Thomas Friedman and the Higher Education Bubble
That Thomas Friedman would spout stupidity and anti-Semitism surprises me no more than the appearance of a gumball after I put a quarter into the machine and turn the knob. But one line in the New York Times‘ calumnist’s (sic) Dec. 13 tantrum against Israel was worth a double-take:
I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. The real test is what would happen if Bibi tried to speak at, let’s say, the University of Wisconsin. My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away, not because they are hostile but because they are confused.
Why on earth is the “real test” at the University of Wisconsin? For liberals, the only people who count are the smart people, because it is an article of faith that social engineering can fix all the world’s problems, and a logical conclusion that only smart people qualify as social engineers. It doesn’t matter what the dumb people think. They are the ones who need to be socially engineered. To Friedman, it is irrelevant whether Americans at large support Israel by a 4:1 margin or better, and that support for Israel is growing steadily, as the Gallup Poll consistently shows:
That poll includes dumb people, so it doesn’t count. To Friedman, what matters is what university audiences might think. The insularity of the liberal mind is astonishing. It brings to mind the anecdote about Emperor Ferdinand of Austria (deposed for incompetence in 1848). He went hunting and shot and eagle. The bird fell to his feet, and Ferdinand said, “It’s got to be an eagle — but it’s only got one head!”
The American university system exists for the most part to produce the social engineers who will fix all the world’s problems. During the 1960s, those of us who had the misfortune to attend the better colleges were taught that our mission was to make the world perfect, through the Great Society, arms control, internationalism, disarmament, and so forth. When the Vietnam War and the urban riots of the 1960s showed that the liberalism of our elders had not fixed the world’s problems, we abominated them, and pursued even more radical versions of social engineering. The radicalization of the universities produced a generation of clever people unsuited to productive activity in the real world but skilled at bloviating, and they became the tenured faculty of today. And their salaries, privileges, and perks continued to grow to the point that $50,000 in annual tuition barely covers them. Overall CPI is up 70% since 1990, but tuition and fees have risen by 300%.
Source: Moody’s
“The future belongs to those who show up.”
Mr. Steyn and Mr. Derbyshire are not wrong in their prophecies. They are incomplete. Mr. Goldman with his demographic projections tells the rest of the story. We only have to outlast our adversaries. Yes, there will be pain and sadness as this all plays out but we will move through it.
That’s all true. Also, feminists and pro-abortion activists have few or no children, so they don’t pass along their nonsense to the next generation.
Even w/o children, feminists and pro abortionists will still spread their propaganda. They are betting that children don’t listen to their parents anyway. The college students are receptive to them.
http://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/03-13-2009/Columnist_vs._calumnist
Clever. I’ll have to remember this one.
“Prof. Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University likes to say that the big question in American politics is whether the red states can produce kids faster than professors from the blue states can corrupt them.”
Also, beautiful.
I’m glad to see you’ve confronted the education bubble (ground zero is law school, by the way), and the demographic and economic pressures it will face very shortly. Skilled labor looks to be the sweet spot for America; national IQ levels accurately predict the long term East Asian dominance of engineering. Their relative advantage in this competition is significant, on both biological and cultural levels. Demographics also favors it.
The ditch diggers of the world have a lot more children than the nerds. It would serve the West well to emphasize this area, and for the Asians to continue their path.
Your link presents a calumny all its own. I’d like Rush haters to finally, after a quarter century of failing, to authenticate one lie he has told in his long running survey of the socio-political landscape. One.
I know that’s not your point, Higher, but in a significant way this reference disproves the point you’re trying to make. “National IQ levels” might “accurately predict the long term East Asian dominance of engineering,” as you say. But the fact that glib, baseless, idiotic, libels like the one embedded in your link are so easy to get away with, and can be repeated this way without shame, tells us a lot more about national IQ levels. No one seems to notice.
East Asian dominance will continue as long as they have access to our schools – cut that thread and you can re-establish the East India Company.
I don’t recall any Opium Wars in America cuz of the massively superior civilization of the Chinese and it is rumored that the fist thing Cortes did NOT say after he toppled the Aztec Empire with perhaps 1,200 Spaniards was “Wow! They are really equal!”
I am a Chemist. Those Americans and Europeans who go into chemistry love the field. Many Chinese do not, it is a means to an end for them. Many Chinese are fantastic professionals and professors, but many wish they had an MBA.
Europe and the US produce highly creative and self motivated scientists. These are people who could go in any direction and fallowed a passion. It’s not a numbers game.
I am also a chemist (physical/organic); or at least I was one until I retired some 15 years ago. In any event, long, long ago when I was in graduate school, I enrolled in a graduate level Chemical Thermodynamics class. When I arrived for my first day, there were 5 other students sitting in the small room – all white males. I overheard two of them say that they signed up for this specific class because someone in the registrar’s office had told them two “minority” students had signed up for this class, and thus the grade “curve” would undoubtedly be lowered because the minority students would do poorly.
Well, as you probably guessed, both minority students turned out to be Chinese -who would obviously raise the grade curve. Both of those white students quickly dropped the course, and only three of us actually completed that Thermo course.
But just down the hall, a huge lecture room was filled with over 200 students (mostly women and minorities) taking a graduate level course in sociology. No other proof is needed to explain why education in this country has gone to hell.
I’ve hired any number of Chinese quants over the years, and their family stories are horrific. They had obstacles to overcome that most Americans couldn’t begin to imagine. They start with the assumption that the world owes them no mercy. Put them up against American kids who think that they are entitled to a high living standard, and the outcome is predictable.
David,
Oops, I made a typo in my above note; there were actually 5 of us grad students who successfully completed that Thermo course – us 3 white guys plus the 2 Chinese males (from Taiwan). And, yes they had the highest test scores.
