<p>
[quote]
Not necessarily. I know someone with an IQ of 106 thats passing his EE claases at UCLA. Sure he may be passing with C's while putting maximum effort, but he's still passing and going to graduate nonetheless.
[/quote]
I'd like to know how someone can get into the UCLA EE program with an ~1100 (550M/550V) SAT score. If I knew better I'd probably saying his IQ score actually underpredicts his actual intelligence.</p>
<p>Mr Payne,</p>
<p>There have been many times here in Dilbertland that I've wondered "what if I had taken a trade instead?"</p>
<p>And then I go back to remembering that I was one of the "chosen few" who was lucky enough to go to college so I could work at a computer at get fat.</p>
<p>Yay!</p>
<p>Years ago as I gardened the telephone wire guy came and started griping, griping, griping about why should I have to dig this hole, boss is nuts, bla bla bla. It was a beautiful day and not much of a dig/rewire. My brother's friend drives a cement truck - how's that job, I asked? It's terrible, time pressures immense (cement can't wait) etc. I've tried not to overromantisize the trades. I'm sure the donut maker has plenty to gripe about, and not much income to show for it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>He got in as a transfer(they don't need SATs). If it's of any conciliation, he did get a 5 on the Calc BC test though.</p>
<p>Treetopleaf,</p>
<p>I dunno... that grass looks awful green from over here. ;)</p>
<p>
[quote]
the heart of the real question: is our love affair with trying to get everyone a BA really improving our society?
[/quote]
</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Are wages so low that employers can demand college degrees for clerical level jobs? Or are employers paying a premium for college degreed employees?</p></li>
<li><p>Can we as a society afford to educate people through some or all of a 4 year degree only to have them do clerical level work? On an individual level, if someone takes loans out to gain a degree, or college hours, it's their debt, not a future employer's.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>There are many routes to success (not to mention the subjective nature of its definition). </p>
<p>Our local community college now offers a wide variety of programs, with very different goals. Some are strictly trade oriented, which is great for students who know what they want to do and need particular certifications. Many plumbers and electricians make far more than the country's median income. </p>
<p>Some community college programs offer automatic admission to excellent four year programs at other institutions. Some students choose this option just to save money. This is not new. Don't any of you know people who began at CC, transferred for a BA, then proceeded to an MD, DVM, or PhD? I do; they're not rare.</p>
<p>In contrast, don't any of you know people with high IQs and multiple degrees (Ivy among them), who just didn't fulfill the promise? They're not rare either.</p>
<p>I posted this somewhere, but since that IQ/Ivy/best peers & jobs argument keeps surfacing...again from The Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins (summa cum laude Yale, 1998):</p>
<p>"What's more,surveys of top business leaders do not support the idea that a degree from an elite institution is necessary for success. By 2005 the percentage of CEOs at S&P 500 companies who did not graduate from an Ivy League school had risen to 90 percent fom 84 percent in 1998. Also that year, the number of S&P 500 CEOs who graduated from the University of Wisconsin matched the number from Harvard. In 2004 and 2005 the CEOs of Chiquita Brands, Continental Airlines, Intel, Kellogg's, Kmart Holding, Sara Lee, Time Warner, and Walt Disney had received their undergraduate degrees from Southern Illinois University, University of South Carolina, University of San Francisco, DePaul Universiy, University of Houston, Augustana College, University of Hawaii, and Ithaca College, respectively."</p>
<p>
[quote]
On an individual level, if someone takes loans out to gain a degree, or college hours, it's their debt, not a future employer's.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Most colleges receive enough third-party subsidies (many paid for by general taxation) that the cost of wasted college degrees does not fall solely on the degree-holders.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This is not new. Don't any of you know people who began at CC, transferred for a BA, then proceeded to an MD, DVM, or PhD? I do; they're not rare.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I didn't get my MD, DVM, or PhD (alas?), but I did go to a CC before I got my BA. I just got my MA at a very bad time (as in, recently.) However, I know a few CC people who went on to get advanced degrees.</p>
<p>The point, however, is that people still stigmatize CCs.</p>
<p>I have encountered Mr. Watson and his regressive and odious ideas, especially living on Long Island where his former lab is situated.</p>
<p>However, that doesn't alter the point that he was considered not intelligent enough for advanced work in science and that was clearly not the case.</p>
<p>UCLAri: As I said, I teach at community college. I consider myself an excellent teacher, and my dissertation won best in the US in 1987 so I put my understanding of my own discipline as as equal to anyone teaching at Harvard. I have had many, many impressive students. I am arguing against Mr. Murray's piece.</p>
<p>No, I don't think a four year residential college is the only place a student can be educated. I am arguing against the idea that a liberal arts education is wasted on a large segment of society. Our distribution requirements provide a liberal arts education.</p>
<p>"I'm sure the donut maker has plenty to gripe about, and not much income to show for it."</p>
<p>One of my former managers had a staff meeting at her vacation home on Cape Cod. There was a very nice home next to hers and she told us that it's a guy that owned a few Dunkin Donuts franchises.</p>
<p>I've written about him before but there's a guy that owns a pizza shop near my son's university. He's there from 9:00 AM to 11 PM (1:30 AM on some nights). He's raking in the dough but he's only doing it for a certain number of years. He asked me if I was interested in buying the place. There's only a donut shop and an asian place nearby besides the cafeteria so he's got a pretty nice situation.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Most colleges receive enough third-party subsidies (many paid for by general taxation) that the cost of wasted college degrees does not fall solely on the degree-holders.
