Two new studies: We need to send more kids to college. They’ll fare better and so will the state of Georgia
Two new studies emphasize the need for more college graduates to power Georgia's economy.
When I began writing this education blog a year ago, I expected to run into disagreements on vouchers, charter schools and merit pay. But I assumed that everyone would concur we need to send more students to college in Georgia.
Instead, I have run into a sizable contingent arguing that we send too many kids to college already. There has been a steady drum beat for more vocational options because “not all students are meant for higher education.”
Yet, college graduates will earn, on average, over $1 million dollars more over the course of their working lives than peers with just a high school education.
At a hearing on his Bridge bill, which would have created a separate track for kids who are not college material and give them skills to land decent jobs, state Rep. Fran Millar once reflected that while Georgia parents will agree that some kids shouldn’t go to college, they never mean their own children. Their children will go to college.
Millar offered up that comment to explain the lack of traction on his bill, but I think it spoke to something else: The basic understanding among parents, whether they attended college or not, that the future belongs to the well educated.
Consider current unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: For those with less than a high school diploma, the unemployment rate was 13.8 percent. Among those with a high school diploma but no college, the rate was 10.1 percent. For those with some college but no degree, the rate was 8.3 percent. For those with an undergraduate degree or beyond, the rate was 4.5 percent.
In a new report released last week, the Lumina Foundation said 37.9 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 held a two- or four-year college degree in 2008.
“If the current rate of increase remains, less than 47 percent of Americans will hold a two- or four-year degree by 2025 — a rate that economic experts say is far below the level that can keep the nation competitive in the global, knowledge-based economy,” the foundation warned in its report, “A Stronger Nation Through Higher Education.”
Among its Georgia-specific data:
–Approximately 36 percent of adults in Georgia have at least a 2-year degree. This is below the national average of 37.9 percent.
–Murray County has the smallest percent of adults with a 2- or 4-year degree (9.6%), and Fayette County has the largest (54.2%)
–To meet the goal of 60 percent higher education attainment by 2025, Georgia needs to add approximately 1,346,524 additional college degrees in the next 15 years.
Citing the findings of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, the Lumina report noted, “According to the center’s analysis of occupation data and workforce trends, 58 percent of Georgia’s jobs will require postsecondary education by 2018. Between now and 2018, Georgia will need to fill about 1.4 million vacancies resulting from job creation, worker retirements and other factors. Of these job vacancies, 820,000 will require postsecondary credentials, while only 595,000 are expected to be filled by high school graduates or dropouts.”
Now, a report released today by the Southern Regional Education Board echoes the conclusions of the Lumina Foundation. In its report, SREB maintains that to meet the target of having 60 percent of the adult population hold a postsecondary certificate or degree by 2025, its 16 member states will need to increase significantly the numbers of associate’s and bachelor’s degrees they award each year.
“We need much-improved career and technical education courses so that more kids can attend some type of college—as you may know, many CT programs now prepare kids for college, or at least specialized technical training. I visited a CT school, formerly known as the ‘vocational school’ in my native Anderson county, south Carolina, and found them making biofuels, studying nanotechnology, doing high-quality broadcast journalism and advertising projects, and more,” said Alan Richard, director of communications for SREB.
“SREB senior vice president Gene Bottoms, the guru of raising the quality of CT programs, advised Millar on his bill, which aims to provide more high-quality CT programs like the ones I discussed rather than a low-level vocational track that leads to very low-paying jobs,” said Richard. “All of this presumably would move us in the same direction. We need many more people to enter and finish four-year degree programs, but the same is true for two-year and technical certificate programs, which are often much more advanced these days than most people realize. Just imagine the math and technology required to become a certified HVAC repair person these days.”
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98 comments Add your comment
George Leef
September 28th, 2010
12:56 pm
The “earnings premium” argument for increasing the number of students going to college is very weak. It makes no sense to look at average or median earnings for people who earned degrees in the past. The relevant question is what the marginal student can expect today. Hidden in all the data put out by the likes of Lumina and The College Board is the fact that about one fifth of college degree holders earn less than does the median for high school graduates. We have so oversold higher education and glutted the labor market with people who have credentials but little actual skill that lots of young college grads find themselves in jobs that don’t call for any academic study and don’t pay well. Just because we put more students through college does not automatically mean an increase in “good” jobs for them. Moreover, the more people who have college degrees, the more employers ratchet up credential inflation, requiring applicants to have degrees even for mundane work that almost any high school student could learn, such as handling a rental car desk. Credential inflation just makes it harder for those without credentials to find decent employment.