About 10 years before I retired, a Chinese chemist was hired in. He worked in my same area, but not with me. He indeed had a horror story to tell of being humiliated constantly and almost killed by Chairman Mao’s Red Guard before he was able to escape China during an international conference. His only crime was having a professor as a father and having been highly educated (in England).
He said many of his professors and co-workers were murdered in China by Mao’s Red Guard fanatics, and he lost a decade of his life being forced to do back-breaking labor in the fields. He was finally allowed to return to limited academic life in China when the Chinese Red Army finally stepped in to limit the excesses of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. No American student can even begin to understand how much he had suffered due to his education, and how much he valued it.
I think the problem with humanities vs science is that very few professors can make science interesting. But perhaps more importantly, I think primary education in science is weak. The kids don’t get proper instruction. I also feel like there is this “this should be learned in college” mentality that is making high schools less competitive.
So I would say it’s not the fault of students but more likely the fault of bad science education and bad teachers. Sciences require a level of work and thinking that many do not want to do. Memorizing forumlae and solving problems can be quite tedious.
Oh. Your point about the chinese students and the white students, were you saying Chinese students are inherently smarter than white students? Also what about minorities and women?
What is the point of the link, by the way?
“There is some value to a B.A. of any kind; it teaches you to read, memorize, show up on time and repeat what you are tol
I was on a university campus for 9 years and I would strike out the “show up on time.” After the first class maybe half the students enrolled would show up for a lecture.
This quote is what used to describe a High School Diploma. As you correctly point, college students no longer pass the attendance part of the training, clearly a BA now is worth less than a High School Diploma. The reason why College Graduates cannot find jobs is because of diminishing returns–they should have entered the job market with a GED, found their occupational strengths, and gone to community college to strengthen those skills.
Excellent article. Thought-provoking analysis. Dire outlook.
The high costs-low returns of higher ed are unsustainable, but as with all bubbles-in-the-making those who have the greatest ability to reshape the trajectory have the most to gain from maintaining the artificially inflated prices and demand.
Lucky me, I have to read Friedman’s Lexus and the Olive Tree for my class and from what I’ve heard it’s not going to be a pretty experience.
Why is this guy relevant anyway?
Friedman is, as Goldman has noted, among those who are famous for being famous, celebrated for being celebrated. Friedman has his own “Amen” corner of liberal bloviators, and no one – certainly not the President who hears from Friedman what he wants to hear – will tell him he’s full of crap.
And, as with other “public intellectuals”, there’s no price for being wrong, as he was/is about the “Arab Spring”. He broadly castigated Israel for not enthusiastically embracing it, but in the end Israel’s skepticism proved correct. Does Friedman even acknowledge he was wrong, never mind apologize for being so naive? A rhetorical question, I know…
Just before I quit Bank of America, I attended a seminar for senior executives. The head of personnel gave a speech urging them to broaden their interests, and keep in touch with world events. “Read Thomas Friedman,” he admonished. Friedman is one of the foreign policy establishment’s designated bloviators. He’s there to keep everyone on message, and the message is the Social Gospel, Wilsonian, world-fixing, internationalist idiocy that the foreign policy establishment was assembled to propagate.
That perhaps explains a lot of why BOA is where it is today.
I dont normally like to paraphrase Matt Taiibi of Rolling Stone but I will join forces with him just once since we share an utter contempt for Friedman.
He was puzzled that in one too many conferences filled with business and policy A listers,he noticed that all the participants for gaga for this snake oil peddler of bad metaphors (“It is ok to throw out your steering wheel as long you remember you are driving without one”,”The walls had collapsed and the Windows had opened”) -how easy it is to fool even seemingly rational people with a load of feel good PC shibboleths masquerading as incisive analysis!
nice takedown of Friedman, but the best was this line from the old “Spengler” column at Asia Times: ” … Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who wears a “world citizen” badge on his tweed jacket like a ski pass …”. I kept that one polished and ready for use for whenever some senior USAID type would deign to lecture the “knucle-draggers” about what they should read to better understand the Middle East.
Maybe we should have a “Best Way to Insult Thomas Friedman” contest.
David P. Goldman wrote at December 18, 2011 – 10:36 am: “Maybe we should have a “Best Way to Insult Thomas Friedman” contest”.
I would definitely check-in early and often to see the results of such a contest. I actually suggested on a thread about a week ago, either here or on Barry Rubin’s blog, a contest along the lines of, “What Would It Take To Make Thomas Friedman Wake Up And Smell The Coffee?”.
David – Regarding the other main theme of this post, I thank you for your frequent writing on the importance of a very strong math/science background, to avoid a career of getting coffee for the visiting VP from Bangalore. I have been forwarding these to my high schoolers as a strong suggestion.
Oh my, electronic herd with short-horn cattle and long-horn cattle.. I don’t know should I laugh or cry because that is like something that I would make up while playing with my legos in elementary school days. More I read it the more I see how wrong he was. McDonald’s theory my hiney. It really resembles childhood fantasies, only problem it is coming from a grown up man and I have to read it.
Straightjacket comes to mind, but not the golden one.
Matt Taibi wrote a raucus take-down of Friedman. It is well worth the read. There is a whole cottage industry on the internet dedicated to ridiculing this supremely self-impressed fool. Both he and Kristoff seem to spend so little thought and energy in the columns they write. They don’t even bother to try to validate their opinions with facts. It’s as if they believe that since they are writing it, it must be so.
The puzzle for me is how did he ever get such a large reputation in the first place. I read his dispatches from the Middle East in the 1980s when he made his reputation and remember thinking that he was all flash and no depth even then.
Thanks steve, I have just read it and enjoyed it profoundly.
)
“Thomas Friedman is not a president, a pope, a general on the field of battle or any other kind of man of action. He doesn’t actually do anything apart from talk about s*** in a newspaper. So in my mind it’s highly relevant if his manner of speaking is f****.”
