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Educated Fools

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Re: Educated Fools

#41

Post by wangii »

dluan wrote: post #38
wangii wrote: post #20

as Chinese lives in uk, they had been my questions for a long time: why did you guys voted for david cameron, barack obama, (any politician, really) at all? had they ever struggled to pay their bills? do they really feel your pain?

Democracy isn't just David Cameron and Obama, when you go to vote for them, you also cast votes on local precinct leaders, local referendums, and local positions like school board and sheriff. In some places, you might even know those people personally.

correct me if I was wrong: the turn out ratio in local elections is very low, to the degree i feel meaningless.

Re: Educated Fools

#42

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

salt-licker wrote: post #15

Great article that exposes many college-educated blind spots, in particular that education is not a panacea for inequality. But the proposed solution of more democratic workplaces — somehow convincing capital-holders that investing in human labor rather than automation is in their own self-interest — feels like swimming against the tide of history. Meritocracy is a dangerous ideal for humanity to continue to hold so…

The article convinced me that UBI would likely be a more meaningful policy position. Some people (the majority, in reality) just aren't cut out for college. Co-determinism seems D.O.A if companies like Uber are planning on autonomous transportation: the underemployed working class is but a stepping stone to creating a company that depends on exclusively highly skilled, upper middle class laborers. Truthfully, there may be not much of a place for low-skilled labor if the service sector will be inevitably automated. UBI is too far left; education for all is palatable policy. And that's why the Democratic establishment is where it's at.

Re: Educated Fools

#43

Post by overgard »

I totally agree with the article, but to me the saddest part of all of this is I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. (I say that with a four year CS degree). Most majors, to be blunt, are pretty useless in terms of real world skills. The argument is "they teach you how to think". I don't know how you would even measure that, but it doesn't seem that true, especially since colleges are hotbeds of intellectual fads that are easily disproved by reality. The only prerequisite to learning to think is making an effort at it. College used to be a good signal for that, but now its not.

So we essentially created a "virtuous" class of "educated" people that aren't as smart as they think they are, talking down to people that are struggling economically by telling them that they need to spend 100k to "learn to think". It's amazing things have stayed relatively peaceful.

It's funny to me because arguably I am part of this liberal elite, and even I feel a lot of contempt and irritation towards my increasingly smug compatriots. People really need to tone down the "flyover state" and "redneck" rhetoric. I definitely didn't vote for Trump, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get why people did.

Re: Educated Fools

#44

Post by rossdavidh »

wangii wrote: post #20

as Chinese lives in uk, they had been my questions for a long time: why did you guys voted for david cameron, barack obama, (any politician, really) at all? had they ever struggled to pay their bills? do they really feel your pain?

Good question. There are certain professions, and really only a very few, that prepare one well for the task of campaigning for office. Lawyer, military officer, business executive, actor, a few others. All of them are from the professional class, nowadays, with the partial exception of military officer.

Once upon a time, a lot more power was held by local politicians, who were often from the working class. Over time, more and more of that became centralized, and the ability to speak well in public is not something that even most professional class jobs prepare you for. Put a programmer up against a lawyer or a CEO, and the programmer will not do well. We not only have mostly professional class politicians, they are overwhelmingly from only a few of those professions, because there are only a few that prepare you to speak, from a script, to a large group of strangers, staying on message and keeping your message short and clear.

Re: Educated Fools

#45

Post by tjr225 »

overgard wrote: post #43

I totally agree with the article, but to me the saddest part of all of this is I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. (I say that with a four year CS degree). Most majors, to be blunt, are pretty useless in terms of real world skills. The argument is "they teach you how to think". I don't know how you would even measure that, but it doesn't seem that true, especially since colleges are…

I agree. I say all of this as someone making over six figures working from home in a situation I could have never imagined myself in ten years ago.

I needed my degree; but just to get my foot in the door. I didn't learn much during the process itself other than to recognize the meta fact that I had to do it to get out of my current situation.

This would have been a real problem for me financially if it didn't work out the way it did because I wouldn't have been able to get out from under my(and more so my wife's) student loan debt.

It should be useful and I think it can be, but that was not the experience that I had.

Re: Educated Fools

#46

Post by Gatsky »

This raises some good issues but does ramble.

Coming from a country where tertiary education is more accessible and cheaper, there is decent free healthcare and more social welfare, all of which give more people the option of higher education, what ends up happening is people go to University too much. Universities have undergone a huge explosion in headcount and footprint. As publicly funded institutions, they have funded this expansion with a kind of Ponzi scheme where more and more full fee paying international students are required to sustain the machine. At the same time there has been a lot of training institutes and vocational colleges popping up, some with dubious quality and intent. The stimulus for this seems to be that young people can't get enough quality work, and so they try and educate themselves. They can do this partly because of the largesse of their boomer parents. This effect is happening at all levels, including fields where lots of education is already required, like medicine, law and engineering.

So I would agree that pumping education is not a panacea. It is starting to feel almost exploitative around here (Australia). Weddings, healthcare and education are surefire ways to extract money from people even when the economy is in a slump. At least you get cake at a wedding.

Re: Educated Fools

#47

Post by rossdavidh »

wisty wrote: post #18

I think this essay is missing a discussion on the theories of what make university graduates better paid. The two main theories are: 1. Human capital. People learn stuff at university which makes them more valuable workers. 2. Credentialism. Universities select (or pass) people who were already going to be valuable. Now let's look at what we might mean by "valuable": 1. You can fool hiring managers into thinking you'…

One other possibility to consider: college degrees are considered a way of making sure the person is from the social class that you feel comfortable being in the room with. It's a (usually) legally defensible requirement that enables class prejudice.

Re: Educated Fools

#48

Post by rossdavidh »

burlesona wrote: post #21

> But the truth might be something closer to this: “It’s only because of race that we have any part of the working class turning out for us at all.” I’ve thought a lot about this, and wondered if we’ll see a major flip post-Trump (perhaps a few more presidencies past), where the republicans somehow manage to shed their racial baggage and suddenly are the party of the entire working class while the Democrats are left…

The first time you have a black or latinx Republican presidential nominee. It could have been Colin Powell, at one time, and Herman Cain came somewhat close. I would not be surprised to see it in this decade.

Re: Educated Fools

#49

Post by rossdavidh »

harimau777 wrote: post #27
sandoooo wrote: post #23

As a society, a portion of the workforce has to do the plumbing, make the furniture, serve coffee, and do all the jobs that don't require college. The people doing those jobs shouldn't need to spending four of their most productive years not working and accumulating debt. They should just start four years earlier, or get vocational training for a few months to a year. Instead of college for all, what's needed is an a…

Those jobs tend not to pay as well as jobs that require a career focused college degree (e.g. business, engineering, computer science, and even teaching).

There are plenty of college degrees that pay no more, or considerably less, than several of those jobs.

Re: Educated Fools

#50

Post by dluan »

wangii wrote: post #41
dluan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy isn't just David Cameron and Obama, when you go to vote for them, you also cast votes on local precinct leaders, local referendums, and local positions like school board and sheriff. In some places, you might even know those people personally.

correct me if I was wrong: the turn out ratio in local elections is very low, to the degree i feel meaningless.

It depends how you define low. The US has low voter turnout by total population (~55%), but very high turnout by percentage of voters registered. Many states have artificial obstacles in place to suppress registration and turnout. Other states like Oregon and Washington have implemented mail-in ballot voting and automatic registration which makes voting more accessible, and have higher turnout (72%). It's certainly not meaningless.
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