Nobody should be left behind

After a few years of blogging, I deleted all the posts in one stroke.  All gone. 

A few months later, I re-started the blog in 2008. 

In one of the earliest posts in this re-invented blog space, on September 19, 2008, I wrote about one of my commentaries that was published in The Register Guard on August 27, 2007.

In that commentary in 2007, I wrote:

Of course, university education is not merely about economic productivity. It is also to develop a culture of learning and an appreciation of various aspects of life. Personally, I am immensely thankful for the opportunity that I have to pursue learning as my vocation. But at a huge cost to the youth, are we incorrectly advocating that college education is the only avenue for individuals to be economically productive?

I recall that my opinion did not go well with some in higher education.  Of course it won't when, as Upton Sinclair phased it, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

For years, even in my California days, I have been arguing for higher education and career/technical education (CTE.)  I have been appalled at how much we have been systematically marginalizing CTE, even taking a condescending attitude towards it, and pushing college for all. 

And, oh, meanwhile Reagan's politics have taken a firm hold on the public and college has been severely under-funded by taxpayers, which makes those from lower-income backgrounds take on huge debts to go to college.

The result has been a shitstorm.

Angus Deaton, a recent recipient of the economics prize in Nobel's memory, and his colleague and wife, Anne Case, looked into the opioid crisis deaths and their study resulted in the much talked about Deaths of Despair.  They find that the undergraduate degree is one hell of a marker of tragedies.

[The] extraordinary thing for us was just how much power that bachelor’s cutoff had—in morbidity and mortality, marriage, out of wedlock childbearing, and churchgoing—everything you could think of.  We have a real problem in this country. We valorize this bachelor’s degree in a ridiculous way that’s not pinned to anything that people can actually do. It’s this one goal which leaves behind the two thirds of the people in this country who are not going to get it.

One would think that democratic politics, which depend on votes, would seize the opportunity to address the two-thirds, right?

Wrong!  Here is Deaton:

But the politics of not having a bachelor’s are really bad too. The Democrats largely decided to abandon the working class and build a coalition of educated elites and minorities (including working-class minorities), and the Republicans basically followed business and religious organizations.

tRump spoke to the whites in this two-thirds and won a couple of key states by thin margins.  It appears that they are yet to wake up to the reality that he merely wanted their votes and that he has been screwing them even more than what real Republicans used to do.

Deaton has more to say about college and occupations:

I do think it would be better if everybody who’s capable of and wants to get a college degree could get a college degree, and the high cost of state universities is working against that.... Nothing I want to say would want to detract from that, but our education system, which is geared from kindergarten to send people to college, only graduates a third of its students from college. It is a disgrace, because the other two thirds are in this vulnerable group. ... I think we’ve got to change our educational system so that it offers multiple things. You’ve got to find other things for people to do, and a much greater multiplicity of valorization of occupations.

Warren Buffett, whom I have quoted a lot in this blog, also had a lot to say about how we--as a society--are not taking care of everybody.  In responding to a question at the virtual shareholder meeting, Buffett emphasized that “Nobody should be left behind."

Buffett, who’s been a cheerleader for America, added that the wealthiest country in the world should “try to create a society that under normal conditions with more than $60,000 of GDP per capita, that anybody that worked 40 hours a week can have a decent life without a second job and with a couple of kids.”

Unfortunately, nothing has changed much in higher education in all these years since my column was published in 2007.

Maybe we have reached a point where we will be compelled to initiate reforms that should have begun more than two decades ago!  But, radical transformations will have tragic consequences for many.  Only time will tell!

May we please stop pushing college degrees for all?

Consider the following, which are the concluding sentences from James Surowiecki's "Financial Page" column in the New Yorker:

We should also rethink our assumption that college is always the right answer, regardless of cost. Politicians love to invoke education as the solution to our economic ills. But they’re often papering over the fact that our economy just isn’t creating enough good jobs for ordinary Americans. The notion that college will transform your job prospects is, in many cases, an illusion, and for a while for-profit schools turned it into a very lucrative one.

Now, read the following sentences from the concluding paragraph in Rebecca Schuman's column at Slate:

The university classroom benefits from a diversity of backgrounds, including first-generation students who absolutely should get any support they need with college readiness. Every American who wants to attend college should be able to (and for a lot less money than they’re currently laying out). But those who don’t want to shouldn’t feel like they have to

Here is the problem: Surowiecki and Schuman are not higher education "insiders."  Yes, Schuman, is an adjunct faculty after earning her doctorate.  After being on the doctoral path at Yale, Surowiecki became a journalist/writer.  For all purposes, both are "outsiders" looking in at higher education when they conclude that the push for college degree for all is not worth the talk, leave alone the money that we invest.