The notion that the intelligent ought to be rich and that rich people ought to be intelligent is flat wrong. There’s education, and then there’s training. They may have common sides to them (in nearly every profession it helps to be able to read) but their purposes could scarcely be more different. Training is a means to an end; education is an end in itself.
spot on. u.s. has been hijacked by spoiled college kids w/ absolutely no work ethic. much like the worst president of all time. still waiting to read 1 law review article from this empty socialist anti-semitic, pro muslim , rev. wright loving, saul alinsky loving, obama.
aje you are exactly right,obama IS that new school student! Lazy,sleeps late,skips that Monday class,can*t wait to go on spring break to hawaii,and about as inspiring as gum in your hair!
As a nuclear engineer, I’d like to comment on why fewer American kids pursue the more rigorous training that becoming an engineer requires in college.
Yes, it is more difficult and leaves less free time to enjoy the frivolities of youth compared to business or liberal arts. And, yes, the social standing of engineering students and ultimately employed engineers is not as “sexy” as advertising or the law. And yes, the expected lifetime income for those who remain engineers is less than medicine.
However, a key factor is immigration. Given the universality of the laws of nature, a foreigner can complete the training of an engineer in a US university as well as an American kid, given a reasonable handle on English. Our immigration laws ENCOURAGE foreign competition for American engineers within our own country. This acts to reduce the incomes of Americans who have become engineers.
Other fields of study build on the culture learned on the mother’s lap by American kids – marketing, communications, etc, offering them a long-term advantage over foreigners with America. American kids have a built-in advantage. Foreigners aren’t much of a competitive factor for American lawyers. for example.
So, is it little wonder that American high school students increasing choose the easier path, the one with some protection against foreign competition, and the one with the possibility of higher social status over a path with deliberate government price suppression, more rigorous studies, less leisure time, and less social mojo? Hardly.
The saving grace of engineering is that it personally fun, engaging, satisfying work, with some employment stability and and an adequate financial reward (usually). Heck, we still get to BUILD things! How many lawyers or social workers get to say that?
There’s still a shortage of engineers in many areas, particularly software engineers, and companies are screaming that they can’t get enough H-1 visas — and that’s in a soft economy where capital investment hasn’t caught up to pre-crash levels, and venture capital remains dead in the water. The fact is that Americans have to compete in the world market, and it makes no sense IMHO to insulate Americans against foreign competition at the university level. During the bubble years, bond salesmen with an MBA made multiples of the compensation of the Chinese physics PhDs slaving away in the back room. Americans got paid for being Americans. Those days are over. MBAs and lawyers are scraping by, and electrical engineers from top schools have a dozen job offers upon graduation. The security and status associated with the fluff jobs turned out to be an illusion. American kids had better start spending their afternoons in cram schools like the Asians instead of playing sports and video games, or smoking reefer and hooking up.
Perhaps American kids understand supply and demand? Our government and business leaders actively seek to increase supply while keeping costs (ie salaries) down. Importing engineering talent will not stimulate the domestic supply chain.
Why do I have to remind Mr. Goldman of this law of economics?
But I agree on American kids having to work harder. Like the song from “Bye Bye Birdie” that goes “Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way? What’s a matter with kids today!”
Whether or not they are perfect in Mr. Goldman’s eyes or yours is irrelevant. If, as you suggest, the choices made by members of the student population he addresses illustrates their understanding of supply and demand, then perhaps they need some additional study of the concepts of self-interest and self-preservation.
As a faculty member at a university whose focus is science and engineering, I can tell you that we have no problem placing our students after graduation and at very good starting salaries. I can also tell you that there is a shortage of applicants in many of the areas in which they apply – even now. Mr. Goldman is spot on with regard to his analysis of the market.
Let the bidding wars begin then! I too am happy that the false market bubble of many careers is correcting and rewards should increasingly go to those who build and produce.
Starting salaries are one component motivating people to chose engineering. Long-term return on investment is another as are opportunity costs both direct and indirect.
I would also note that the lead time for a graduating engineer is approaching 8 years if one includes high school prep classes. Market lags are inevitable and much longer than say pork bellies.
My point remains – government policy to import engineers (like H1B visas) suppresses American investment in home-grown talent. Neither Mr. Goldman nor Stephen have rebutted that argument nor even addressed it.
@Whitehall @Stephen
Regarding your assertion that changing the supply of American-born will take several years, given the 8-year pipeline of high school and college – why does it need to be that way? It strikes me that this is really a re-training issue, given engineering status as a professional correct. There are quite a lot of already-graduated Americans who perhaps wouldn’t mind changing careers, but don’t want to go through the undergraduate process again – aren’t here any post-bac engineering credential programs out there (akin to post-back premed, I guess), or is traditional university the only way to become an engineer in America?
Elena:
There are quite a lot of already-graduated Americans who perhaps wouldn’t mind changing careers, but don’t want to go through the undergraduate process again – aren’t here any post-bac engineering credential programs out there (akin to post-back premed, I guess), or is traditional university the only way to become an engineer in America?
Science graduates who want to become engineers can complete either a BS or an MS in engineering in several years. There were a fair number in my engineering program. One difference with graduates wanting to become engineers, and engineers who want to become teachers, is that there is a lot of useless fluff in education courses, while there is no fluff in engineering courses.
In most cases, if you want to work as an engineer, you need to have the degree. The courses are not fluff, but necessary.
There are a fair number of people working in software and IT who do not have the education credentials but have undergone OJT, thus acquiring skills that enable them to be hired at engineering- level salaries without the degree. Granted, a software engineer is not the same as a mechanical engineer.
My uncle graduated from high school at age 15 at the beginning of the Depression, and had only a semester of business college at the post high school level. Among other positions he held, he managed a dairy, which led him into the last job he had – managing a plant that made cheese. This was reputedly the largest cheese factory in the world, at the time. The machines he was responsible for were straight out of an engineering handbook- triple effect evaporators, for example. His position as Plant Manager was one that many engineers have held. This would be less likely to occur today.
