Everyone has to be rich now??

[Major Seven]

One place where I agree with the Euro system of schooling is that they have not gone full-in on the Chromebooks/Laptops. From what I have read, they still write everything and use notebooks and paper and real books. I think this is a great way of doing it. I think the computer education is also important as well as typing on a keyboard, but I think there should be a class time for that, not use it for learning every single subject.

I will say, my buddy talked me into taking typing class my Senior year of high school. I did not want to but he said, come on, it will be easy. It was not easy and out teacher had us clacking keyboards and typewriters from the moment the bell rang until it rang again. Turns out it was possibly one of the most important classes I ever took because everything changed within a few years and being able to be proficient on a keyboard on a computer put you in a good spot. I see people even today, all these years later, and they are not proficient on a keyboard. I tell them if they would just put the time in and get really good at it, they would be so much more efficient. Some care, some don't. Like life I guess.

Had typing c;lass as well. Another unexpected side effect was Latin. I can interpret so much more now because of it.

 

[Major Seven]

Ok, reminder, no religious discussion, of any kind. I'm leaving in place a quote that happens to come from a religious source but was not cited in an inherently religious vein. Subsequent discussion of the quote has been deleted without penalties, but leave it alone.



A couple of things here;

First of all, in the American system, for the most part the student is treated as a customer. Their education is treated as a commodity they purchase with their own (generally borrowed) money. So the question isn't, in the abstract, for society to decide whether they're "throwing good money after bad" but for the student to make that decision. "We're" not spending piles of money, students are.

Secondly...


... define "lots." For all the hullabaloo about supposed deadbeat grads and "worthless" degrees, the fact is that college grads continue to place as well as ever in the job market and make good livings. And that's not even getting at the bigger issues of becoming thoughtful members of society, where I think objectively the current crop of college grads are doing as well as any generation ever did in modern times. I mean, there's a book out there about Boomers titled "A Generation of Sociopaths." 21-year-olds have always been on a learning curve stepping into adult maturity.

A human being is not a factory product, and college is not an assembly line. They don't pop out into the world with their degrees all packaged up and in the best operating condition they'll ever be in. It's more like planting an orchard of fruit trees; they take a lot of watering and pruning but the payoff doesn't come until long after. College students get exposed not only to a lot of information about different topics, but a lot of experiences and ways of doing things and ways of thinking. That's not all guaranteed to gel the moment they graduate. There was an interesting article about five years ago, from a women who double-majored in engineering and philosophy. She pursued a career in engineering; she said that she actually USES her philosophy degree, in practical ways, MUCH more often, fifteen years later. Most of what she learned in engineering classes is obsolete by now, but the thinking methods she learned in philosophy continue to be useful.



Sorry you don't recognize yours; but what you describe sounds a lot like mine. This is what goes on every year on my campus. We recently graduated the woman who didn't finish high school, got her GED, drove a school bus, went to community college, transferred in to us and completed her bachelor's degree while still driving the bus each day. And she's amazing, a constant fountain of questions and ideas.

I agree, there's definitely an issue with college preparedness, and it's a lifelong thing. It isn't like kids arrive at college in the same state they did forty years ago and somehow colleges can't educate them like they used to.

Part of it, as I mentioned in a previous post, is that a far higher proportion of the population goes to college in the first place. In 1940 6% of the population had a college degree, now 37% do. We're working with a broad swath of the population, not just groomed elites.

Another part is that not just education, but the total life experience, is different now. Far fewer people read books. There's a study that started tracking these things back in the 1970s, at which point something like 40% of high school graduates had read 6 or more books for pleasure in the prior year. Now it's down around 10%. I teach history; to be sure, there are lots of technological ways we convey information than were available in the past, the internet and video and all. But by the same token, the modern student has a much bigger barrier to receive information the way that people of the past received it, and therefore to understand the ways they recorded the information of their lives. That information is in books, and students have a much harder time actually reading whole books themselves.

That doesn't mean forget about college, or about teaching history in college, altogether. There are still lots of students who do great at it. But it does mean that, as a professor, I think about my pedagogy, how to meet the students where there at and give them the chance to get where they need to get to. Some won't; failure is always a possibility in the system. But I've had lots of them do very well and truly impress me.

I went to visit my university. There was no more bookstore. I loved that bookstore. It was full of esoteric books you could'nt find elsewhere.

 

[Parzival]

Had typing c;lass as well. Another unexpected side effect was Latin. I can interpret so much more now because of it.