Proud Black Man
September 28th, 2010
12:57 pm
“Two new studies: We need to send more kids to college. They’ll fare better and so will the state of Georgia”
Both technical and two year schools. I agree with this statement 100%
V for Vendetta
September 28th, 2010
1:14 pm
David Sims,
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to confuse my racist groups. By any name, you’re all collectivists who use spurious statistics to support your racist agenda. The real irony is that your claims of superiority are actually evidence against it.
Andy
September 28th, 2010
1:27 pm
John Barge, candidate for superintendent, is running on a campaign that “one size does not fit all”. He has a realistic understanding of education unlike the career politician also running.
David Sims
September 28th, 2010
1:28 pm
@RJ. We need a skilled workforce. It doesn’t have to be a 4 year college degree.
That’s right. A college degree is supposed to represent ability, which people possess in varying amounts. Credentials are supposed to correlate strongly with ability, but liberal attitudes and the doctrine of racial equality have undermined that correlation with regard to high school graduation, and now those same influences are beginning to undermine the meaning of college degrees.
@George Leef. You are quite right. Credentials have begun to lose their meaning because too many people, some of them with only marginal ability, have gotten credentials. The standards for becoming credentialed drop, and the law of supply and demand reduces the value of any commodity in glut. Maureen’s premise in this article is wrong.
@V for Vendetta. In fact, I have not introduced any statistical evidence on the relative quality of humanoid races. I’ve refrained because they are off-topic. If I find a relevant discussion, however, I’ll show you the evidence and defy you to refute it with countervailing evidence. Where leftists and racists disagree, the racists are right, they have always been right, and they will continue to be right for the foreseeable evolutionary future. Racial differences are real, and they are biological; they are not “social constructs” amenable to remedy by social interventions.
Atlanta Mom
September 28th, 2010
1:31 pm
I guess if this statement is true : “58 percent of Georgia’s jobs will require postsecondary education by 2018″ we need to plan for another invasion by Yankees.
Leigh
September 28th, 2010
1:49 pm
I disagree. I attended an expensive private college in the midwest.Upon returning home to Georgia, I was never employed doing anything that a high school graduate could not have done. The job market here is such that if we send our kids to college, we are sending them to live someplace else, too. We should think about that first.
Attentive Parent
September 28th, 2010
2:20 pm
Glad to see George Leef weigh in. He did a great job on this issue arguing against Kati Haycock’s “College for Everyone” last year at an ed conference here in GEorgia.
He has done some great work through The Pope Center on this precise issue.
another comment
September 28th, 2010
2:52 pm
We need to look at which economy has come out of the recession first, it is the German economy. Now take a look at the German education system. It is a three tiered education system. All students take aptitude tests at the end of elementary school to determine if they should be college bound, vocational track, etc… Germany has maintained a strong domestic quality production basis, buy the entire country being willing to take forloughs, instead of mass layoffs as well. Not the partisan demography.
George Leef
September 28th, 2010
3:48 pm
Thanks to Attentive Parent for the kind words and mention of my organization. I have often sparred with representatives of the higher education establishment and debated their idea that getting more young people through college is a national imperative. Anyone who would like to read more will find a lot of information at our site: http://www.popecenter.org.
Writer Gal
September 28th, 2010
4:22 pm
Every child has a right to pursue a college education. Period. Maybe some are better suited, maybe some not. I’ve see many ‘top’ high school students–you know the ones with all the superlatives, “most likely to succeed,” “smartest” “brainiest” fail miserably in college and never finish–mainly because their head was too exploded by being the pets of their high school to actually know how to face challenges and adversity.
On the other hand, I have seen many mediocre students thrive in a college environment. They had been “kicked around the block” a few times by cliquey public schools and cliquey teachers. They knew instinctively how to bounce back after a setback on a grade or a course.
There is no potential perfect college student. I did alright enough in high school to get a college scholarship, but I realized my potential in college–I acheived way more intellectually, socially, and emotionally in my college alma mater. Mainly because I was away from those high school pests that every high school teacher promoted. What happened to all those guys? Most of them dropped out completely. They were merely legends in their own minds and of the teachers, who enocuraged the myth.
Oh and by the way, GO GO GO GO Brenau University of Gainesville, Georgia! Thank you for believing in me and pushing me to succeed. Oh, and I now realize how incredibly “uneducated” many of my high school teachers were about students and success!