@ Gringo
Sounds expensive, but I guess it would pay off in the end, if you had the aptitude and tenacity. That’s still a 2-year lag, minimum, though, depending on if the university in question would allow previous coursework from the original degree to count for non-major coursework…
@ Whitehall
It’s true that learning skills for an entirely new career is difficult when you’re 40 – but people do it all the time. A significant portion of the “career-change” population is less than 30, and even at 40, the brain seems to be highly elastic.
Additionally, considering that people in American are living longer and longer, I expect most people my generation (early twenties) will be working not until 65, but far longer. In that case, re-training may be very congenial to anyone who thinks of it.
There are- it’s called a Master’s Degree. You can usually complete it in two years or less (depending on where you go, which discipline and whether or not you have the prerequisite courses completed already). Downside: graduate engineering programs are incredibly hard and quite expensive. If I hadn’t been able to pay for a year of mine by teaching, I would have paid about $45,000 in tuition alone for my Master’s of Science in Engineering. Someone attempting to get the same Nuclear Engineering degree I did, but without a Nuclear Engineering undergraduate background would be looking at an additional year (and $40,000 in tuition) in order to complete it.
*facepalm* And that’s why I shouldn’t post from my phone, sorry. “Career”, not “correct”.
Re: Retraining adults as engineers
Try to learn differential equations and vector analysis for the first time at age 40!
It is possible but like learning a new language or playing the cello, there are learning windows in the human mind’s developmental and aging life.
Sorry but I dont get the logic of “suppressed American investment in home grown talent”-who has gone out of their way to deny Americans of STEM?
If Americans go for coursed like transgendered metamorphosis in medieval Fijian poetry and (shockingly) find that job offers are not forth coming ,why should Asians be blamed?
AgainDid anyone actively prevent Americans from not pursuing STEM majors?
Isnt it possible that therapeutic Im OK Youre OK type “education” and culture that Americans wallow is atleast indirectly responsible for their preference for nonsensical fluff in college?Asians and Indians cultures dont have time for such nonsense.
Indeed , many Ivy League schools actually practice affirmative action for whites at the expense of Asians.
Now if you argue that American employers are H1B visa happy which enables them to hire foreign,cheaper and more pliant labor over the local talent dripping with a sense of entitlement ,purple hair and nasal rings then you may have a point.But then again I would emphasize the latter part of the previous sentence.
Haha. So glad you mentioned ivy league white affirmative action. Can you imagine what a political mess would be at hand if market forces truly dictated who got accepted into Ivies? You would have mostly Indian, Asian, and Jewish students. Hell, I am sure you could find enough Indians to fill harvard alone. But then you wouldn’t have a predominately white institution.
Of course it makes sense to keep foreigners out of our universities: we are shooting ourselves in the foot. How well would the East India Company have done if they’d brought Hindus and Mughals to England, educated them in all things for 10 years and sent them back? If you have an advantage you maintain it.
H-1 Visas are popular because wages are cheaper, it is a corrupt racket and because benefits and workers rights are gerrymandered by the fact they can be sent home if there is a problem. They are like vacation replacements in a union shop and expendable. The Third World is reverse engineering us to death in all arenas and we are helping because of the massive immigration connection and American companies who only care about profit and nothing for the eventual dislocation of the American worker.
I hired lots of people with H-1 Visas over the years on Wall Street, NOT because they were cheaper–I paid people according to performance and ran a strict meritocracy–but because they were the post people for the relevant jobs. At B of A, I had 140 professionals working for me and a couple of dozen programmers supporting my department. This was an intensely competitive business (my department tied Citigroup in the rankings, with half of Citigroup’s budget), and I doubt I could have obtained the required results without the H-1 visas.
What you’re missing is that America always made good by important talent. Do you think we would have had a space program without the German rocket scientists? The outstanding quality of our universities is the outcome of World War II: the cream of European academia emigrated to America. Cutting ourselves off from the world would really be shooting ourselves in the foot. I want more talented immigrants. America is a proposition, not a fixed population. If that’s tough on us, so be it. The only thing that can kill America is complacency.
Actually, if you look at the history of migrations to the “New World,” the people coming here were the misfits and rogues from the old world’s Eurasian land mass by and large. I think the same could be said for Australia, one of England’s penal colonies. I also suspect the plague of migrating misfits was going on in the preliterate stone age. Perhaps migrating Muslim misfits to the Americas will have a similar happy ending?
How many German rocket scientists are we talking about: 7? 23? That’s hardly a trend nor was it planned; there was a thing called WW II that dropped them into our laps in a way not foreseen.
As for post-WW II Euros upping America’s know-how: we replaced oom-pah-pah bands with John Coltrane and had to bomb those idiots into oblivion to stop them from killing millions of people for no reason. Germans made great tech stuff but their general quality of thought was on the level of a Victorian novelist.
American’s are noted for the way they think about problems, not x’s and o’s. To suggest that the academic elite of such a continent came here and showed us how to think is not persuasive. America in the 1930′s was a far more sophisticated place than Europe as I think it is a mistake to conflate over refinement and genuine innovative and varied thought. Generally speaking, America showed Europe how to live and redefine life and today there are millions of baseball caps in Europe without a baseball stadium in sight.
I also don’t believe in new immigration same as the old immigration. The poster below says the dregs of Europe came to American. Well, there are dregs and dregs. You’re right, America isn’t a fixed population: with our current policy we’ll have 500 billion people here before you know it and 90% of them from the Third World. You’re right: good stuff is where you find it and it ain’t the Third World, unless I was in the wrong part of the 14 Third World countries I’ve spent more than 6 years in.
In comparison, American eccentricity and creativity is so effortless it must seem like magic.
