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New York, 8:38 AM
Wed Nov 25
49 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/12/09
And it just so happens that the whole thing bottoms out the year that I graduate and every employer wants experience over a piece of fine grained paper with words no one can read (seriously, every time i look at that diploma, i think it's laughing at me). Blame me for not being savvy enough. Blame me for not being like all the first genertation kids and do pre-med or engineering. Shit bores me to tears. The skills I do have are rather narrow (theater tech, what what!) but pay my cell phone bill and my blissfully low loans BUT I'd like to move out soon. No, I don't feel entitled but I'm more than a little annoyed. #thepoors
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I don't disagree, but for at least the past 50 years, the elite of American students were steered away from learning trades. Those jobs were considered infra dig. They paid relatively poorly and were considered not appropriate for the upwardly mobile.
It worked well when the number of college grads was small enough that they could be absorbed into junior management positions and learn skills on the job. The problem of the U.S. evolving into a service economy was discussed with regularity, but most people with choices still wanted to push pencils, not pushcarts.
Sex and race discrimination, which also shrunk the pool, didn't hurt either. #thepoors
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11/13/09
Sorry to take so long to reply, but I was going over carpentry and plumbing school catalogues.
I'm so glad that few people ask for my advice, because I don't have an effing clue what anyone should do. #thepoors
11/13/09
11/13/09
I don't remember it ever being quite this bad. #thepoors
11/12/09
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11/12/09
Huh. I had a point somewhere. I think it was "destroy the bottom-up approach of regional schoolboards, and make all schools directly controlled by the federal government". That point is in there somewhere. Promise. You might have to squint. #thepoors
11/12/09
11/12/09
American students need more of their education structured around a standardized test? The federal government should take a larger role in shaping education?
This is a parody post, right? You do realize this is exactly what's happened over the past decade and the results have been dismal?
11/12/09
Wouldn't it be smarter to adequately prepare (and yes, assess, as is done with the SAT/ACT/AP/IB now) the college-bound because they are college-bound, than to instead apply the same pre-university standard to _everyone_ in high school? That, by the way, being the approach that only now lends itself to producing plummeting standards. My old school district in Michigan now requires every student to take four years of a language, of science, and of math, all for the purpose of university preparation. I applaud the ideal, but I very much doubt the implementation. Indeed, the kids who will go to (and succeed in) college will have done this anyway. Kids who are uninitiated or unable will fail out. Which I guess is a method of bringing meaning back to the diploma... even if the other 16,000+ school districts make it a lot easier to get.
Though, I guess a lot of my thoughts above are predicated on a notion that anyone knows what the hell they want to do in life starting at age 14, and that they already know how to accomplish that. Which is silly. There's something stomach-churning about the German convention of testing students at the age of 12 and then sorting them off to their future careers. But I think there's something to be said for the fact that Germans subsequently seem to attach far less cultural shame to vocational careers than we Americans seem to do.
No Child Left Behind is fucked, yes. But is that only because it is a federal policy? Or is just that it's a _bad_ federal policy? Or is it maybe just that all current federal policy on education is weakened by only being able to lead with a carrot on a stick (strings attached to funding promises) and are able to interfere in no other way?
The above questions aren't rhetorical, by the way. If you're learned on the issue, please fill me in. I just can't imagine simply celebrating the inefficiency of having 16,210 some separate school boards and districts in this country. Or imagine that that's NOT a flawed approach to educating our youth. What reason beyond small-f federalism is there for allowing (and saluting) the ability of a Kansas school board to decide it can no longer teach evolution? Or to accept that property tax funding models mean that rich neighborhoods get good schools and poor neighborhoods get shit schools (something that seems even more anti-egalitarian than sorting kids by ability at age 12)?
(I actually welcome informed information to the contrary of any of my above thoughts or understandings-- the above is all pretty naive and simplistic, and I would always like my thoughts on topical issues to better conform to reality. Please, educate me.)