Tuckergirl
September 28th, 2010
4:31 pm
I worked at SREB for five years and came to know Gene Bottoms fairly well. He is very passionate about high-quality career/technical programs for students, starting in high school and moving into the post-secondary arena. He’s been doing this since the early 70s.
I often reviewed a number of reports that came from visits to various middle and high schools across the country. Unfortunately, many schools are lacking when it comes to preparing young people for career/technical careers because the mantra of “must attend a four-year liberal arts college” is being shoved down throats more and more. The “vocational” track is viewed as the basement where kids with poor grades are dumped to sit it out until graduation, if they make it that far.
There are, however, some schools that have embraced the wisdom of preparing young people for high-paying, highly-skilled career/technical jobs. Many of them are in the northeast and are devoted to offering high-level, technical jobs in HVAC, automotive and electrical fields. Many of these kids even come out with certifications in these fields with their eyes toward getting more training in a two-year or four-year setting. These kids have more math/science skills than many four-year liberal arts college grads and make a lot more money.
There are glimmers of this here and there in other areas of the country, including Georgia, but unfortunately, it gets drowned out by the notion that every single young person must fit into some mold decided by some “experts” in higher education who rarely step foot in a classroom.
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David Sims
September 28th, 2010
6:25 pm
@Writer Gal.
High school math problem.
Known: G,M, a, and r.
Find: v.
v² = GM(2/r − 1/a)
College math problem.
Known: G, M, a.
Find: t(r)
(dr/dt)² = GM(2/r − 1/a)
Show me why the sensible mediocrities in high school would excel more in solving the implied differential equation in the college math problem than the high school whiz kids would. I’d like to hear your reasoning. If you are a sensible mediocrity yourself, then you might want to give it a go.
Proud Black Man
September 28th, 2010
6:56 pm
fools errand
money
September 28th, 2010
7:25 pm
well the ROOT of the problem is not personal attacks; but the writings to answer Mareen’s orginial question- “So, tell me again why we need more vo-tech classes and fewer college bound students?”
and I think we have given her some of those answers.
David Sims
September 28th, 2010
8:51 pm
@Proud Black Man. Not a fool’s errand. It’s the “plunge orbit” problem from the celestial mechanics and classical mechanics classes that we have both no doubt taken. You remember the chapter on “Motion Under A Central Force”? Sure you do. Since the variables in the differential equation are separable, getting to the integral is easy. Solving the integral analytically is the hard part. Hard, but doable, if you know what you’re doing. Here’s the answer:
t = ∫(t₁,t₂) dt = ∫(r₁,r₂) dr / √[GM(2/r−1/a)]
t = [a/√(GM)] { √(2r−r²/a) + 2√(a) Arctan[√(2a/r−1)] } | (r₁,r₂)
Suppose we use the function to find out how long it would take Earth to fall into the sun from an initial distance of 1 AU, if the Earth is initially at rest relative to the center of the sun.
M = 1.989e30 kilograms
G = 6.674e-11 m³ kg⁻¹ sec⁻²
r₁ = 1 AU = 1.496e11 meters
a = r₁/2 = 7.48e10 meters
r₂ = 6.96e8 meters
Quickly, we see that when r=r₁, t=0. That’s because r₁=2a, or in other words the initial distance, which is the aphelion, is twice the semimajor axis of the plunge orbit. But when r=r₂,
t = 5578821 seconds = 64.57 days
If the fall is all the way to the center of the sun, instead of to the photosphere, then r=r₂=0, and
t = π√[a³/(GM)] = 5579573 seconds.
So—with some suppressed bad assumptions about the distribution of the sun’s mass—Earth would reach the center of the sun 752 seconds after it passed the photosphere.
College math. Wasn’t that fun?
Proud Black Man
September 28th, 2010
8:56 pm
zzzzzzhuh?
Proud Black Man
September 28th, 2010
9:03 pm
Its fun being a pizza delivery guy with a smattering of physics isn’t it? Later loser…
Dekalbite@David Sims
September 28th, 2010
9:45 pm
You forget that we are a social species. As much as you would like to discount the fact, that is written into our DNA. Social skills are the grease that makes our wheels go round and round. The titans of Wall Street or the 100 Senators who run our country could probably not perform many high level math functions either, but they are masters of a complex set of social skills.