“the cream of European academia emigrated to America.”
Sure, if you’re stupid enough to define emigrated as “come to America where the Soviets can’t have your skills or we’ll put a bullet into you. Or just hand you over to the Israelis so they can explain to you why it was a bad idea to use Jewish concentration camp inmates for the V-weapon programs.”
Which one would you have picked?
Mr. Goldman’s point here is the relevant one. Those seeking to fill positions wish to hire those with the greatest potential; it’s in their interest to do so.
With the exception of foreign degree programs whose reputations are well-known (e.g. some programs in the Indian Institutes of Technology) employers seeking graduates of engineering degree-programs have a bias toward those with ABET accreditation; in other words graduates of US university engineering programs. If my university is typical, and I believe it is, most foreign nationals seeking and successfully obtaining H1 class visas for employment in engineering are post-baccalaureate graduates of US universities.
This pushes the issue back to the US universities. Foreign nationals comprise a growing portion of post-baccalaureate degree programs in US universities for several reasons, the most important of which is that they are well prepared and … they apply. Many, perhaps most, US STEM related graduate programs have programs to recruit US students. But, as Mr. Goldman describes his prior hiring practices as meritocratic, so too the admissions processes for US graduate programs in the STEM disciplines.
US graduate education, particularly in STEM disciplines, is an industry competing for talent and funding in a global market. The same forces that drove Mr. Goldman’s hiring practices on Wall Street drive to ever greater extent the dynamics of graduate education in the US.
Here’s something for all of you to contemplate – you too Mr. Goldman. My university in collaboration with one its sister campuses will, in the next year, open in partnership with the Chinese government, a new university in southwest China. Graduates of their program will carry our University’s name as well as the home institution. And when it’s fully up and running the programs will carry ABET accreditation. (If I recall, Cornell is already doing this. We’ll be the second.)
We get a steady income stream, experience in setting up such programs, exposure to the Chinese market, the chance to cherry pick Chinese students for our graduate programs, and the ability to offer the chance to study in China to our US students within their own degree program since classes offered there and here are to be the same.
There is a great need for graduates in STEM disciplines. That need will be filled with or without the interest and participation of US students – hence my original point above about the need for US students to think a bit more deeply about their self-interest and self-preservation.
Stephen, I’m aware of such efforts. At a less ambitious level, there are scores of such initiatives out there. I have academic friends with distinguished credentials who are offered handsome fees to spend a few weeks a year in China advising on the upgrading of local graduate programs. The quality of Chinese universities always has been an issue. The Cultural Revolution nearly erased a whole generation of university faculty (which wasn’t strong to begin with). The efforts to upgrade are intensive, and I’m deeply curious to see when and if the quality of Chinese graduate programs will begin to converge with the better American schools.
Curious for us would be an understatement, Mr. Goldman. We are well aware of the quality issues involved. Graduate education in those parts of the world where development is an issue is very much a work in progress from our experience there and elsewhere. Chinese we’ve worked with seem increasingly aware of their circumstances as well.
The concerns you’ve expressed are critical to the agreement with our Chinese counterpart. The key part is that it is effectively part of our engineering program: English only instruction by Chinese nationals, but with supervision by staff and faculty of our programs involved; our curriculum, our standards; president a Chinese national with embeds in administration beneath. That means that the program in China must meet the benchmarks set by ABET for accreditation of the degree programs involved; in otherwords, we put our own accreditation at some risk in this arrangement. Only a small subset of our engineering programs are currently involved and not the biggest ones. However, if this works, there will be more such programs. So, we shall see.
Mao and his progeny have been a great plague on mankind; on none moreso than the Chinese as you, from your experience, are well aware. A departmental colleague who recently passed, a good probabilist and statistician, survived the Cultural Revolution looking after fish in a remote part of the country. Though he hated it, he considered himself lucky. There and here, I’ve heard similar stories from that generation.
Stephen,
Many thanks for your information and insights. One phenomenon has attracted my attention: the proliferation of classical music study in China. By some reports there are more than 30 million piano students alone in China. I wrote about this here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JL02Ad01.html
A lot of nonsense is written about music and mathematics, but I am convinced that classical music study improves concentration span and heightens aptitude for higher-level problem solving. I would surmise that a correlation should exist between musical study and mathematical achievement. If you hear anything about this, please let me know.
“Do you think we would have had a space program without the German rocket scientists?”
Yes. Our “rocket scientists” at Cal Tech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory were making similar progress on designs tailored to the needs of the US military and would have been able to be the seed of a space program.
I will concede that Huntsville would not today have the best German food in Alabama without the German rocketeers.
If you are still attending to this thread Mr. Goldman, then know that I read your post in the Asia Times not long after you put it up in 2008. I enjoyed revisiting it.
I agree with the points you make in the AT post and in your response above. But I’m not aware of a study that establishes a correlation between musical study and mathematical achievement. Such a study would have generated much comment in such publications as the AMS Notices or Springer’s Mathematical Intelligencier.
On a personal note, I spent a good portion of my younger years enjoying the study of single and double reed instruments to the point that some assumed I’d make a career of it. It is not uncommon to find mathematicians at conferences giving impromptu performances at a surprisingly high level. On the other hand, I also know too many mathematicians with little experience, less talent, and dreadful musical taste. So, who knows? But, like you, I remain convinced that there is some connection that eventually will be revealed by work in neurobiolgy; perhaps a second order connection, but a connection nonetheless.
How long could Britain afford NOT to educate the Indians who were willing and able to pay if she were running a massive trade deficit? Education is a major export industry in this country, and one of the few ways we have of paying for our imports.
The fact that Bill Gates is complaining does not mean there’s a problem.
It is nice to hear that there is demand once more for software engineers. Maybe the small numbers of people studying for that major has something to do with having watched their fathers, uncles and older brothers with Computer Science degrees on unemployment or working part time at Home Depot when their jobs were outsourced to India a few year back.