Latin should be required for any high schoolers in a STEM path or Law path.

 

[MJ5150]

I went to visit my university. There was no more bookstore. I loved that bookstore. It was full of esoteric books you could'nt find elsewhere.

Speaking of libraries. I found myself in Cambridge, MA last week with the wife. As I sat there munching on my bagel, I realized I was surrounded by people far more intelligent than I was. We decided to do something about it, so we roamed the campus until we found a library open to the public, went inside, sat down, and had a few minutes to look over some books of interest. On the way home, we discussed how we both felt a bit stimulated intellectually by our time at the library and agreed we'd do it again next month when we visit Cambridge.
We also learned the good libraries require a student ID or that non-students be with a student. We'll also see about making friends with a student who will get us in the good libraries.

-Mike

 

[definenredefine]

On the student loans, how are they predatory? I'm not being smart, I am really curious. And on loans, you will always owe more than you borrowed. Unless you have found some generous folks to give you a 0% interest rate.

I should have been more clear - sorry! With student loans, it's possible to make regular payments and see no change in the amount you owe. Sometimes it goes UP. I forget the details/mechanics of how that's possible, but the thing I read or listened to (I honestly don't remember) mentioned that no other loan works that way.

If all public education is free, then you will basically just be extending high school from 12th grade to 16th grade. Will you get a more educated citizenry? Maybe, but I'm not sure. And then there will still be higher education above that and then it will become the standard if you want to get a good job.

Not necessarily. Free (and yes I realize it's not really free) doesn't mean mandatory. I don't think everyone should have to have a post-secondary education, but I think that everyone who wants one should have access to it.

Well, when we open the discussion of "free public education for all", it seems to me the first question is "why isn't the existing free public education for all, providing the "educated citizenry" it's supposed to?" So first action would be "fix that".

Yes, absolutely! Like another person on this thread, I live in NC. In our state, a really good first step would be to pay our teachers a living wage. My wife taught middle school special ed and only made $1700/month, even though she has a master's degree. This was within the last 15-20 years. Even in our little city, that's not nearly enough to make ends meet.

Other steps go beyond education and speak to ways to improve communities - things like the food deserts I mentioned earlier, or carceral reform, or a whole host of other issues that may make it more likely for students to have the support they need outside of school (as was mentioned a few times upthread.)

But electricians? Phlebotomist techs? maybe worth public funds for job training.

Yes, most definitely. But again, the way you framed this is still education as a means to an end. I am fundamentally opposed to that framing. Education is an end to itself.

The bloat in the administration is real

This is a major problem in healthcare. Ask me how I know...

Quite frankly, AI scares the hell out of me.

Me too.

I think this “need” for higher education is starting to turn around. Lots of kids coming out of school with degrees but no real ability to apply anything they learned, or they’re learning stuff that’s either already obsolete or just irrelevant to the job at hand. I’m seeing more and more businesses looking for people with some baseline abilities (MS Suite), good communication skills, and the ability to connect the dots with what’s being communicated in an interview. It’s going to be a long and slow process, but I think the shift is starting.

Well...but the "need" for a degree to get a job I think was more about being educated in general. Which I think is a good thing. As I've said a few times now, I don't think a college degree should be about getting a particular job (though certain degrees are and always will be about that.) There are learning, application and social skills that one gains in college that are applicable even if they don't seem obviously so.

My bachelor's degree is in sociology. I'm a pharmacist. Those wouldn't appear to go together. But having a degree in sociology gives me a perspective that folks with a traditional "healthcare path" (so to speak) degree - eg bio or chem or biochem) - don't have. I think that's an advantage.

My point is that sending a bunch more functionally illiterate unmotivated behavior problems to four more years of "college" will not transform them into educated productive citizens, but it surely will waste a heck of a lot of money and devalue a four year "college" degree.

Does anyone remember the sci fi story (Asimov?) where EVERYONE has a PhD?

Again, I'm not advocating for mandatory college, and I agree with you re: devaluing degrees that would result. We definitely should focus on primary and secondary education preferentially as well.

One place where I agree with the Euro system of schooling is that they have not gone full-in on the Chromebooks/Laptops. From what I have read, they still write everything and use notebooks and paper and real books.

They don't really care for standardized tests either.

Their education is treated as a commodity they purchase with their own (generally borrowed) money.