I have the utmost respect for higher level thinking skills. My husband is an internationally recognized molecular biologist, and I taught highly gifted students for 11 years – ones that went on to Princeton and Yale and Harvard and majored in physics, computer science, math, biology, theoretical chemistry, etc. How nice it would be if the world ran on mathematics and science. But as long as we’re human that won’t happen. How tidy it would be if we could simply categorize groups of people into races and gender. But that’s not reality. I’ve taught students of both genders and all races, colors and creeds. There are differing abilities within our species, but discounting whole groups of people is not efficient. After teaching over a thousand gifted students, I understand that intelligence comes in all sizes, colors, genders, and personalities. Generalizations ensure you miss some of the best minds. That’s the one thing we can’t afford to do as a country.
JacketFan
September 28th, 2010
10:08 pm
As a professor in a “gateway” institution, I can say, with a fair amount of certainty, that a good number of the students I see on a daily basis have no business in college. They are simply spending money that they don’t have on an education they will never finish. The system loves these kids because they stick around long enough to take and re-take classes and keep spending money.
And it has nothing to do with race – it has to do with preparedness and maturity, both of which, unfortunately, most students just do not possess. It will never get better if we do not make significant changes to our education system. That’s just a fact. Fewer and fewer students possess the necessary skill sets to make it at the college leve – and I’m not just talking about math and language skills.
Jacky Jones
September 28th, 2010
10:40 pm
Check out the Georgia Association for Career & Technical Education website: http://www.gacte.org
They are doing some very innovative things working with career & technical teachers all across Georgia. The Georgia Legislature and Department of Education need to do more to support our career & technical education programs, students, and teachers. Its time to turn the focus from HOPE Scholarships for all to career & technical education for all students including “college prep” kids. All students need CTE!
Billy Moss
September 28th, 2010
10:42 pm
Jacky, I completely agree. Matthew Gambill is the Executive Director for the Georgia Association for Career & Technical Education and he has been working very hard with the Legislature and Department of Education for several years now to elevate the status of career and technical education programs. We need to require all our high school students to have a career pathway. Career and technical education courses are for college prep kids too.
Jan Kilpatrick
September 28th, 2010
10:46 pm
I heard Matthew Gambill speak about career and technical education at the Georgia Association for Career & Technical Education Summer Conference last July. There were over 2,000+ career and technical educators in attendance. CTE is picking up a lot of momentum in Georgia. Gene Bottoms at SREB has done a great job promoting the programs as well.
Cara
September 28th, 2010
11:17 pm
What is the goal of our public school system? I think that it is to provide students with a quality education. As a teacher who spends way too much on teacher school supplies and devotes countless hours to plan meaningful activities, I think we need to focus on our main objective. I think high schools need to prepare students for the future. Every child should leave high prepared to go to college. Whether or not they decide to attend is a choice.
David Sims
September 28th, 2010
11:39 pm
@Dekalbite. That’s pretty standard liberal apologetics. Here’s my reply.
No white racist seriously argues that there is no such thing as a smart black. Racial differences aren’t a matter of all versus nothing. Rather, they’re matters of more and less. Depending on which racial difference we’re talking about, it might be a little more versus a little less, or substantially more versus substantially less, or incomparably more versus incomparably less.
If you want to know the facts about something, study it. Look at it carefully. Examine it MUCH. That means you must not limit yourself to your personal experience, because that is too limited for a proper judgment to be made. Anecdotes have some value, but statistical summaries of a great many studies have much more value.
When such studies were done on racial differences in intelligence, the researchers found that the distribution of intelligence, as measured by IQ test scores, show an almost normal distribution within each race. One of the ways you can tell that you have more than one race in a sample, without looking at the people in it, is by noticing that the distribution of their IQs isn’t normal, but skewed or bimodal.
Over more than half a century, psychometricians in the United States have worked to find the normal distributions that most nearly characterize the country’s white and black residents. And the latest results that I know about are these:
White IQ distribution: 103 ± 16.4
Black IQ distribution: 85.0 ± 12.4
The averages in those distributions comes from “Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability” by J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur R. Jensen, published in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2005, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 235-294. The standard deviations in the distributions comes from a 1963 study by Kennedy, Van De Riet, and White.