Somebody who is smart enough to earn a STEM degree is smart enough to learn from the misfortune of others, especially if they have seen it up close and personal.
Mr Spengler..I have been reading,admiring and finding tremendous insight in your writing for years..
My thinking is we should encourage American kids, and we should use some sort of incentive system to get them to apply for, and BE ACCEPTED into the great US Institutions of Higher Education in engineering, medicine and so forth.
I think many qualified American kids currently get bumped for foreign students.
Highly qualified, straight A, 2100 SAT American kids, get passed over and we educate foreign kids at our National detriment. Am I correct?
Do you have any thoughts?
My main thought is that if only 40% of students who indicate preference for a science/engineering/math major actually finish within five years, and most of the rest choose easier majors, the problem can’ be that American kids can’t find a good university slot. Maybe the foreign competition makes it harder to get into MIT or CalTech, but I am sure that American with 2100 SAT’s and straight A’s will get into a good program somewhere. Now, private universities are private institutions. If they want to give preference to Americans, or not, it is up to them. I don’t think the government should be in the business of dictating admissions policies to private institutions EXCEPT where illegal discrimination is an issue. State universities give preference to residents in one way or another.
What is a 2100? I seem to remember the maximum being 800+800. Is there a third part, 700 for each?
Are you sure the universite would let a 700/700/700 student get in? Wouldn’t they have all sorts of “well-rounded” requirements?
It is up to the Federal government how many student visas to grant. And I do think they ought to be stopped for Middle Eastern countries except for potential refugees. There is no reason to subject Jewish students to persecution by foreigners.
There is a whole ‘nother side to the H1-B visa and claims about “shortages” of “the best and brightest.” Professor Norm Matloff (statistics and computer science at UC Davis) has been trying to draw attention to the H1-B (http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html). His arguments are that the tech shortages are effectively bogus; there are shortages of people who can fill a position requiring skill sets X, Y, and Z _at a sub-market wage_. However, by lobbying about alleged shortages, industry groups can persuade ignorant (or crony capitalist) Congresscritters to pass the modern indentured servant visa (H1-B) that, the PR notwithstanding, does allow H1-B visa holders to be far below the prevailing wage.
There is much anecdote about costly experienced US tech workers kept just long enough to train their replacements: inexperienced H1-B visa holders who cannot easily change jobs, thereby being locked out of the market for better wages and benefits. No matter the pro-H1-B PR, there is no obligation on the US employers’ behalf _for H1-B applicants_ that they prove there is no American who can do the job; if a firm says no American exists for Tech Job X, Congress says it’s OK to bring a foreigner in, probably one as equally unqualified as the “non-existent” American.
Matloff notes that the companies that shriek loudest about a “shortage” of “the best and brightest” typically hire neither PhDs nor the best/brightest, such as Intel. They hire cheap drones on effectively non-negotiable contracts that Congress allows. When the H1-B worker’s 3-year visa is up, it’s easy to bring in a fresh H1-B. The American worker? Congress is working to make him/her unemployable. Some of his writings have tied US politicos to foreign tech firms that lobby in the US and/or have corporate presences (clout) here.
H1-B is one reason my few engineering acquaintances seek work or to stay in defense firms: Those firms cannot, currently, hire non-citizens.
I loathe government intervention. Since this is an international matter, government intervention is regrettably unavoidable. Here, it is proving detrimental to the public’s interests but all too typically beneficial to special and politicos’ interests.
Mr. Godby,
Thank you for bringing Professor Matloff into this discussion,he should be required reading before people take part in this specific debate.
I keep seeing this claim about a shortage of software engineers. Funny that; companies keep advertising for software engineers here in Boise, but they don’t seem interested in those of us with 30 years of experience. I know PhDs who are still unemployed from layoffs at HP in 2008.
And that has been the dirty little secret of the tech world at least since the early 90s, sell out your compatriots and make that extra little bonus or killing in the stock market.
As a computer programmer, I interpret, “there aren’t enough …” as “there aren’t enough American …. who will work cheap, so let’s hire foreign labor and drive down the salaries.
Just before I entered college in the late 70′s, I remember reading a round-table discussion of businessmen, the gist of which seemed to be: “We need computer programmers to realize that they are blue collar workers and to stop insisting on being treated and paid like professionals”. Well, maybe they shouldn’t have rqequired a degree in the field, then.
And, yes, the social standing of engineering students and ultimately employed engineers is not as “sexy” as advertising or the law. And yes, the expected lifetime income for those who remain engineers is less than medicine.
And remember that the Universities themselves in the early 70s took concrete steps to REDUCE the social standing of engineering students. Example: the University of Washington instituted a program entitled the Social Management of Technology to literally impose a hierarchy of ‘socially conscious’ creatures to watch over those kids who took hard rigorous courses and knew facts instead of narratives, and to somehow mitigate the social harm that the nerds might commit without adult supervision. It was a branch of the environmental religion, and seems to remain influential today.
More disturing is Friedman’s assertion that the US Congress has been “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
That is not only an insult to the American people but pure classical antisemitism. His U Wis remark is just another insult to the great unwashed of America whose continued support of Israel can only be attributed to stupidity. He is frustrated I think for reasons similar to Mersheimer.
In the case of Mearsheimer my theory is that he spent a career trying to build on the foundation of political realism established by his mentor, Hans Morgenthau, at U Chicago. Only he found that his “improvements” on the classic did not work when it came to the US-Israel relationship. Faced with the dilemma that the facts do not fit the theory he did what the intellectually dishonest often do; he contsructed a conspiracy theory to explain the anomaly.
Friedman has spent his whole career pushing the premise that if only Israel would grant more concessions they would find a reasonable partner for peace in the Palestinians. The abysmal failure of that idea is by now glaringly obvious.