To me, this i the problem. Education (and healthcare, while we're at it) should be treated as public goods rather than commodities. I think that's the biggest mistake we've made (and continue to make.)

that's not even getting at the bigger issues of becoming thoughtful members of society

This, all day long.

And my post was in response to someone saying that post-secondary education should be free for all. My point is that if existing elementary and secondary educations, on which we spend even bigger piles of money, are not reliably meeting their stated goals, that's the first thing to fix. Sending illiterate unmotivated behavior problems on to four years of "free college" isn't going to turn them into the people that their elementary and secondary experiences failed to create.

One more time - free for all ≠ mandatory.

What was "rich" to me? I knew engineers at work who made $80,000. That was big-kids money. Anything beyond that was incomprehensible.

My first job out of pharmacy school paid a hair over $80k/year. That was 2010. I was plenty comfortable. Of course, at that point I was able to live a half mile from work in a single bedroom house for like $700/month. Things aren't quite like that anymore. Which I think is the point of this thread...

 

[MJ5150]

Let's all just take a moment to recall rule #1 at TalkBass, respect each other.
We don't expect everyone to agree and be buddies around here, that's not the point of respect. Rather, it's when you come across someone who's on the opposite end of the opinion you have. There's your chance to show respect, even if you think they're wrong.
If it happens you were insulted or disrespected, please use the Report button to let the moderators know. We'll handle it behind the scenes and you can move on with your day. Don't give that person who insulted/disrespected you the satisfaction of a reply.
Thanks y'all for making TalkBass a great place.

-Mike

 

[fdeck]

.... This is a major problem in healthcare. Ask me how I know...

En route to gratifying myself with my latest theory, I dug up some stats:

United Healthcare employs about 440k people, and serves about 52 million people.

Medicare employs about 6k people, and serves 65 million people.

Now, Medicare doesn't have a billing department... their billing department is the IRS, which has about 100k employees, and they work with Social Security, which has about 60k employees. But serving Medicare is only a small part of what those agencies do.

 

[djmay]

En route to gratifying myself with my latest theory, I dug up some stats:

United Healthcare employs about 440k people, and serves about 52 million people.

Medicare employs about 6k people, and serves 65 million people.

Now, Medicare doesn't have a billing department... their billing department is the IRS, which has about 100k employees, and they work with Social Security, which has about 60k employees. But serving Medicare is only a small part of what those agencies do.

Enlightening

 

[hrodbert696]

I went to visit my university. There was no more bookstore. I loved that bookstore. It was full of esoteric books you could'nt find elsewhere.

That is a loss, I agree. It isn't due to colleges, but to Amazon.

 

[nutdog]

Can’t say I miss the university book store. The profs took turns writing text books and every couple of years they rotated so the used books were worth nothing. Did physics 101 really change since last year?

 

[nutdog]

and yes I realize it's not really free

One more time - free for all ≠ mandatory.

If you know it’s not free why do you keep calling it free?

I think what you are advocating for is a mandatory fee for everyone so some can go to college for the public good. That’s an argument worth making but calling it something it’s not kind of undercuts it.

 

[turf3]

Can’t say I miss the university book store. The profs took turns writing text books and every couple of years they rotated so the used books were worth nothing. Did physics 101 really change since last year?

Ah yes, rule ONE of textbook selection: Thou shalt select a new textbook for thy classes every year. In all things, a textbook written by thyself or one of thy tenured colleagues shall be given preference. If no new textbook is available, a new edition will suffice.

It always seemed to us impecunious undergraduates that there was a cabal dedicated to making our used books worthless, and to making next year's students buy new ones instead of used ones.

That said, the university bookstore DID carry a lot of non-textbook titles that were not likely to be found at the local ordinary bookstore.

 

[turf3]

...

One more time - free for all ≠ mandatory.

...

Yes, but there'll be an awful lot of those I described, the young people who are unqualified for actual university education, but who will cheerfully sign up for four free years of dumbed-down subjects on someone else's dime.

Look, you can't have it both ways. Either you have education as an end in itself, in which case you do away with things like engineering and health sciences, and you limit it to those who can truly cope with the material. Oh yes, you also need to make it so that this non-training education does not require the students to take on lifetime loads of crushing debt or use up all their parents' resources.

Or, you go ahead and accept the dual education-as-end-in-itself AND education-as-professional-training paradigm that's been in place since the early 1900s, and you figure out how to make that time and money be worth something.