Sorry if this is frazzled and disjoint. I pretty much just stream of consciously dumped all connected, half-formed thoughts on public education. Long week, lots of math. #thepoors
11/12/09
11/12/09
It's gallows humor. #thepoors
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11/12/09
This argument is going to get me absolutely killed, I know it, but my thought is that the solution to this education crisis is to revoke all of the inflationary Federal subsidy. Go ahead and call me a slavish devotee of the "Invisible Rand" or whatever. #thepoors
11/12/09
Did this comment get tagged with #thepoors because of the word "loan" or the word "journalism."
11/12/09
The problem is that cutting tuition aid would mean we'd have to directly fund the universities, which would basically put the entire higher ed system under the control of the federal government.
Be careful what you wish for...
11/12/09
11/12/09
Well, with health and education in particular, the philosophy seems to be that these are entitlements. Anyone that seeks an education or to be healed should have it! And while I agree to an extent, these incentives tend to pervert behavior.
(That's kind of where the whole thing veers off into the bloodstained wilderness of central planning vs. market economics.) #thepoors
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11/12/09
Exactly. To criticize someone for taking out loans for the best possible higher education when the unrelenting message for the last 40 years has been: "Education is the key, poor people!" is, quite frankly, pretty shitty. #thepoors
11/12/09
11/12/09
Given the rising cost of education, it has long been impossible to work one's way through college and/or graduate school unless you plan to take 20 years to graduate.
I think your statement about the mindset of student borrowers contains an awful lot of faulty assumptions. You also seem to be unaware of the way the educational institutions, aided and abetted by the media sold the message of "Get a great education and you will be able to get a great job."
Reasonable expectations fostered by supposedly reliable sources are not the same thing as entitlement. #thepoors
11/12/09
I've known some people who've taken off a year or two to save for their community college tuition, but that's a tiny fraction of what a top four-year private school costs. #thepoors
11/12/09
Sorry, "long been" = how long? I know kids doing it now, and I knew several people, with children, working in the day and going to night law school, in the last decade.
I could choose to go to a great exec mba program now, and it might - maybe - mean some greater market skills and cred to a pretty marketable resume already. But for $100k and an uncertain return? NFW. And I have a job. Knock wood. #thepoors
11/12/09
11/12/09
But aren't these concepts related? Think in terms of supply reactions to the demand-side stimulus that a subsidy provides.
All of this Federal loan money is resulting in runaway cost inflation as students leverage up and pile into institutions. The "demand" for higher education has consequently exploded.
In response to the demand, schools are racing to increase facilities and staff. The effect is a cost spiral as the ability to assume debt overwhelms the college system's capacity. The pain is particularly powerful in city schools, which have to pay a hell of a lot more for real estate and basic services to accomodate burgeoning student bodies.
The market is inevitably doing what Federal policymakers won't - setting a bar. Costs are rapidly rising to a point where the bar to admission will fall back in place in the form of 300K 4-year bills for a bachelor's. And then we're back at square one again, with a raft of unemployable kids burdened with debt and a new generation unable to afford education. #thepoors
11/12/09
11/13/09
I agree, it is complicated. But I just hate it when it looks like poor and middle class people are being singled out for seizing one of the few ropes that could lead to upward mobility (and let's face it, if you're poor and obscure, going to community college won't do it; you have to go to a really good school and get lucky). Do you think Obama would be president today if he'd gone to Maui Community College?
Taking a risk on an education still seems more defensible than speculating that a bigger house that you really didn't need in the first place will appreciate in value. #thepoors
11/22/09
What can I say, you can not believe everything you see in the news.
11/12/09
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10/30/09
10/31/09
But at least I'm employed! #shutupcollege
10/30/09
What. The. Fuck. #shutupcollege
10/30/09
I might have broken down and said "JUST LEAVE NOW" and then sobbed quietly in the empty conference room. #shutupcollege
10/30/09
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10/30/09
I work in the system. You can't imagine the lack of academic skills and basic knowledge we see from recent h.s. grads. Astounding. #shutupcollege