I might add that Friedman’s net worth ($25 million) is more than the annual budget of AIPAC. Why doesnt he just buy his own Congress if it is so cheap and easy?
The first line of Spengler’s essay caught my eye. ‘Congress has been bought and paid for by the Israel lobby’.
I though Friedman was Jewish! In terms of vicious pointless infighting Jews are almost as bad as we Catholics. I am sure that quote from Friedman is going to be repeated on half a hundred anti-semitic websites. With the ethno-religious solidarity that North American Jews show for one another, they don’t need any enemies.
Mr. Goldman, if you want elaboration on my concerns about the disturbing growth of anti-semitism in The States reply to this comment. If you don’t reply I will not inflict my ‘bloviations’ upon you.
Bloviate all you want. That’s what the comments page is for. Friedman is echoing academics like Walt and Mearsheimer. He doesn’t mention that most Middle East Studies programs are subsidized by the Saudis or other Arab oil states.
A friend pointed out that fact and, not being inclined to believe everything I hear or see, I did some checking. What an eyeopener.
The Saudis et al are pouring what appears to be enormous sums into American university ME studies programs, chair positions, special scholarships and fellowships, buildings and more. If I’m not mistaken, they’re also beginning to fund language and “culture” programs in select public elementary, junior and high schools. The Chinese are doing the same.
Follow the money.
What Friedman said is so far from classicalcal anti-Semitism it’s pitiful and that pity resides in crying “Wolf!” and the sad equivalence with actual death camps.
It is common for Americans to say that congress has been bought and paid for by lobbies or that lobbies and corporate contributions amount to institutional corruption. Being wrong about those accusations or including AIPAC in the mix has nothing to do with bigotry.
“I might add that Friedman’s net worth ($25 million) is more than the annual budget of AIPAC. Why doesnt he just buy his own Congress if it is so cheap and easy?”
Heh, heh.
That’s a good one!!!
Yet even more disturbical is that anyone who doesn’t see it your way’s comments don’t show up to coinical a phrase.
Well said, well done.
Best one line summary of Tom Friedman ever. Eat your heart out Jim Taranto.
This letter from Netanyahu’s advisor to the NYT refusing an offer to write an op/ed is a must read. Friedman gets a special mention.
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=249724
That particular article made my day. It just felt so good that Netanyahu didn’t fall into the trap of trying to defend us in the NYT which would only have given them the credibility that I hope they are losing.
Very funny. But don’t you see that by using numbers, you are imposing the sort of bias that sent Harvard students marching out of their Econ 101 course last month?
David – The New York Times in general seems to be on a vendatta against Israel, and some in Israel have finally caught on. There is this column today in Contentions by Jonathon Tobin which you may have already read: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/16/bibi-new-york-times-netanyahu-bias/#more-778082
I have maintained that the Times should change its logo to, “All the news that fits our views, that’s what we print.”
On the costs and benefits of higher education, I have come across claims by some that, at least for women, a good plastic surgery job has better payout (compared to costs) than a college education. Put another way, for some at least, the cost of college education has outstripped the benefits it yields. That tells you that there is a bubble, and the delinquency rates you cite indicate it may soon burst, if it is not already doiong so. I suspect some of the OWS people are former students who owe a bundle on their college education but can’t get a job, or get a good enough job to give them the wherewithal to pay off their student loans.
Walter Sobchak @10 – Good sense of humor.
David – Shabbath Shalom
I agree with Tobin. But if I had wanted to write what Tobin writes, I would have stayed on Wall Street, and written checks to Commentary.
Jack,
What can one say about the NYT opinion pages? They are an echo chamber of Freidman, Dowd, etc.
On he other hand, NYT has frequently had great coverage of Iraq, Afghanistan, the methods by which Iran operates its covert WMD development program and insurgent/terrotist operations and finance: http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/12/16/by-means-vile/#more-19457.
“The dashed hopes of American students promote the sort of misbehavior we see in the Occupy Wall Street protests. They would do better to sue their universities for fraud and demand a return of their tuition, with interest.”
From the earliest days of the OWS movement I have been suggesting this very action to anyone who will listen. It is not the fault of the 1% that so many students went for the easy majors. It is definitely the fault of the colleges and universities that offered fluffy, nonsensical, irrelevant majors in return for the big fat checks from Mom and Dad (and Sallie Mae). Did they really not believe that they had a responsibility to offer tangible value for all that money? The failure to do so was intentional, not happenstance. There is ample grounds here, I think, for a huge class action.
Any ambulance chasing vultures…I mean product liability attorneys reading this thread? Here’s your next big, deep-pocketed litigation target!
“From the earliest days of the OWS movement I have been suggesting this very action to anyone who will listen. It is not the fault of the 1% that so many students went for the easy majors.”
The problem is, a lot of the “easy” majors aren’t so easy at all, just irrelevant to employment. Pure mathematics comes to mind. Employers didn’t tell students to find practical skills too loudly, for reasons of political correctness and government pressure. It’s the same kind of bubble as the housing bubble: artificially created by enforced information asymmetry. When people see the wall coming, it’s already too late.
Ron Paul would fix things by cutting off the government’s credit card.
You are right. Math, computer science, even business administration and finance are not easy. However, I do take exception with any of the numerous “studies” disciplines being offered by many institutions. In far too many instances one gets an A by simply regurgitating the biased, counterfactual notions of the professors whereas critical analysis of same gets you a failing grade. I experienced some of this first hand even decades ago in my humanities requirements for a science degree.
Far too many current students and recent grads went for the latter. They are the ones owed a refund, IMHO (I wasn’t exactly being facetious before).
Thank you, David. Another great post.
Just finished your book, “How Civilizations Die.”
Again, thank you. Your insights and courage inspire me.
OWS is PURE astroturf: 0bama PERSONALLY engaged in such gambits in his early Chicago daze — while he was still the darling of the CPUSA.