It is an open secret anymore that we are unnecessarily pushing college degrees down the throats of young, and older, adults.  All we have managed to achieve through this is an enormous level of credential inflation.  Which is what Schuman notes as well:

the solution is to stop requiring a bachelor’s degree to be an office assistant, or a paralegal, or any number of professions that up until recently could be staffed—successfully—by the holder of an associate’s degree or high-school diploma.

The first ever op-ed of mine that was published along these lines was about two decades ago.  Yep, back in California, not too long after earning my doctorate, I argued in that opinion piece that we were committing a double crime of pushing college degrees and undermining vocational education.  Nobody cared then because I was an outsider--I was not in academia at that time.  (Well, ok, there was one wonderful benefit from that--a Mike contacted me after reading the column, which later led to dinners as well.)

As an academic, of course, I have written quite a few op-eds by now criticizing the overselling of college degrees and the under-investment in vocational education.  The only time that a fellow academic responded to it, well, it was pretty much a personal attack.  Otherwise, the higher education professionals remain silent as ever.  Why?  It should not surprise you by now--this college degree issue is merely one of the many examples for why I loved the George Bernard Shaw quote as the title for this blog itself: every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.



(BTW, keep in mind that the criticism is against the push for college degrees; having a degree is not the same as having been educated, wherein lies a huge part of the problem.)

Through the looking glass. A broken looking glass.

One moment you are enjoying life and the blue sky with puffy white clouds. And the next moment, well, shit happens. Sometimes. Like this:

I suppose the cosmos determined that it was time that I paid up, some more.  Can't fight that cosmos.

"You have to pay a $100 deductible."  Not that bad a deal to replace the windshield, I figured.  I was even Polyanna-ish thinking that it could have been worse.

The auto repair folks gave me a ride.  It turned out to be more than a ride.

"How has your day been thus far?" the young fellow asked me.  He didn't look older than twenty-five.

"Looks like I am draining my wallet today. Other than that, things are well. Thanks."

Conversation is not a solo act.  I followed up with "How about you?"

"Am looking at a long day" he said. But, he continued to have a pleasant expression on his face.  Not like me, who was born with a face that apparently cannot even convey a smile!

"Oh yeah?"  That was the cue for him to continue.  And he did.

"After a full day here, I head to work four hours at UPS."

"Wait a sec, are both part-time jobs, or is one full-time and the other part-time?"

Turns out that the UPS job is a part-time one on top of the full-time job.

"That is a long day.  An exhausting day, I imagine."

"Yes, tiring sometimes."

"I teach at Western Oregon.  A few weeks ago a student was describing the tiring job he had at UPS, sorting boxes and loading trucks" I told him.

"Hey, if people are ready to hire you, then I bet you have a very good work ethic."

"I suppose so. I think I have a good work ethic.  That matters a lot" he said.

For a second he seemed to think about his life and experiences.  "It worked out well because I am not the scholarly type" he said.  "I love the trades."

I was yet again reminded that we do a huge disservice to the young by pushing an unhealthy ambiance right from elementary school years that those who don't go to college are losers, and that the trades are only for the ones who can't make it.  This young man is yet another evidence in my pile that there are plenty of people who love what they do, enjoy their lives, understand the world, are wonderfully articulate, and all of that without ever stepping their foot on a college campus.  Life is not about piece of paper that the college diploma is.

The ride ended.  "Thanks for the ride, and the chat."

He put his hand out.  "Thanks. I am ___."

"I am sriram."

"Srilam?"

"Sriram."

"Got it. Sriram."

I wished him well.

I got more than $100 worth out of the shit that the cosmos flung my way.
The score: Cosmos 0 versus sriram who is a gazillion dollars wiser after chatting away with a twenty-five year old young man.  The cosmos lost big time! Again!!!  I am all set for the next round with the cosmos.

Kill the college. Now.

Over the past decades, the push for collegiate education has systematically led to a marginalization of career and technical education (CTE) programs in schools. More than a marginalization, there has been an unhealthy shift in attitudes that view college-preparatory programs as being superior to CTE programs. This atrocious attitude has resulted in many students at colleges and universities to attend college only because they fear being labeled a “loser” otherwise.