To generate percentages of a race that have IQs above a specified figure, you must integrate the “bell curve” for that race’s IQ distribution from the specified minimum IQ to positive infinity. The general equation is
P = {1/[σ√(2π)]} ∫(IQ,+∞) exp{ −[(x−x̄)/σ]²/2 } dx
For whites,
W = {1/[16.4√(2π)]} ∫(IQ,+∞) exp{ −[(x−103)/16.4]²/2 } dx
For blacks,
B = {1/[12.4√(2π)]} ∫(IQ,+∞) exp{ −[(x−85)/12.4]²/2 } dx
Of all American whites, only about 5% would qualify for the job if the IQ minimum were 130. However, only one US-resident black in 7030 (about 14 thousandths of one percent) would qualify. Given equal numbers of American whites and US-resident blacks (in a large, randomly selected group of job applicants), there would be 350 times more qualified whites than qualified blacks.
To follow is a chart showing the White-to-Black Qualified Job Applicant Ratio for qualifying minimum IQs ranging from 100 to 140.
IQ=100. Whites exceeding: 57.257228%. Blacks exceeding: 11.320135%. Ratio W/B: 5.1
IQ=105. Whites exceeding: 45.146883%. Blacks exceeding: 5.338277%. Ratio W/B: 8.5
IQ=110. Whites exceeding: 33.475184%. Blacks exceeding: 2.189324%. Ratio W/B: 15.3
IQ=115. Whites exceeding: 23.217361%. Blacks exceeding: 0.777403%. Ratio W/B: 29.9
IQ=120. Whites exceeding: 14.996457%. Blacks exceeding: 0.238194%. Ratio W/B: 63.0
IQ=125. Whites exceeding: 8.988502%. Blacks exceeding: 0.062809%. Ratio W/B: 143.1
IQ=130. Whites exceeding: 4.984674%. Blacks exceeding: 0.014224%. Ratio W/B: 350.4
IQ=135. Whites exceeding: 2.551547%. Blacks exceeding: 0.002762%. Ratio W/B: 923.7
IQ=140. Whites exceeding: 1.203226%. Blacks exceeding: 0.000459%. Ratio W/B: 2619.5
Those ratios in the rightmost column are the ratios you’d expect to find in the labor force for jobs having intellectually demanding requirements, on the condition that there were equal numbers of applicants from both races. However, on average in the United States, Whites outnumber Blacks by a ratio of about six. So in actual practice, where mentally challenging jobs really are apportioned in accordance with employee merit, the ratio of Whites to Blacks would be six times larger than the ratio in that rightmost column.
For all jobs requiring a minimum IQ of 130 for satisfactory performance, there would be (on average in the United States) about 2100 whites hired for each black hired.
David Sims
September 28th, 2010
11:47 pm
Three name-droppers have suddenly shown up, trying to influence us by their mutual agreement!
Proud Black Man
September 29th, 2010
7:37 am
Talking points from your favorite pseudo-scientists as seen in amren.com. We have an educated racist on our hands. Lot of time between pizza deliveries huh? Btw you are influencing no one.
V for Vendetta
September 29th, 2010
8:43 am
David Sims,
You are assuming that IQ is a fixed and unchangeable number. Such an assumption reveals your lack of understanding of psychology. Socioeconomically disadvantaged populations will score lower on IQ tests, regardless of race. Furthermore, many IQ tests are culturally biased towards whites, and, although the use of them has diminished greatly over the years, in poorer school districts they are still widely used–which is precisely where one would expect to find diverse student populations.
I’m not doubting your intelligence in the areas of mathematics and physics, but your philosophical premises are certainly questionable. Finally, assuming there was a proven genetic difference between races, what would it matter? Is a lower IQ a reason to discriminate against a person or a group? Surely, if one values individual rights, it is immoral to discriminate against anyone on the basis of something such as race. To do so is to value a collectivist mindset, one that views people not as individuals but as groups. Of course, this is America, so it is your right to discriminate as you wish.
But I hold with what I said earlier. Your rhetoric means very little in rational and logical contexts, and you probably fall asleep at night clutching the bible and Mein Kampf to your chest having dreams of a pale white Jesus coming back to save us all.
come on now
September 29th, 2010
9:03 am
@Jacky,
i want to clear up any confusion about GA graduation tracks. There is only ONE graduation track and it is College prep. There is suppose to be only ONE Math track; but when the DOE saw the Math II EOCT scores they quickly rearranged things so students could take Math III support (a grad test prep class) and then take Math III in their senior year. The education debate on the national level that NBC and others are covering have even stated that a “one size fits all” curriculum does not work; BUT, what does GA have? EVERY WHERE AROUND THE WORLD there are school systems that have many different tracks to graduation.
