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income inequality debate

Roadblock teachers are largely a myth propagated by conservatives. Also there is plenty of choice. Both are conservative constructions.

This is good to know. I'll let everyone in failing school districts know that if they don't like their failing public school, they still have to keep their failing public school. They'll get no choice and like it, then? Prosperity here we come...

Wait, not so fast. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/1-4-americans-25-54-not-working_806178.html They must not have heard that the schools are fine and preparing them for today's competitive economic climate.
 
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All those standardized tests aren't preparing people for the workforce?

Who knew?
 
All those standardized tests aren't preparing people for the workforce?

Who knew?

And neither are curricula chocked full of victim's studies. Weird.

It's borderline mental illness to claim that conservatives have a stranglehold on academia. No, you guys have screwed that one up all on your own. Take responsibility for something.
 
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jhmd in his moderate wisdom would completely ignore the most needy children in the country to focus on the middle and upper class children who would have, for the most part, been perfectly ok without his help.
 
And neither are curricula chocked full of victim's studies. Weird.

It's borderline mental illness to claim that conservatives have a stranglehold on academia. No, you guys have screwed that one up all on your own. Take responsibility for something.

"Victim's studies" aren't useful for understanding 25% unemployment you believe isn't caused by the unemployed themselves thus making them victims.

Not much logic there.
 
"Victim's studies" aren't useful for understanding 25% unemployment you believe isn't caused by the unemployed themselves thus making them victims.

Not much logic there.

What is the job placement rate for graduates with an identity studies degree? How does it compare to say, computer science?
 
Higher than someone without a bachelors degree.
 
Higher than someone without a bachelors degree.

*slow clap*

P.S. I'm being a jerk about this for a couple of reasons. First, I'm a jerk. That's what we do. Second and more benevolently, what you guys on the left have been hustling for about the last thirty years has a zero to less than zero track record of ever actually working. If somebody told me they wanted to charge me $40,000.00 a year for a high school graduate to go to learn something other than engineering or I.T. in 2014, my first question would be, why? There wouldn't be a second question. If I sent my kid into the labor market or the military, they would learn something useful. Can you explain to me the purpose of an undergraduate degree in something other than a hard science in 2014? Try to talk over India's audible laughter. How many tens of thousands of unprepared kids do you push out into the labor market $100,000 in debt and steeped in the tradition of blaming other people for your own problems until you cease being the party that actually cares about young people and income inequality? If you like income inequality, keep that up.

Inside the bottom of my cold, shrinking, conservative heart, I can't help shake the notion that we should be doing more for our young people that they are getting for their nondischargeable tuition dollars. Lessons that might actually be useful, and stuff.

eta: Food for thought: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/opinion/why-poor-students-struggle.html?_r=0
 
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accounting/business and some other majors, but I agree with your point in general.
 
First, I don't know what you mean by "your party." I, clearly, am a moderate.

Second, Mitt Romney wouldn't have had to learn about economic growth on the job. He had more private sector executive experience than Senator/3 Obama, and he had more public sector executive experience than Senator/3 Obama. He wasn't a very good speaker, though.

Third, interesting moral high ground on helping the poor. How are the poor doing in major Democrat strongholds like Detroit? Atlanta? Chicago? New Orleans? DC? Do you have any evidence that your policies actually---what's the word---work? I've heard the self-serving soundbytes. Show me some evidence. I'll show you a cratered black family structure, unsustainable entitlement programs on crash courses with insolvency and a widening wealth disparity.

eta: Fourth, your party pays an awful lot of lip service about education and caring about families. Why don't you trust the family in the failing public school district with the power to make a better choice when your beloved public education superstructure continues to fail them? Who do the schools belong to, anyway?

1. well played
2. Mitt Romney's school reform plan: con a bunch of investors into investing in a school, run the school a muck, declare bankruptcy, profit.
3. jhmd: There are still poor people=program failure
4. All the talk about trusting someone to make a good choice sounds wonderful. It really is brilliant branding of the GOP plan to kill public education and funnel it to private entities. I believe there is a thread on this topic now. It goes right along with buzzwords like "accountability" that using conservative definitions of these words are qutie successful in that they extremely detrimental to providing a quality education.
 
Third, interesting moral high ground on helping the poor. How are the poor doing in major Democrat strongholds like Detroit? Atlanta? Chicago? New Orleans? DC? Do you have any evidence that your policies actually---what's the word---work? I've heard the self-serving soundbytes. Show me some evidence. I'll show you a cratered black family structure, unsustainable entitlement programs on crash courses with insolvency and a widening wealth disparity.

Perhaps you should look at it this way: there are still poor people and we have had 30 years of trickle down BS. Instead of things getting better, they are getting worse. You love to blame it on dependency (another great example of GOP branding because dependency=addiction=scary), but just maybe the problem is with the structure of our economic system and not with the so-called 47% moocher class.
 