The existence of such a view about those who do not attend college is a tragic reflection of our own selves—us elders—who have cultivated and propagated such a grossly distorted view. These contrasting attitudes towards college-prep and CTE programs, with the latter suffering the proverbial stepchild treatment, do not serve the students and society well.

Thus, it was heart-warming to read that throughout Oregon “there has been an effort to expand CTE programs in middle and high schools.” It was even more encouraging to read that Oregon’s efforts to expand CTE has inspired Rep. Kurt Schrader to introduce a bill in Congress to expand funding for such programs throughout the country.  We need a lot more coverage of these programs, and a lot more public support for them as well.

But, at the same time, I hope we are promoting CTE for all the correct reasons of introducing children to the phenomenal range of opportunities that they can choose from and not because we want to track them on a vocational path. Because, more than anything else, we live in a world where careers are increasingly volatile, and this volatility can easily make a mockery of the decisions we make, especially when young.

It is possible that there is a renewed attention on CTE because of the anemic economic recovery with respect to the persistent unemployment rate. Here, we should keep in mind that the “jobless” recovery is not really about “skills mismatch”—the claim that we don’t have people with the skills needed for the jobs that are out there. While economists disagree on this as they always do on any topic, there is a strong evidence-based argument, such as the one from the Economic Policy Institute, that “the weak labor market recovery is not due to skills mismatch (or any other structural factors).” Instead, it is due to weakness in the aggregate demand in the economy.

CTE programs ought to be considered as important as college-prep programs for all the right reasons. My neighbors are successful self-employed business owners, who did not attend college, and are living the American Dream. They exemplify the old Mark Twain quip that he never let schooling get in the way of his education.

Whether it is via college-prep or career and technical education programs, I hope that teenagers are developing an understanding that the world is their oyster.

This is a slightly edited version of an op-ed that will soon be published in the Statesman Journal

Harvard says everyone doesn't need a college degree

And my thought is: it took this long for Harvard to figure it out? (ht)  Even I have been blogging about it for years!  The report is clear:

Our current system places far too much emphasis on a single pathway to success: attending and graduating from a four-year college after completing an academic program of study in high school.

Yes.  An overemphasis, which has resulted in higher education becoming one huge ponzi scheme. 

Our fundamental problem is that our system has not evolved to serve young adults in this radically different world. Behaving as though four-year college is the only acceptable route to success clearly still works well for many young adults, especially students fortunate enough to attend highly selective colleges and universities. It also works well for affluent students, who can often draw on family and social connections to find their way in the adult world. But it clearly does not work well for many, especially young men. In recent years, a yawning gender gap has opened up in American higher education. Men now account for just 43 percent of enrollment in our nation’s colleges, and earn only 43 percent of bachelor’s degrees. Not surprisingly, women also account for 60 percent of the nation’s graduate students.23 Similarly, among the low-income and young people of color who will make up an increasing portion of the workforce of the future, this single route does not work well either. Many of these students are frustrated by an education they often find irrelevant and removed from the world of work. And given the barriers—including weak or nonexistent career counseling, rising college costs, inadequate financial aid, and the frequent need to balance their courses with jobs that are often totally disconnected from their programs of study—it is a minor miracle that so many still manage to complete a degree

So?

We also need to elevate the critical importance of relevant work experience in a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. The workplace is clearly the place to “try on” or test out a career choice. It’s also by far the best venue in which to learn the “21st century skills” so critical to success in today’s economy. And work-linked learning can be extraordinarily powerful in engaging students who are bored or turned off by conventional classroom instruction. Yet in comparison to many other advanced countries, America has largely neglected this highly effective learning method. We need to revolutionize our approach.

Ok. This is all more of the obvious--obvious to people like me who have been trying to get people's attention all these years.  The report engages only in wishful thinking.  But, a useful first step--after all, when Harvard says there is a problem, then things happen.

The liberal arts is dead. Long live the liberal arts.

There is nothing else I want to do but be immersed, the way I am, in liberal education.  To those who say put your money where your mouth is, well, I have: I gave up what would have certainly been a fantastically remunerative career in electrical engineering, which is more than enough evidence of my mouth and money.