I have not seen or heard ONE state representive ask an educator what are some ideas that could be done to save money and help more students graduate.
Fred Cooper Jr.
September 29th, 2010
9:17 am
True…The Georgia Association for Career & Technical Education has been speaking out for a long time on behalf of career and technical (vocational) education. This process starts long before a student is old enough to attend technical college. I find it amazing that the average age of student at the technical college level is 29. We are missing the opportunity to expose kids to careers if we dont start with career exploration in middle school followed by career and technical education in high school.
Sally Wright
September 29th, 2010
9:21 am
Lt. Governor Casey Cagle has spent $48 million dollars since 2007 building “Career Academies.” While they are nice facilities in theory…reality is the state does not have have enough money nor do local systems to build a career academy in every school system in the state. Why are we REINVENTING THE WHEEL??? Lets use the existing career and technical programs that exist already in every high school in the state and require that all high school students take a sequence of career and technical courses? Lt. Governor Cagle is to be commended for his efforts but Career Academies will only reach a small audience of students. Lets broaden the scope.
Jim Youder
September 29th, 2010
9:25 am
Sally…Why are we reinventing the wheel????
Because…Casey Cagle needs something to get re-elected on. Career Academies sound good on the surface. Look at the data. Once a Career Academy is opened enrollment usually declines because high school students dont want to leave their home campus and be away from their friends. We really should be doing something similar to the Career Academy concept with the existing infrastructure that is already in place in all our high schools. However, that would make too much sense and not require millions of taxpayers money. ha ha…
Susan Chung
September 29th, 2010
9:31 am
Check out Jan Bray’s interview from the Today Show yesterday with Kathie Lee Gifford. Jan is the Executive Director of the Association for Career & Technical Education and she talks about modern day career and technical education programs.
http://www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=9E1D1D1E-CB29-11DF-8853000C296BA163&aka=0
Chris
September 29th, 2010
11:34 am
Maureen at 11:02 am on September 28, in regards to your post, I’m in favor of booting the racist comments. I find them not only racially offensive, but also long-winded, distracting and they are bringing down this blog. That’s my view.
David Sims
September 29th, 2010
12:10 pm
@V for Vendetta. IQ is, pretty much, a fixed and unchanging quantity. Many people confuse IQ with acquired mental skills, such as the ability to finish a game of MineSweeper in a short time. When anyone first starts to play that game on the “intermediate” difficulty level, his time to finish is usually around three or four minutes. But as he continues to play, his game times grow briefer, until, usually after about two weeks of frequent playing, he is completing a game in under 60 seconds.
Does that mean his intelligence increased? No. What it means is he used the intelligence he had to acquire a mental skill, which will remain with him as long as he continues to play MineSweeper on the intermediate level at least once daily.
What more nearly measures the player’s intelligence is the shortest time in which he can consistently finish a game of MineSweeper. That briefest finishing time partly reflects the extent to which he can hone the relevant mental math and logic skills by practicing them. I said “partly” because other factors become important as the playing time decreases. But, sooner or later, the player will reach is point of diminishing returns on invested time in practice. His intelligence influences where that point is, as does his reflex speed and muscular coordination.
Intelligence isn’t a skill. It’s an inborn, heritable characteristic of the brain related to its information capacity, to its information transfer efficiency, and to its ability to acquire, interpret, and relate new information as it becomes available.
Your belief regarding the lower IQ scores of “socioeconomically disadvantaged populations…regardless of race” is a common liberal attempt to hide the racial gaps in IQ.
It’s true that the higher SES groups have somewhat higher IQs than the lower SES groups do, but your opinion that the money leads and the IQ follows is mistaken. The reverse is true. A person with a high IQ can usually earn more money than a person with a low IQ can, and that’s the cause of the SES gaps. It’s likewise why you can’t improve the IQ of a retarded person by giving him money.
There are still racial IQ gaps on top of the SES gaps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TBC-BW-IQ-SES-withDiff.png
“Socioeconomic status (SES) varies both between and within populations, but Black-White differences in IQ persist among the children of parents matched for SES, and the gap is largest among the children of wealthiest and best educated parents.” —Wikipedia.
You (V for Vendetta) wrote: “Furthermore, many IQ tests are culturally biased towards whites, and, although the use of them has diminished greatly over the years, in poorer school districts they are still widely used…”
That’s more leftist evasion, easily pierced. Here is why the “cultural bias in IQ tests” explanation won’t work.