This gets into the advice I invariably give young posters on these forums who ask about majoring in music performance. I always say "If you and your parents can afford to pay cash for that degree, a degree almost none of whose holders will be remuneratively working in the field after graduation, and doing so will not adversely affect your long term financial future or your parents' financial future, go for it. But if you have to borrow a bunch of money, or use up all your parents' savings, you'd better go for something that will make you self-supporting and able to retire that debt quickly."

This goal of "an educated citizenry" is what was used 150 years ago to justify the existing public education 1-12 system. Rather than extending the government handouts for another four years, let's fix the 1-12 system so it does yield an educated citizenry. If you saw what my grandmother studied in the course of completing a high school edcuation, in a small rural town in Kansas over 100 years ago, she had an education equal or superior to most run of the mill BAs from big state party schools. And by no means did every young student even complete high school in those days; the general expectation was that after 8 years of schooling, the student would understand the basics of arithmetic, writing (and I mean the ability to compose a letter, not just form letters on the page), read any non-technical books written in English, manage their personal finances and run a small company's business if needed (a farm is a small business), recognize much of English literature, command a basic understanding of science as it was known at the time, have a knowledge of geography, and have a general understanding of the government, politics, and history of the United States and Europe.

That was what the run of the mlll eighth grader, in a farming community, who also had to do chores before and after school, was expected to know. Not at a deep level, but certainly to understand the basics of all these to a sufficient extent to conduct their adult life if they stopped school right there.

If you read biographies of people before the modern era of social promotion and fad-based elementary education, observe how WELL people with third-grade and sixth-grade educations could write a letter. Yes, their spelling was often unreliable, but they organized their thoughts, wrote cogently and with sense, and wrapped it up when the subject was exhausted. And they did it with clear, legible penmanship.

Now it's being said that since TWELVE years of instruction isn't sufficient, we need to make "college free for everyone" to try to get kids with SIXTEEN years of instruction up to where they were with EIGHT years, a century ago. I call BS.. Throwning good money after bad in a system that's broken is not fixing the system.

 

[GretschWretch]

Speaking of libraries. I found myself in Cambridge, MA last week with the wife. As I sat there munching on my bagel, I realized I was surrounded by people far more intelligent than I was. We decided to do something about it, so we roamed the campus until we found a library open to the public, went inside, sat down, and had a few minutes to look over some books of interest. On the way home, we discussed how we both felt a bit stimulated intellectually by our time at the library and agreed we'd do it again next month when we visit Cambridge.
We also learned the good libraries require a student ID or that non-students be with a student. We'll also see about making friends with a student who will get us in the good libraries.

-Mike

Okay; a couple of things here. One: I took typing in college. Made a D.

Regarding libraries, if you were in Cambridge you probably were visiting private university campuses. Mine was/is a state university -- public. And citizens of Alabama can use our library in-house. One does not have to be a student; a person off the street can use it. But they cannot check out materials. To do that one must get a for-fee Friends membership.

And one brag I will claim, derail though it is (and because I do not have a pre-CBS Fender to boast about) regarding the intellectual stimulation libraries can provide. Before me, in the dozen years of my library building's existence before I came, a succession of four librarians were responsible for my floor. I had it for thirty-six years. I built that collection; that collection was MINE.

A few weeks before my retirement I got to give a tour of my floor (the "literature" floor) to a new hire as the English Department's Shakespeare specialist and his wife. The Specialist had his Ph.D. from Purdue. I showed them Shakespeare circulating and the Shakespeare reference, at which point the wife said we had more material on Shakespeare that what Purdue did.

I glowed inside.

 

[fhm555]

Wealth inequality is a recurring pattern in history. The outcomes are not always great for the poor or the rich. Teleworking had the possiblity to change this dynamic given it wouldn't be necessary to live close to your workplace or have the need to own a vehicle to take you there.

The basic flaw in telework is it is near impossible to project a facade of power and control when there are no proletariat physically present to use as a thumb rest.

 

[GretschWretch]

That is a loss, I agree. It isn't due to colleges, but to Amazon.

Maybe. But before Amazon even existed publishing houses were infiltrating college bookstores. Barnes and Noble already had a firm hold on my daughter's college bookstore. This was in 1993.

On a side note, we actually have not one, but TWO moderators regularly participating in this thread. How cool is that?

