that we’re pushing more and more people into (more and more expensive) college programs, even as the number of jobs in which they can use those skills has declined. A growing number of students may be in a credentialling arms race to gain access to routine service jobs. Or maybe the productivity of our nation’s wait staff is spiking as more skilled workers flood into these jobs.

And as evidence, McDonald’s is now requiring a college degree to be a cashier. And it’s positively destroying the low-skilled workers. This isn’t going to end well.

[Update on Friday]

OK, so it turns out that the McDonald’s help-wanted ad was erroneous. But the fact that it was believable should concern, and it may in fact be a sign of things to come.

Business, Economics, Education, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

The Corruption Of Once-Liberal Education

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What’s the matter with Vassar?

The students I contacted were angry about the walkout and embarrassed for Vassar. The protesters, on the other hand, tweeted a proud picture with a poster they’d ripped down. These students may fancy themselves courageous, but hiding behind masks and refusing to risk public contradiction by questioning a political opponent is cowardly.

As for the talk itself, you can watch it on video. The walkout comes at about 29 minutes into the tape. You can hear students criticizing the protesters as they leave. (A brief video with a better camera angle on the walkout can be found here.) But the real takeaway from the video is that, agree or disagree, the dreaded Epstein laid out a perfectly reasonable case for the importance of fossil fuels and the dangers of putting the industry that produces them out of business without an economically viable substitute. The notion that a talk like this is out of place at a an institution of higher education is pernicious. If anything, students desperately need to hear Epstein’s side of the story.

I asked Vassar’s administration for a comment on the walkout, the ripping down of ads for the talk, and on the threat by a student to harm himself at the talk as a protest. Acting Vassar College President, Jonathan Chenette has so far addressed only the walkout. Chenette’s statement, forwarded to me by Vassar, emphasizes that Epstein took the walkout in stride (true), yet added that the students who “[exited] rather than engaging” had “lost an opportunity for exchange and questioning.” (I have some serious concerns about this statement, but I’ll raise them when I reproduce the full text in a follow-up post.) My first response to Chenette’s statement is that it won’t do much to address the underlying problems at Vassar, which run deep.

There may be faculty at Vassar who still respect the ideals of liberal education as classically understood. Notwithstanding that, Vassar appears to have passed a tipping point beyond which these ideals no longer meaningfully operate where they’re most needed. Classes filled with courteous and respectful discussion don’t mean much if students dare not raise questions that half the country might ask.

If only the problem were just at Vassar.

And always remember, it’s a right-wing war on science.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obama’s Competency Deficit

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Some thoughts:

This administration has grand ambitions to grow government but little interest in running it. The result, according to polling, is the highest mistrust in government in years. And rightfully so. We’ve willy-nilly added bureaucracy, deepened the debt, perpetuated cronyism, slowed economic entrepreneurialism and gotten few, if any, of the promised benefits.

It’s not exactly a new problem, but more people are starting to notice it. Too bad they didn’t do so a year ago.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

California Dreaming

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Ah, the utopian fantasies of the loony left:

Fittingly, the same day Egan’s hymn was published, the California State Auditor reported the state’s net worth – its assets minus its liabilities – at negative $127.2 billion. Also reported were $167.9 billion in long-term obligations, not including $60 billion in unfunded liabilities for retiree health care, or those for state employees’ future pensions. These are not just “bills.” These are benefits for public employees and services for the poor that won’t be delivered as promised.

California’s public school system, both one of the most expensive and one of the poorest performing in the country, is not improving. The state’s prison system is both so overcrowded and underfunded that the US Supreme Court deemed conditions “cruel and unusual punishment.” And despite 9.8 percent unemployment (tied for highest in the country), tax, regulatory, and zoning policies make blue-collar job creation in manufacturing and real estate development next to impossible.

But other than that, things are great.

Egan and other turquoise dreamers seem to look at tenured teachers, happy prison guards, and fleeced one-percenters and believe conditions are promising enough to move on to romantic dreams of the future. Over the heads of undereducated kids, the chronically unemployed, and the poor, they see a high-speed train zooming along the sparkling coast. This is not how progressives used to think.

What constitutes actual “progress” is, of course, subjective.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Economist’s Climate Alarmism

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Thoughts on their backing off:

…in January, they gave up on the global climate treaty approach, and are now acknowledging the many nuances inherent to climate modeling. This is a sign that the global intellectual and political establishment is gradually distancing itself from the climate radicals and taking a more thoughtful and balanced approach. We also hope it’s a sign that they’re beginning to realize a more fundamental truth about the politics of climate change: that green hysteria and doom-mongering are leading causes of climate skepticism.

I’ve always been appropriately skeptical about the modeling:

I guess I am a denier. Here’s what I deny.

I deny that science is a compendium of knowledge to be ladled out to school children like government-approved pablum (and particularly malnutritious pablum), rather than a systematic method of attaining such knowledge.

I deny that skepticism about anthropogenic climate change is epistemologically equivalent to skepticism about evolution, and I resent the implications that if one is skeptical about the former, one must be similarly skeptical about the latter, and “anti-science.”

As someone who has done complex modeling and computer coding myself, I deny that we understand the complex and chaotic interactions of the atmosphere, oceans and solar and other inputs sufficiently to model them with any confidence into the future, and I deny that it is unreasonable and unscientific to think that those who believe they do have such understanding suffer from hubris. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, extraordinary policy prescriptions require extraordinary evidence.

The world seems to be catching up to me.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Low-Info Hipster Morons Who Voted For Obama

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…learn that elections have consequences:

That mean old company won’t throw extra cash at them so that they can live the New York City lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed! Dear Dudes: Companies are in business to stay in business and employ people. Obamacare regulations are making that increasingly more difficult; the costs are staggering and burdensome. That whole “you can keep your plan” deal? Obama lied.

And anyone with half a brain would have known that. But they’re products of the public educational system, and universities.