1. Asian students coming from cultures more different from the American mainstream than Blacks did usually outperform Whites to some extent on IQ tests, and they outperform Blacks greatly.
2. There are tests having no cultural dependence, such as Raven’s Progressive Matrices, which show exactly the same thing that the more common IQ tests do.
You question my philosophical premises? V, I don’t rely on any a-priori premises. YOU do. I rely on empirically acquired statistical evidence, which is precisely what you can’t do, and also maintain your present viewpoint.
You wrote: “Assuming there was a proven genetic difference between races, what would it matter? Is a lower IQ a reason to discriminate against a person or a group? Surely, if one values individual rights, it is immoral to discriminate against anyone on the basis of something such as race. To do so is to value a collectivist mindset, one that views people not as individuals but as groups. Of course, this is America, so it is your right to discriminate as you wish.”
Let me clarify what I mean when I use the word “morality.” I refer, above all, to a will to do what preserves the existence of the group that practices the moral code. The survival of the molecular information (the DNA) that made the cultural information (the moral code) possible, is a prerequisite for every other value judgment and is, therefore, itself the highest value. Why? Because nothing matters to the dead. Because only to something alive may anything else be good. Because neither knowledge, nor freedom, nor justice, nor happiness, nor prosperity can have any importance if nothing living can preserve and appreciate those other values.
An essay by Herschel Elliott makes this concept more clear. Here is a link to “A General Statement of the Tragedy of the Commons,” which provides a close reasoning for why survival is the highest of moral virtues.
http://dieoff.org/page121.htm
So, to answer your questions: Yes, it is appropriate to discriminate when choosing which person shall have opportunity, because opportunity is not automatic success. Rather, it is a challenge which, if mastered, will bring more challenges, which may ultimately lead to success.
Not everyone who might be given opportunity will be able to surmount the challenge that comes with it. For example, a person hired to do a job that demands from him more mental ability than he has will fail to perform that job in a satisfactory way. He’ll either be fired and replaced, or his inability will inflict a never-ending drag on the company’s competitiveness.
Discrimination is a good thing. It’s what makes it possible for you to reject poison and choose nutritious foods when planning your menu. And it is what allows opportunities to be apportioned to people in accordance with their abilities, instead of being wasted on people who can’t make use of them.
I do have copies of both the Bible and Mein Kampf. They are on my bookshelf. However, those books aren’t on that shelf because I endorse the views of their authors. I am not, for example, a Christian. It is simply useful on occasion to have a Bible handy, in case I should want to point out to a Christian that he isn’t behaving in accordance with his own religious teaching.
It does coincidentally happen that I endorse many of Hitler’s opinions, although not necessarily all of them. I judge his views in my own mind in the same way that I judge everyone else’s.
I have read Kapital, too, and have decided that not everything Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels said is stupid. Some of their criticisms of capitalism are correct and well-presented. They made a basic error in holding that social class is the primary division of mankind. It isn’t, because that’s what race is, and the error is why Marxist regimes often fail. Natural evolution created a partial remedy for the tragedy in the commons for biological collectives (it’s called “love”), but it did nothing similar for socio-economic groups. Man is primarily a biological creature, not a financial one.
jwr
September 29th, 2010
12:57 pm
I certainly agree that every child deserves the choice to go to college, however, our public school systems are not preparing them to realize that choice. Graduating high school 2-3 years below grade level in reading and math means that even if Johnny gets into college with his overinflated grades, he’s not even prepared to pass the remedial classes he’ll spend a year taking.
Next, while college graduates do earn more, not every career field requires college, or even pays you for it. I’m not talking about ditchdiggeres here, but high-5 and 6 figure paying jobs. These require techical and vocational training, not traditional college.
Finally, no matter what, until public schools stop catering to the lowest common demoninator and offer engaging college prep and vocational courses of study, many of those who do want college will be hopelessly unprepared for it.
David Sims
September 29th, 2010
1:38 pm
@Fred Cooper. I suspect you’re with the Jacky Jones, Billy Moss, Jan Kilpatrick trio, but you raised a point I want to address when you wrote: “I find it amazing that the average age of student at the technical college level is 29.”