[/quote]
Then we, as a society, need to decide what portion of the population actually needs to go to college. Probably no more than 25% in my opinion.</p>
<p>'The point, however, is that people still stigmatize CCs.'</p>
<p>Yes, and they shouldn't. I think we'll see this change except among the self-impressed.</p>
<p>
[quote]
He got in as a transfer(they don't need SATs). If it's of any conciliation, he did get a 5 on the Calc BC test though.
[/quote]
I think most will agree that it's extremely atypical that someone with a 106 IQ gets a five on the Calc BC test. I'd be very surprised if he took another IQ test and got a 106.</p>
<p>"Then we, as a society, need to decide what portion of the population actually needs to go to college. Probably no more than 25% in my opinion."</p>
<p>Should society also expect payback from those among that 25% who receive a college education and fail to utilize it fully?</p>
<p>"While it is difficult getting a degree in your 20's, try getting it in your 30's or 40's"</p>
<p>I did get my degrees in my 30s and it was easier due to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Maturity</li>
<li>Experience</li>
<li>More favorable tax environment for employer tuition reimbursement</li>
</ul>
<p>There is a difference between the donut maker, and the donut shop owner.
Albeit, the owner could have started off as an entry level donut maker.</p>
<p>In general, I should think it be noted there is a difference between those who solely do the actual trade and those who administer.</p>
<p>I'm just catching up with this thread and haven't read all the way through yet, but I want to respond to mythmom (who I admire :) ). She said:</p>
<p>
[quote]
I teach at community college, and I totally disagree with the article cited. Struggling to get an AA, and then for most, a BA or BS, is all that educates my students to be understanding and thinking adults.</p>
<p>In many cases both their parents and their high schools have failed them. I teach writing, literature and intellectual history. Many students cannot write a decent sentence when they come into my classes and don't have the clarity to pose or recognize a cogent argument.</p>
<p>Our goal, as a faculty, is to remediate and to stimulate. We have very demanding distribution requirements. I think an understanding of many disciplines is essential to a thinking electorate.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am a high school English teacher. I teach sophomore world literature in one of the top public high schools in California (a 900-student magnet technology school where students are accepted with no qualifications other than lottery; we turned away 50% of applicants for this year's freshman class due to lack of space). I work for a school district that has decided that all high school students will be enrolled in college prep or honors English. My mandate is to prepare 100% of my 180 students for four-year college. Our stringent state standards in English were created 10 years ago in order to prepare students for a UC level education (our UCs accept only the top 10% of high school students in the state, while our CSUs accept the top 30%). Last year, 98% of the graduating class enrolled in college, either two- or four-year. All of this is a way of stating that the curriculum I use is rigorous and the expectations of the school, district, parents and teachers are very high. </p>
<p>What is not high is the ability of my students. Like mythmom, I find at least 75% of them cannot string together a few sentences without major errors in syntax, grammar, punctuation and spelling. I have spent my holiday break grading 1,500-word essays combining research from their world history class with literature from our world lit class, and they are uniformly awful. I have given many, many D's. This is with weeks of scaffolding, direct writing instruction, one-on-one advisory, etc... </p>
<p>One student transferred out of the honors program about a month into the school year because it was too difficult; she is now in my class. She wrote this sentence in her paper, buried among many others of the same caliber: </p>
<p>"Therefore, if anyone in their tribe were to show a lack of respect towards the God's it was a major lack of respect that was being shown."</p>
<p>I kid you not.</p>
<p>Here's another:</p>
<p>"This extremely strong was statement made by a manufacturer worker gives insight about what there true concern that the factory owners thought about."</p>
<p>How do I, with 180 students, remediate this kind of writing? And this is from a former honors student. Everyone in her family expects her to get a bachelor's degree, and she most likely will. She eventually will learn from her mistakes because she is motivated. </p>
<p>On the other hand, at least half of my students are not really interested in college or in high school, for that matter. Many simply do not hand in assignments or read the novels. They test proficient or higher on our annual state reading tests, so I know they can at least read, but they don't care to put forth the critical thinking effort that my course requires. It's "hard," and they won't do it. These are the ones who will fill mythmom's class at community college because a string of D's and even F's in high school makes no difference. All one needs to enroll at CC is a high school degree; actually, that's not even necessary, I believe. Some students may be late bloomers who find their way, others will quickly drop out with no job skills and little in the way of preparation. They will think of themselves as losers, and their job prospects without a BA or AA will be pretty dim, especially in a recessionary job market. </p>
<p>The ideal of preparing all students to enter a four-year college is worthy at a certain, simplistic level, yet as the saying goes... you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. As one of the people holding the horse's head an inch from the *&%# water, it's very, very frustrating. There should be options for those students who are determined not to engage in rigorous work; they are taking up seats in my classroom but they aren't really there. In general, they are nice people and I fear for their future and that the system we have devised is failing them as much as they are failing it.</p>
<p>(This is setting aside the 20% or so of my students who simply cannot do grade level work... those in "resource" who are also in my college prep class, drowning. One young man's mother admitted in an email that she "helped a lot" with her son's paper... she got an A on it, too. She is a principal in our district.)</p>
<p>** P.S. the young lady whose writing I cited above is white and speaks only English. I mention this so that there might be no confusion about her English-speaking status.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Should society also expect payback from those among that 25% who receive a college education and fail to utilize it fully?
[/quote]
Well, now we are treading on non-PC ground. The fact of the matter is that a large portion of our society probably doesn't even utilize their K-12 education. The fact of the matter there will always be a portion of our society that is always a net receiver of government money, never paying enough taxes to cover what they use. The most productive ~25% of our country provides the vast majority of value.</p>
<p>"The most productive ~25% of our country provides the vast majority of value."</p>
<p>I doubt this is the same 25% you would identify as worthy of a college education. The difficulty in determining who will be the most productive (and its definition) is the reason I made the TIC comment about payback.</p>