As opposed to the conservatives of color who stayed in the cities? Please.
That is fine, however, those who like to talk up the value of a liberal arts education over STEM are usually the same ones who complain endlessly about income inequality especially by race. If there are more black MDs and engineers, blacks’ income as a group would not be at such disparity with whites.
Is it better for a black person to graduate with an African American studies degree from Harvard or is it better to have him graduate as an MD from University of Alabama? I would say that not just the man himself, but blacks as a group and society as a whole are all better off with the MD from UAL instead of yet another underemployed/unemployed liberal arts graduate.
“That is fine, however, those who like to talk up the value of a liberal arts education over STEM are usually the same ones who complain endlessly about income inequality especially by race.”
I disagree.
Most of us who “talk up the value of a liberal arts education over STEM” are very, very aware that this kind of education does not lead to large paychecks right after graduation. Most of us do say it can lead to a decent paycheck with post-grad experience and possibly additional education.
Income inequality is a whole other can of beans and a thoughtful person wouldn’t link it to the difference between a STEM degree versus, say, a sociology degree. Income inequality is the difference between the worker bee whose income is stuck under $50,000 with diminishing benefits, and his/her CEO whose income is $5,000,000 plus stock options plus a multi-million dollar golden parachute.
A thoughtful person knows this is a whole different discussion.
Income inequality across races is entirely related to academic achievement and area of focus. This is well proven. Whether CEOs make more or less, this will not change.
“Because the affluent white community - including the white liberals who champion affirmative action - moved to the suburbs.”
You didn’t give the matter much thought before making such a statement, did you?
Hardly a week goes by without another story about the “income gap” and “education gap” between blacks and whites in the media. A thoughtful person would know that education, career choice and income are all highly correlated.
A thoughtful person would know that there’s an even bigger correlation between privilege and access to quality education. That’s what this whole thread is about.
“Whether CEOs make more or less, this will not change.”
I call BS on this statement. Even that tireless defender of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal, reports the lopsided way Americans are compensated beginning in the late 70s, when middle class income began stagnating and executive salaries soared to obscene levels. This isn’t news by the way. You shouldn’t deny income inequality because then you simply sound like you don’t read the papers or even notice the reality around you.
http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/05/13/top-ceos-now-make-373-times-the-average-rank-and-file-worker/
There is a good amount of evidence that lower achieving students at selective colleges are more likely to switch out of some (not all) STEM majors than high achieving students, but this does not mean that the same students would be more like to pursue med school had they attended a less selective college. I’ll use Harvard and Ohio State as an example, rather than Alabama since Ohio State has a larger sample size with more data available.
According to the AAMC charts that were linked earlier, in the class of 2014 19% of white students at Harvard applied to med school, compared to 30% of black students. In contrast at Ohio State, 6.5% of white students applied to med school, compared to 7.5% of black students applied to med school. Black students at Harvard from the class of 2014 appear to be tremendously more likely to apply to med school than white students, yet there was little difference in rate of application between the two races at Ohio State.
This suggests that black students may get some kind of benefit from attending Harvard that makes them more likely to apply to med school and become doctors than would occur at typical less selective colleges. Perhaps it is related to seeing a large portion of their peers pursue medicine or encouragement from advisers or faculty. I’m not black, but I experienced something similar to this at Stanford. I was planning on pursuing engineering and had no interest in medicine, but the combination of the large number of my peers pursuing medicine and my enjoyment/success in engineering chem classes led me to stick with the pre-med track after chem. Self selection may also be a key factor.
Thanks @Data10, for pointing out the truth. And really, it’s not the end of the world if some African-American students realize there’s a whole world of inquiry out there and they don’t have to become doctors. There are other choices. I didn’t take a woman’s history class until I was a junior, but it was fascinating and I could easily imagine having changed my mind about my major because of it. (Instead a course in prints and print making made me realize that I was more interesting in creating physical objects than writing about them.)
Bingo! HYP and their ilk, essentially corner the market on high achieving URM’s*…OTOH, I definitely feel that private schools offer other than educational benefits over publics, which tend to be cash-strapped in today’s economy.
*as measured by high school stats (GPA+test scores).
The rate of med school applicants was far higher for black students at Harvard than white students at Harvard. If it was just a matter of high achieving students, then black students at Harvard would need to be correspondingly far higher achieving than white students at Harvard, which seems unlikely with AA. It’s possible that black students who are accepted to Harvard are more likely to be interested in pursuing medicine than white students or related institutional policy. The trend doesn’t seem to be specific to Harvard. Black students had a higher rate of med school applicants than white students at all HYPSM… type schools I checked. However, a different trend occurred at many state schools with more limited AA. For example, at Berkeley 18.5% of white students applied to med school, which was greater than the 14.5% of black students. This does not support the theory that AA policies at HYSPM… type selective colleges are keeping black students out of medicine.
Purely anecdotal based on talking to someone getting a degree in education - she was in an inner city school as part of that program. Her comment was there were so many non-education related issues that came up in her middle school class that it was difficult to actually get quality time to teach the real subject material because of these interruptions. So she said to forget about the advanced stuff - she couldn’t even find time for the basics. She said she and many/most of her peers really wanted a career without any of these distractions, so they avoided inner city and headed for the suburbs.
That’s certainly one of the reasons – the schools don’t have resources to address kids’ problems, shifting the burden to teachers who are neither trained in dealing with issues nor necessarily interested (meaning, they want to teach, not to play social worker.) So the good ones leave, leaving the kids in the hands of annual waves of young and inexperienced educators.
@katliamom, There are two separate issues being commingled here. One is overall income inequality in the American society. There, the erosion of power of the unions as brought about by Reagan and the Republican Party and the increase in the power of executive management is the root cause. The other is the income inequality between races. That has been the case forever. There, the difference in academic performance and focus of work is the dominant cause. Let’s not confuse the two.
Even if the salary of all executives were cut to 0 there would still be a income gap between races, with the ones focusing on professional services having a lead.
Income inequality was brought up by cmsjs in post #61 – and yes, I also tried to explain that it’s a different issue. And then YOU tied it ENTIRELY (again, your word) to academic area of focus in post #63. And once again, I tried to explain that it’s a different issue. Who’s confusing what here?
The same person could do both, since persons with any major can go to medical school, as long as they take the pre-med course work (and do well in the pre-med courses, all courses, MCAT, and other selection criteria for medical school, of course).
At what college are more than half of calculus 1 students those who scored 5 on the BC exam?
The set of constraints or conditions does not necessarily remain constant. Not all of STEM is science. The E means engineering, and engineering design problems must take into account the varying possible constraints or conditions that can result in no solution being optimal for all possible constraints or conditions that may be encountered. For example, there are successful competing computer programs that do broadly similar tasks (e.g. iOS versus Android). These show that more than one solution can be correct.
Indeed.
Only 9 kids are african american studies concentrators at Harvard!