Employers are hiring social science and humanities graduates at a higher rate than people without bachelors degrees. They're just suffering from the wage stagnation that all workers are suffering from.

Ask employers why they'd rather hire a UNC English BA grad rather than a kid with a diploma from Chapel Hill High School. That's not on the education system. The private sector decides what they want and they want a college education from their workers.
 
So the vast income inequality in this country is due to the proliferation of BA degrees? link?
 
Roadblock teachers are largely a myth propagated by conservatives. Also there is plenty of choice. Both are conservative constructions.

Wouldn't a free market approach to roadblock teachers just be to pay them more, give them more autonomy, thus encouraging higher quality applicants to become teachers?

Not just, but certainly that. It would not be a lock-step promotion/compensation accountability insulation in the form of the beloved Unions. The best teachers (as measured in significant part by feedback from the parents) would be promoted. The worst teachers would be, gasp, pushed into other lines of work.
 
Thoughts? http://qz.com/271422/the-six-paths-of-the-typical-us-college-graduate-and-why-theyre-all-wrong/

Of course, some former bankers/lawyers/consultants/doctors/professors/teachers will go on to start successful companies. But they’re likely going to have to go against the grain to do so. The people and institutions around them aren’t designed to encourage them to start a business. Quite the opposite. Making someone a highly-paid professional in a high-cost-of-living city and surrounding them with other folks doing the exact same thing isn’t exactly a recipe for entrepreneurship (I know this from experience too, having left a large law firm, Davis Polk and Wardwell, to start a dot-com that failed in the first bubble). Most of the major entrepreneurs of this age—Howard Schultz, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, Reid Hoffman, Jon Oringer, Barbara Corcoran, etc.—were not products of our professional paths. This isn’t a coincidence.

Another byproduct of the six paths is that we have less diversity of thought. Academics kind of think a certain way. So do lawyers. And bankers. And consultants. And doctors. Having most of our top students being trained in the same handful of ways might be good in some ways—we might break fewer things. But it might make us less likely to build new things too.
 
Thoughts? http://qz.com/271422/the-six-paths-of-the-typical-us-college-graduate-and-why-theyre-all-wrong/

Of course, some former bankers/lawyers/consultants/doctors/professors/teachers will go on to start successful companies. But they’re likely going to have to go against the grain to do so. The people and institutions around them aren’t designed to encourage them to start a business. Quite the opposite. Making someone a highly-paid professional in a high-cost-of-living city and surrounding them with other folks doing the exact same thing isn’t exactly a recipe for entrepreneurship (I know this from experience too, having left a large law firm, Davis Polk and Wardwell, to start a dot-com that failed in the first bubble). Most of the major entrepreneurs of this age—Howard Schultz, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, Reid Hoffman, Jon Oringer, Barbara Corcoran, etc.—were not products of our professional paths. This isn’t a coincidence.

Another byproduct of the six paths is that we have less diversity of thought. Academics kind of think a certain way. So do lawyers. And bankers. And consultants. And doctors. Having most of our top students being trained in the same handful of ways might be good in some ways—we might break fewer things. But it might make us less likely to build new things too.

Article is completely true. Damn millenials are part of the problem, just talk to them. Everyone wants to be a professional working in NYC or some other huge city. Security and path simplicity is the direction they are pushed towards from a young age. Fat chance of getting a millenial to be an entrepreneur. #selfloathing
 
Good article, jhmd. I'm not sure why you posted it. It contradicts everything I've seen you post on higher ed. You're pretty adamant that students should fall into one of the first four paths. I haven't seen you post anything on the lines that students should pursue their own interests. In fact, you've been posting the exact opposite. You're posting about unemployment as if working for somebody else is the only way a college graduate can be successful.
 
Good article, jhmd. I'm not sure why you posted it. It contradicts everything I've seen you post on higher ed. You're pretty adamant that students should fall into one of the first four paths. I haven't seen you post anything on the lines that students should pursue their own interests. In fact, you've been posting the exact opposite. You're posting about unemployment as if working for somebody else is the only way a college graduate can be successful.

You're either not reading very closely or very honestly. I've said no college with wise choices is better than a lazy default to college resulting in a useless degree. I'll say it again now. Of the sixth paths, I'm in favor of number seven.
 
What are the useful degrees?

How can you use a metric like unemployment to make your point when all the evidence shows that college graduates with "useless degrees" are more likely to be employed than people without a college degree?

I guess I try to assume you have common sense in your arguments. That's the misunderstanding.
 
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You're either not reading very closely or very honestly. I've said no college with wise choices is better than a lazy default to college resulting in a useless degree. I'll say it again now. Of the sixth paths, I'm in favor of number seven.

I also don't think that article reflects what you are saying. It is talking about how the smart college kids these days are unimaginative donks who default into the safe paths towards upper middle class security and not entrepreneurship. You seem to be beefing with the rudderless kids with no direction who go to college for no other reason than to accumulate debt, not develop any skills, and in large numbers dropout. Two different groups.
 
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