 

[fhm555]

Speaking of libraries. I found myself in Cambridge, MA last week with the wife. As I sat there munching on my bagel, I realized I was surrounded by people far more intelligent than I was. We decided to do something about it, so we roamed the campus until we found a library open to the public, went inside, sat down, and had a few minutes to look over some books of interest. On the way home, we discussed how we both felt a bit stimulated intellectually by our time at the library and agreed we'd do it again next month when we visit Cambridge.
We also learned the good libraries require a student ID or that non-students be with a student. We'll also see about making friends with a student who will get us in the good libraries.

-Mike

Growing up, the only two places I wanted to be was in the woods or in a library. I’m almost certain it was because there were no other humans in the woods, and in a library one must communicate in low tones which discouraged such interactive nonsense of the small variety; and the world was literally at my fingertips.

 

[WG Plum]

I was sad when I heard The Hungry Mind, my college bookstore, had closed down. I still have bookmarks from it thirty years later.

 

[MuseChaser]

As a very young child, I watched my parents work their way out of a very financially poor existence (living in a used trailer, one beat-up car, barely money for food and heat, Mom made some of our clothes, etc....I won't use the word "poverty" because we weren't unhappy). My Mom passed at 56 due to multi decade battle with cancer, but they were quite comfortable financially well before then, and Dad is still doing VERY well

My wife and I both started out with nothing, worked our way through college, lived similarly meager existences in the early days of starting our own family, and now in our retirement from "day gigs" are also blessed with no financial worries

Our three kids are also following similar arcs, doing most everything on their own with little parental assistance, all owning their own homes (with mortgages) and gradually building equity.

The common thread is the immutable principal that one must not only live within one's means, but BELOW one's means. Never spend more than you earn. That principle has been firmly implanted in our family for many generations and will never change.

What has changed is the amount of "stuff" folks seem to require to be happy and the definition of "poverty." Our kids have always had much more and lived "better" than we did at their ages, with very little assistance from us. My wife and I in our early marriage days (got married when I was 21, first child at 24) probably lived more similarly to our own parents, but they'd probably say we had it better.

The standards of living have increased dramatically in terms of what is considered minimums for housing, vehicles, and what we now define as necessities. All of that costs more money. One has choices....discover that some things really aren't necessities, that incurring debts for wants rather than true needs is a bad idea, or find ways to make more money.

Or engage in unproductive rage, jealousy, class warfare, and placing blame.

The opportunities are still out there for anyone. Sure, some jobs won't be ideal, enjoyable, or within one's envisioned goals in life, but you can always work towards those goals viewing a job you hate as a means to get there....and being grateful for that job.

My life goal as a teen and young adult was to be the next Chick Corea....all I wanted to do was practice piano, write music, and gig. My Dad convinced me to get a music ed degree, "just in case." After a few years of doing pretty well playing full time, my wife and I decided we wanted to have kids, so I applied for and got a teaching gig "for a few years" to offer my family some security from the financial vagaries of a not-household-name musican's up and down times. Never liked the job....having to get up at 5:30 AM, getting home at 5pm, clueless administration who had no idea what music education was for, demanding unreasonable parents, students who never practiced...just a constant assault on the music that meant so much to me. Then .... 31 years later, I retired. So much for "...a few years." You know what? It was a great life, despite the things about job I hated. I had some GREAT students, met a lot of wonderful parents and families, did a lot of good for a lot of kids, and even had a few great administrators! Not the life I had planned, but managed to keep a good performing career, that still continues, going throughout the whole time.

Why do I bother telling that story? On a gig several years ago, a friend of mine who's a world class electric bassist and also a very successful realtor was complaining, chiding me about how easy teachers have it....all that time off in the summer, just babysitting kids for a few hours a day, vacations and long weekends all the time, a nice paycheck (about a fifth of what he was making, but whatever... ), and a pension. I said to him, "Ronnie, if it's such a great gig, why don't you do it? Nothing's stopping you."

His reply was, "Oh, I could never do that."

OK.

It's easy to be jealous of those who live lives that appear "better" or easier than ours. Maybe it's better to focus on how to attain one's goals than on what seems to be preventing that journey. Many times, and I dare say most times, the obstacles are internal rather than external.

Just my thoughts and experiences. I understand and accept that they may not reflect everyone's.

 

[GretschWretch]

Growing up, the only two places I wanted to be was in the woods or in a library. I’m almost certain it was because there were no other humans in the woods, and in a library one must communicate in low tones which discouraged such interactive nonsense of the small variety; and the world was literally at my fingertips.

This, and being with small-town girls, on the village green, when I was seventeen.