Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

In my observation Education isn't the main/only criteria for getting a job. Skills get you a job. But education and good academics help you to qualify for the interview. If in the interview you can prove that you have the skills to perform the job, most likely you will get the job.

The problem is traditional education is focused on theoretical knowledge and doesn't stress enough on practical skills. Unfortunately in India there are many Computer Science engineering students who after 4 years for Computer Science education, fail to write a simple Frequency Counter in a programming language of their choice. This shows that something in the education system is not right. The colleges are producing engineers by hundreds of thousands every year, but the overall quality of education these guys have received is so poor that most of them are not employable.

I know about computer science because I work in this field. However I think more or less the situation is the same in other fields.

Wow, the author was just recently fired,

> On May 20, the progressive public policy organization, Demos, fired Matt Bruenig, a popular writer who covered poverty and inequality. [1]

Best of luck to him and hope he finds another position.

This article, though, is pseudoscience. It is just statistics slapped together with a desired conclusion drawn at the end.

Measuring the causes and effects of societal issues over the span of 25 years should be done by sociology PhDs, not political bloggers.

[1] http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/25/bruenig-firing-...

sure, we all ride the ebb and flow of the economy, but if we were talking about developing countries or even historically impoverished communities in the US i suspect it would be harder to make the argument that education doesn't help.

Because education just removes one obstacle -- there are many:

1) parental encouragement for development and time spent with the child (depending on income too, e.g. single parent working deadly shifts),

2) family atmosphere (economic pressure leads to lots of things, depression, violence, etc).

3) connections

4) security (if you start studying/working paycheck to paycheck, you might not get to a point to be able to take more risk because you have no cushion money)

5) actual security (your neighborhood, city district, etc might not be the most safe/encouraging/etc growing up).

6) lack of role models (close to you, not some people on the media)

The vast majority of challenges organisations face are wedded in how they interact with society. If a groups not working well together, is it knowledge and creativity that's the problem, or social and value clashes between members. The vast majority of day-to-day management challenges fall into the latter category, so no wonder management attracts people that are interested in "social intelligence" and we tend to be interested in what we're perceived to be good at.

Having studied both in arts and sciences I would say that both approaches have advantages when applied in the real-world, and limitations. I don't believe (or know of any evidence) that "Arts" people are more likely to suffer the Peter principle. It's a function of seniority that you lose information versus specialists in an area - so if anything it's connected with bombastically believing you're right rather than what degree you did.