This commitment and belief in liberal education is also why I am terribly disappointed with the contemporary state of liberal education.  Self-aggrandizing faculty through their endless intellectual Onanism have converted liberal education into a process to clone as many of their like-minded replicants as possible.  One unfortunate result of all this, among many, is that liberal education now arrogantly and systematically disses any kind of professional training--the trades, as Camille Paglia refers to them.

I have written about this and have, in the process, earned more enemies than I ever imagined would be possible.  But, it is an important issue that we cannot ignore--because, we are screwing up the futures of hundreds of thousands of youth.

Paglia's latest commentary is too good to merely provide an excerpt.  So, here is the entire piece--a short one to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the Chronicle Review.  (Only now do I realize then that my own essay that was published there in 2001 was in its infancy. Cool!)  Camille Paglia writes on "Revalorizing the Trades":

Vanishing of jobs will plague the rest of this decade and more. Meaningful employment is no longer guaranteed to dutiful, studious members of the middle class in the Western world. College education, which was hugely expanded after World War II and sold as a basic right, is doing a poor job of preparing young people for life outside of a narrow band of the professional class.

Yes, an elite education at stratospheric prices will smooth the way into law or medical school and supply a network of useful future contacts. But what if a student wants a different, less remunerative or status-oriented but more personally fulfilling career? There is little flexibility in American higher education to allow for alternative career tracks.

Jobs, and the preparation of students for them, should be front and center in the thinking of educators. The idea that college is a contemplative realm of humanistic inquiry, removed from vulgar material needs, is nonsense. The humanities have been gutted by four decades of pretentious postmodernist theory and insular identity politics. They bear little relationship to the liberal arts of broad perspective and profound erudition that I was lucky enough to experience in college in the 1960s.

Having taught in art schools for most of my four decades in the classroom, I am used to having students who work with their hands—ceramicists, weavers, woodworkers, metal smiths, jazz drummers. There is a calm, centered, Zen-like engagement with the physical world in their lives. In contrast, I see glib, cynical, neurotic elite-school graduates roiling everywhere in journalism and the media. They have been ill-served by their trendy, word-centered educations.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: We need a sweeping revalorization of the trades. The pressuring of middle-class young people into officebound, paper-pushing jobs is cruelly shortsighted. Concrete manual skills, once gained through the master-apprentice alliance in guilds, build a secure identity. Our present educational system defers credentialing and maturity for too long. When middle-class graduates in their mid-20s are just stepping on the bottom rung of the professional career ladder, many of their working-class peers are already self-supporting and married with young children.

The elite schools, predicated on molding students into mirror images of their professors, seem divorced from any rational consideration of human happiness. In a period of global economic turmoil, with manufacturing jobs migrating overseas and service-sector jobs diminishing in availability and prestige, educators whose salaries are paid by hopeful parents have an obligation to think in practical terms about the destinies of their charges. That may mean a radical stripping down of course offerings, with all teachers responsible for a core curriculum. But every four-year college or university should forge a reciprocal relationship with regional trade schools.

The hype about a college degree

In the Great Recession, even new nursing grads are not having an easy time to find a job--because the more experienced ones are coming back or working longer hours because of family financial crises. If this is the situation for grads who used to pick and choose from the multiple offers, I am not sure how well a liberal arts grad is faring. For some time now I have been wondering whether we are hyping the college degree way too much--to the effect that we are screwing the very young who need help. This NY Times report adds more:

The pressure to earn a bachelor’s degree draws young people away from occupational training, particularly occupations that do not require college, Mr. Sennett said, and he cited two other factors. Outsourcing interrupts employment before a skill is fully developed, and layoffs undermine dedication to a single occupation. “People are told they can’t get back to work unless they retrain for a new skill,” he said.

None of this deterred Keelan Prados from pursuing a career as a welder, one among roughly 200,000 across the nation. At 28, he has more than a decade of experience, beginning when he was a teenager, building and repairing oil field equipment in his father’s shop in Louisiana. Marriage to a Canadian brought the Pradoses to Maine, near her family. And before Mr. Prados joined Cianbro, an industrial contractor, he ran his own business, repairing logging equipment out of a welding and machine shop on the grounds of his home in Brewer.

The recession dried up that work, and last December, he answered one of Mr. McGrary’s ads. “I welded a couple of pieces of plate together for them and two pipes, and they were impressed,” Mr. Prados said. In less than two weeks, he was at work on Cianbro’s oil refinery project, earning $22 an hour and among the youngest of Mr. McGrary’s hires, most of whom are in their mid-30s to early 40s.