In about 1982-3, I went with a girlfriend to her “math class” at Rome Junior College. It turned out to be a remedial math class focused on arithmetic, simple algebra, and the use of a basic handheld calculator. The teacher was holding the class at about an eighth-grade level. All of the students were adults who should have long since learned what was being taught in that class. A few of them were elderly. I almost laughed aloud. It is a good thing that those people were trying to catch up, but the extent to which they had fallen behind is shocking. When you see someone who is 30 years old, you assume that he’s had a courses in calculus and differential equations, and maybe also statistics, Fourier transforms, tensors, and suchlike. It’s amazing to discover that he barely knows algebra.
Proud Black Man
September 29th, 2010
1:59 pm
“When you see someone who is 30 years old, you assume that he’s had a courses in calculus and differential equations, and maybe also statistics, Fourier transforms, tensors, and suchlike.”
Get out much lately?
David Sims
September 29th, 2010
2:47 pm
@Proud Black Man. Why, now that you mention it, I haven’t been out of the hills of West Virginia for quite a while. My nearest neighbor, Dr. Bob DeMarais, has a Ph.D. in business something-or-other. Our former employer, Dr. William Pierce, had a Ph.D. in physics. It might be that Dr. Pierce just attracted a bunch of extraordinarily skilled people into the Allegheny Mountains. On the other hand, Green Bank Radio Observatory isn’t too far away.
Proud Black Man
September 29th, 2010
3:48 pm
When you lie down with dogs…
Bob DeMarais-Alcoholic unmarried Jew lover or patriot?
http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=45232
Attentive Parent
September 29th, 2010
9:41 pm
I’m going to interrupt a troublesome dialogue to go back to what is a very important topic.
George Leef posted above.
Here’s an excellent discussion from today he wrote on what’s wrong with College for All and credential inflation:
http://popecenter.org/clarion_call/article.html?id=2415
Dekalbite@David Sims
September 29th, 2010
9:49 pm
You are reading some mega outdated books.
Here’s some of my personal favorites:
The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
Collapse by Jared Diamond
The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
Hot Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett
Outliers by Malcom Gladwell
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohan
V for Vendetta
September 30th, 2010
8:38 am
Dekalbite,
Of course he’s reading outdated books. He’s using whatever information he can find to justify his preconceived notions of racial superiority. Like any collectivist, he is judging groups based on their traits instead of looking at people individually. Even if his information were true, it still would not justify his collectivist mindset. His only rebuttal to opposing arguments is that they are all liberal propaganda–which I find humorous because I am anything but liberal. I wonder if he’s found a statistical reason to hate gays yet. I’m sure we’ll hear about it.
Great list of books, by the way. If only more people would read them. I would also add:
God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
The End of Faith by Sam Harris
The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins
The Language of God by Francis Collins
Georgia Teacher
September 30th, 2010
9:30 am
Only one question about this study: How many open jobs are there in Murray County that require a college degree?
Proud Black Man
September 30th, 2010
9:52 am
And to add to that list of books:
This Kind of War by TR Fehrenbach
Lies My History Teacher Told Me by James Loewen
Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
Cold Black Preach by Robert Decoy
and two great short stories
The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling
To Build a Fire by Jack London
V for Vendetta
September 30th, 2010
1:16 pm
PBM,
Great short story picks! I love those two.
Ole Guy
September 30th, 2010
8:04 pm
What ever happened to the quaint concept of pursuing the career which makes one happy; which provides a sense of fullfillment? Yes, we know that, ON AVERAGE, the college grad, over a lifetime, will probably earn a few more denaro (there goes my last sensitivity ribbon) than the non-college grad. Whatever happened to the trade school concept which prepares the kid for a vocation which will provide a sense of accomplishment rather than pad a bank account beyond that required for a nominal lifestyle?
As much as I hate to even suggest this…a college degree, in today’s harsh environment, could conceivably become an anchor to the kid’s career progression. Quite possibly, the constricted economy of the 21st century just may require a whole lot more indians and a whole lot less chiefs. I know this is an arguement which receives a share of attention when it comes time to debate the issue. But at the very same time, kids seem to flock to colleges and universities in ever-expanding numbers. A recent article in USA Today bore this out. The thought process seems to be that by gaining degrees of one flavor or another, job prospects will appear. While this may or may not be the reality du jour, in the end…getting on a payroll…is roughly split down the middle with PREPARATION, schools, degrees, etc accounting for employability prospects, and PLAIN DUMB LUCK/right place-right time accounting for the other half. So the kid might as well pursue that which is enjoyable and fullfilling, rather than go blind for four years studying ideals which may not have the applicability in the work place which they may have once had.
Besides, where is the rule that if one is to pursue a degree, it must be realised by the age of 22?