orichalcum | Well, that's encouraging.

892,000 new jobs for "post-secondary school educators" are predicted within the next seven years. Admittedly, I suspect the vast majority of those are lecturers or adjuncts, but it's still a lot more than the 205,000 for lawyers or 212,000 for doctors.

Sadly, this news comes from an article discussing the benefits of a college education and whether it's really necessary for most people. Apparently, the conservative social scientist Charles Murray, best known for the infamous _Bell Curve_, has been arguing in the WSJ that "the number of Americans able to handle challenging college classes" is no greater than 15%," and so we should just leave the low-IQ kids out and tell them to go get menial jobs. Conveniently, he argues, the reason why kids in inner-city schools aren't achieving better is because they just aren't that bright (insert veiled racism here), but this will all be okay because the increasing wealth of the "cognitive elite" means that there will be lots of new jobs for "craftsmen." Yes, and domestic servants too! (In the interests of fairness, I write this while my babysitter watches my child and my cleaning lady mops my floors as I work on a lecture for tomorrow's class, but I also recently had a long conversation with my babysitter urging her to send her elder daughter to college so she can become a lawyer like she wants, and that it's far better to take out loans now and pay them back later.)

I had a dream last night wherein I realized that I don't actually want to go back to college. It was my usual "I have had to move back into the Yale dorms, because somehow there is one class that I mysteriously failed to pass and now I need to retake it" dream, except this time, I was dealing with the awkwardness of sharing my dorm room with a full-grown golden retriever and a baby, and my husband living off-campus and only being able to come over for occasional visits. And you know what, it's really hard to smuggle a golden retriever in and out of a Gothic residental college without any of the staff noticing, and there are lots of stone staircases for babies to fall down, and you can't trust 19-year-olds to keep the baby gates closed, and I _like_ living with my husband. Sigh. I guess I _have_ grown up. :)

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Heh. I only have those sorts of dreams about high school, probably because it sucked and I really wouldn't want to go back. :)

So, I used to have them about both high school and college; lately it's been mostly college. I hope I don't have to deal with grad school dreams now...

Huh. Those "moving back into the dorms" dreams for me are normally fun. I think it's partly that there's no sense of "oops, something went wrong," (usually there's no explanation at all for why I'm moving back in,) but also it's partly because all my old friends are there too. :-)

See, they used to be mostly fun, before the baby and the dog moved in with me. :)

I almost never get 'go back to college' dreams. Most often, it's high school, where I failed to turn in one last paper or something, but end up having to take at least a semester's worth of classes. And my schedule's all screwed up, and I'm missing classes right and left, and I can't remember where anything is... though actually I *did* have a dream like that except that it was college-level back in late summer/early fall when things were a tad stressful.

I'm curious: has there been any counter-viewpoint in the WSJ in response to Mr. Murray's articles?

I can't answer the actual question of whether there has been a response to the Murray articles, but it's worth noting that the WSJ is an excellent, professional newspaper, with an utterly disreputable, hackish opinion section. Most newspapers (especially the high-end ones, like the NY Times and the Washington Post) make a point of diversity in their opinion columnists and frequently use op-eds to present counterpoints to the masthead editorials that carry the paper's "official" opinion. The WSJ, however, does not to the best of my knowledge.

--Adam

The WSJ, however, does not to the best of my knowledge.

They in fact DO run counter points, though not every day.

Thanks for the factual correction. However, I still think that the basic point-- that the WSJ's opinion page is not particularly respected, and not just because it's more conservative than many papers-- holds.

--Adam

WSJ isn't available online, so I can't say for sure, but I haven't heard of one.

There were several letters to the editor, but I do not recall an official counter-viewpoint. That said, these articles I think ran in the weeks immediately following my getting kicked out of my apartment, so I didn't follow that closely. It was a series of 3 articles by Murray of which I think I only caught 1. I think the editorial page that week was dedicated to education, and there were other opinions on the general state that I did not catch.

Not knowing your babysitter, I think you probably did an excellent thing in encouraging your babysitter to help her daughter get a post-secondary education, but I honestly don't think that our society is well served by the expectation that there is something wrong with people who don't go to college. I'm not defending how Murray attributes who should and should not go, but I find the argument that maybe not every kid is bright or motivated enough to get full benefits from going to college hard to deny. On the other hand, I do think that there are huge problems when smart kids who want to go don't have the opportunity to go because of accidents of birth & class.

I really think that we should strive for an educational system that enables people to get good jobs after high school, because there are many students who simply don't want to spend time in school if nothing else. I also think that there are whole fields that have created post-secondary education that may not really be necessary. I mean, does broadcasting (not journalism, but simply the technical aspects of dj-ing) really require a post-secondary degree? There are schools out there ready to take money from kids who want to learn the skill.

So, the thing is, I think that accidents of birth and class play a much larger role in what is perceived as "intelligence" than Murray is willing to accept. I agree that I see nothing wrong with good vocational programs and that a liberal arts education is not necessary - although I (admittedly self-interestedly) argue that it is the best way we've found of teaching adaptability and general skills of analysis and reasoning. These skills are the best way of advancing in professions or business in the modern world. But not everyone has that as their goal.

I'd also support a system of delayed college entrance (ideally after two years of optional national service), because there are a lot of 18-year-olds out there who don't have a clue what they want to do, which is why so many people drop out frosh year.

And meanwhile, yes, it's a criminal shame that most students don't graduate high school able to write, calculate, or reason coherently.

Obviously, I agree that the state of secondary education in this country is shockingly poor overall and it should be improved. Similarly I think that people should go to college simply because that gives a person the highest chance of entering the cultural and economic elite in this country (nor do I think anyone is disagreeing with this)

The problem we're facing is the question of what fields are realistically available in the modern globalized market. Obviously, certain service industry jobs will always be available because they simply have to be local, but increasingly jobs which one can do with a secondary education are just drying up. To take broadcasting as an example, most radio stations don't even use regular DJs for a large majority of their content: everything's run by computer. At the same time, the same basic type of jobs in many industries are getting more complex. I have a friend in Corning who says that Corning Glass has turned to hiring college grads for jobs once done by high school grads simply because of the increased complexity of the job.

Well, that's encouraging.

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