?I want to take up another angle on the following point made by Chris Green in response to Mike Palij's 25 May posting on higher education: >I really do wish that kids not interested in learning >(episteme, not techne or doxa) would find something >else to do instead of going to college. I don't think they >should stay away forever. I just think that there is no >reason that, at the age of 18, everyone is magically >ready for what colleges, at their best, have to offer. (And >some will never be ready for, or even interested, in that.)
Here is the relevant sentence from the New York Times article that Mike quoted before commenting adversely on one of the names among the group in question: >A small but influential group of economists and educators is >pushing another pathway: for some students, no college at all. Shock, horror! Some students may not be suited to college study, and another pathway may be more relevant for them. Mike failed to mention that the following sentence reads: "It’s time, they say, to develop credible alternatives for students unlikely to be successful pursuing a higher degree, or who may not be ready to do so." And further: "They would steer some students toward intensive, short-term vocational and career training, through expanded high school programs and corporate apprenticeships. This was exemplified by: "While no country has a perfect model for such programs, Professor Lerman pointed to a modest study of a German effort done last summer by an intern from that country. She found that of those who passed the Abitur, the exam that allows some Germans to attend college for almost no tuition, 40 percent chose to go into apprenticeships in trades, accounting, sales management, and computers." Mike, apparently, is less interested in whether this is a sensible position (which to my mind it is, in fact eminently so) than in the political colour of those proposing it. For Mike, it seems, it suffices that the advocates are conservative in their political views: >One name that I easily recognize in the list provided in the article >is that "political scientist Charles Murray" though he is not identified >as being co-author of the book "The Bell Curve" nor as a "scholar" >at the conservative American Enterprise Institute; see: >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute Moreover, from the way Mike presents it seems he takes it for granted that TIPSters will be of a similar mind to his on the item in question – just mention a name and/or an organisation and we're agin it. This brings to mind Scott Lilienfeld's thoughtful posting on 24 March this year in which he alluded to a what he saw as "as a (fairly clear-cut) shade of liberal groupthink on this listserv", and added: "What routinely surprises me about many of my academic friends is not their liberalism (I once was extremely liberal myself), but by their apparent lack of awareness of thoughtful arguments on the other side. I read the New York Times and watch MSNBC quite regularly, but I also listen to and read thoughtful conservatives. It's an interesting and at times confusing exercise, but I can assure you that there are plenty of extremely bright and fairminded conservative thinkers out there, like Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Sowell, and even Dennis Prager and Bill Bennett (both of whom I often disagree with, but are worth listening too) who have plenty to bring to the table (interestingly, fellow skeptic Michael Shermer also listens regularly to these folks). American conservatism is a lot more than Fox News, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh, although the loudest and often shallowest voices understandably tend to get the most attention." Back to the proposal discussed above: Unlike Mike, Chris treated it on its merits, in the light of his own considerable experience in higher education. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [email protected] http://www.esterson.org --------------------------------------------------------- RE: [tips] How to lie with statistics.... a current example Lilienfeld, Scott O Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:51:33 -0700 I'm extremely reluctant to enter into a debate about politics on this listserv, but I have to say that I'm quite surprised by the quite defensive reaction to what I thought was a quite obvious observation. Incidentally, I don't necessarily share the view that universities are "too liberal" - but I do agree with critics that there in many academic departments, there is often an insufficient appreciation of alternative viewpoints, at times verging on groupthink. I was merely reacting to what I saw as a (fairly clear-cut) shade of liberal groupthink on this listserv (in the interests of full disclosure, I am not a political conservative by any means, but my politics are probably closest to that of a moderate to conservative Democrat in the U.S., which puts me decidedly at the conservative end of the spectrum in my department). [...] What routinely surprises me about many of my academic friends is not their liberalism (I once was extremely liberal myself), but by their apparent lack of awareness of thoughtful arguments on the other side. I read the New York Times and watch MSNBC quite regularly, but I also listen to and read thoughtful conservatives. It's an interesting and at times confusing exercise, but I can assure you that there are plenty of extremely bright and fairminded conservative thinkers out,there, like Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Sowell, and even Dennis Prager and Bill Bennett (both of whom I often disagree with, but are worth listening too) who have plenty to bring to the table (interestingly, fellow skeptic Michael Shermer also listens regularly to these folks). American conservatism is a lot more than Fox News, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh, although the loudest and often shallowest voices understandably tend to get the most attention. So my plea is merely to recognize that the political.economic issues here -as they so often are - are a heck of a lot more complicated than we might think, and that we should calibrate our confidence levels accordingly. I've now used up my quota of messages for the day, so will look forward to seeing the debates continue. All the best... ...Scott ------------------------------------------------ On 15 May 2010 Mike Palij wrote: Consider Plan C: Go Gangsta (was re: [tips] Plan B - Skip College - NYTimes.com Mike Palij Sat, 15 May 2010 10:45:28 -0700 On Sat, 15 May 2010 09:07:45 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrote: >"Perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor's >degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six >years.... And what conclusion should we draw from this? Before one answers, make sure that one is aware of the parenthetical statement in the article: |(The figures don’t include transfer students, who aren’t tracked.) So, are we to assume that all transfer students fail to graduate as well? Also implicit in the statement above is that the baseline for graduation should be some other number, maybe 100% but in reality, has college graduation rates ever been 100%? Historical comparisons of rates is problematic because those going to college has become much more diverse prior to, say, 1950 at which point U.S. citizens made use of the G.I. Bill to go to college. So, what is the a credible baseline to compare the the figure presented above? Moreover, it is likely that this overall figure is seriously misleading because it assumes that there are no differences in graduation rates on the basis of gender, race/ethnic group, whether one is the first person in one's family to go to college, SES and financial status, and a number of other variables known to affect retention in college. The situation is complicated and, I believe, the argument presented here is simplistic and ultimately spurious, motivated by nefarious intent though appealing to some who simply respond to the statements without much thought, much like the Tea Partyers who shout that the U.S. federal government should stay away from healthcare but also shout for the federal government to stay out of Medicare (apparently not being aware that Medicare is a federal healthcare program). >A small but influential group of economists and educators is >pushing another pathway: for some students, no college at all. One name that I easily recognize in the list provided in the article is that "political scientist Charles Murray" though he is not identified as being co-author of the book "The Bell Curve" nor as a "scholar" at the conservative American Enterprise Institute; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute >It's time, they say, to develop credible alternatives for students unlikely >to be successful pursuing a higher degree, or who may not be ready to do >so." > http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/weekinreview/16steinberg.html?hp This is a curious article and I would point out that one should also take a look at the comments to the article which can be found here: http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/is-college-for-everyone/ I say curious because this article seems to be a re-hash of an article published last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education; see: http://chronicle.com/article/Are-Too-Many-Students-Going-to/49039/ A Google search of the leading characters here seems to show that they have been flogging this dead horse for a while. I'll leave it to the interested reader to find them. It seems to me that too many conservatives advocate this viewpoint and I'm sure that it is on purely rational grounds and has nothing to do with being racist, elitist, socially dominant, and working in support of "The Man". >I say: Hear! Hear! Given the number of college students I see who lack >the interest or discipline to benefit much from higher education, I see >no reason they shouldn't do something else instead (like work), at least >for a while, until they feel a need for more "life of the mind." It will >suit them better and it will make schools better (not having to >constantly entertain those who don't really want to be there in the >first place). You're entitled to your opinion, Chris, but, historically, haven't teachers made one form or another of this complaint over the millenia? I can't recall the reference but didn't Socrates or one of the Greek philisophers complain about the lack of seriousness in the studies of his students? >Making higher ed "accessible" is great. Making it a "requirement" is >somewhere between pointless and a disaster. Nobody makes it a requirement though parents may have been sold on the idea that the only way that their kids will do better than they did economically is by going to college, you know, all that "people who go to college make more money" crap. Of course, if they read about the education backgrounds of the richest people in the world, they'd realize higher education has little to do with it, unless like Bill Gates, dropping out of college is somehow as prerequisite for becoming the richest man on the planet. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --------------------------------------- From: Christopher D. Green <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Consider Plan C: Go Gangsta (was re: Plan B - Skip College - NYTimes.com Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 19:06:12 -0400 I can always depend on Mike to have something obnoxious to say when I post. It has really become so clockwork that I hardly notice it now. It usually amounts (as below) to his placing the worst possible construction on something I have said, and then knocking down the very straw man he has erected. Huzzah! Mostly I ignore it, but this time I'll give a brief response (to which he will almost certainly apply the same treatment, but I will try very hard to ignore that one.) (1) I noticed Charles Murray (and was somewhat concerned by it). (2) It did, indeed, occur to me that this was a conservative plot to re-institute racist, classist, sexist, pick your favorite -ist structures in the college system (which I would not want to be associated with, despite Mike's suggestion to the contrary). (3) What seemed important, however, was not the source from which it emanated but, rather, the problem it identified, which is that, somewhere along the line, we decided that everyone should go to college. (It was not so much parents, Mike, as businesses deciding they would hire only BAs as a way of "externalizing" their training costs. There was a lot of happy talk, at the time of this change, about how widespread college education would producing a better informed, more thoughtful citizenry, but I can't imagine that there are still very many people who believe that this particular part of the plan worked out terribly well. (4) I really do wish that kids not interested in learning (episteme, not techne or doxa) would find something else to do instead of going to college. I don't think they should stay away forever. I just think that there is no reason that, at the age of 18, everyone is magically ready for what colleges, at their best, have to offer. (And some will never be ready for, or even interested, in that.) Let them come when they want it, and will work for it. It is true that complaints like this have come from professors forever but (a) that doesn't mean they are wrong and (b) the difficulties faced now are orders of magnitude larger now than they were back when, say, there would only a couple of dozen universities scattered across Europe, each with only a couple dozen faculty members. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=2660 or send a blank email to leave-2660-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