Note how many ACORN personalities have been rebranded into the OWS ranks.
—
Another weird trend is the absolute dominance of XX in the HR departments of modern America.
So you have chicks deciding which tradesman has what it takes to cut wood, plumb pipe or run wire.
It’s a strange world, indeed.
Re: “Rather than produce smart people, the university system has dumbed America down. After two generations of academic wheel-spinning, the transformation of universities into Maoist re-education camps with beer kegs has ruined their practical value.”
What a brilliant summation of what our once-excellent universities have become!
This writer likes to think he is well-educated, but he did attend a STEM program, and also has spent many years educating himself, and underdoing all the claptrap with which his leftist profs tried to indoctrinate. Keep up the good work, please, David…
I’m a Dare To Be Dull STEM kind of guy in my 74th year. Lately, I’ve been doing a risk analysis to estimate the cost of a lost well control for a foreign oil and gas company (a BP Macondo type of event). I don’t mind the exercise, but it is telling that the client can’t find a younger person for the job. Long ago I studied structural engineering and fluid mechanics. Now a days students study social engineering and coffee mechanics.
As for Friedman:
Instead of saying that someone is “as dumb as s..t” we should use “as dumb as
Friedman.”
There is one aspect of the NYT-Friedman story that bothers me. It is: why do the Times pursue such an anti-Israel policy? It seems bizarre to me, given there are so many Jews in its staff and in its NY readership.
The inescapebale answer, I believe, is that its editorial staff thinks that the ties between American jewry and Israel are weak and weakening and that for the majority of them the religion of Liberalism is far more important than the passe traditions of “Jewish history”.
Perhaps also there is in action here the shameful factor of Jewish anti-semitism, which is a widespread and serious disease among Jews.
I think you and many others here are forgetting the fact that other people are not you and have their own opinions. This does not make them idiots, bigots or traitors as a default position.
Spot on, as one expects from Goldman.
If you know someone who enjoys thinking at this level, you would do them a great favor by giving them a copy of “How Civilizations Die”.
Thomas Friedman makes a good first impression but it doesn’t take very long for that to go out the window. He gets a cogent thought, often from talking to some thinking person in
Israel, India or Silicon Valley and thinks gee whiz, that’s quite an insight. Then he goes on to expand that thought he caught into column or even a book. Then he appears on Charley
Rose or NPR and throws out a few sound bites and voila…genius. What crap, and the public
seems to feel nourished by the fact that they can grasp his points and make interesting chat at the next dinner party. That to me is his formula and has been working well for him for an entire career.
“Why, anybody can have a brain. That’s a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain.
“Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven’t got: a diploma.”
…The Man Behind the Curtain in the Emerald City.
And when was that written? 1900!
Plus ca change…
I thought the real test for Friedman is if the Chinese Communist Party approves.
If you can’t twirl a wrench, either physically or mentally in this economy, you are screwed.
Just perfect !
” A bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability.”
It no longer requires intelligence and capability, just the ability to borrow the money to pay the tuition.
As much as I agree with so much of what is said here, my own experiences raise questions about the theory versus reality of what is proposed.
I was a research and development engineer for many years working for large corporations and found that it a less rewarding path to follow. Technical expertise was never valued anywhere near as much as legal or business credentials – as measured by compensation and job security. Students who opted out of scientific and technical disciplines were doing what was logical. Science and math are difficult subjects, require persistent efforts to master and the rewards are more modest than pursuing a business degree or law degree. Like many engineers, I eventually left the field.
I graduated from a college town high school in 73. Even then the teachers looked down at those learning skills – auto mechanic, welder, machinist, and engineer. These careers are to be “Low Status” compared laughably to the Masters of English major working minimum wage at the local Banana Republic.
Against their wishes I became an Engineer at the University of Michigan where I wasn’t taught the answers to the problem, but how to look for and find the answers. It was very valuable. I have done very well for myself, earning more than my Internist MD wife. My son looked at the reality of being a doctor and decided to do engineering.
We were lucky, the local school system still can teach properly, if the student looks for it, he graduated high school with nearly a year of college credit. He is now an enginner himself and doing well. But many of his college friends that did not get career degrees are back living at home and strugging to get a career going.
We need more open immigration for those studying Engineer and other careers to stay here, vs being in India as our competition. But eject the illegals that are here to just suck on benefits, and find a fair way to replace all illegals with legal immigrants that deserve opportunity.
Same here, and in a farming/timber town in The South in the ’60s. The College Prep curriculum was REALLY demanding, I was playing in a band, making what passed for real money in the rural South in those days, and I simply didn’t want to do the work in my Senior year, so I dropped out of College Prep to the Vocational track and my teachers and counselor were simply appalled. They told me I was ruining my life. I took typing and bookkeeping instead of calculus and physics. But, you know, when I had my own businesses I could do my own books and correspondence rather than pay for it, and when it got big enough to justify having someone else do the books, I knew enough to tell them what to do and to call BS when necessary. When I went into government in the late ’80s, I was the only man that could or would type his own stuff and practically the only person there who could use a personal computer. I could dash off a well-written, neatly typed briefing or decision memo in a matter of minutes or hours at most while others where sending handwritten drafts and hand corrections back and forth to word processing for days. Guess who those higher up the food chain looked to for memos and letters. I ultimately got as far as you can get in a state government without legislative confirmation or standing for election, and, you know, not only did I never miss those calculus and physics classes I skipped, I never even needed the Algebra I endured at work, though it and trig and geometry later came in handy as I went for a Celestial Navigation endorsement for my Master’s License, but that was strictly avocational.
Government work is getting harder to find, what with more than 500,000 state and local layoffs since 2008. Government employment was great at absorbing psych majors. I doubt the prospects going forward will be as good.
Yes, Netanyahu would we boycotted at U of Wisconsin. Because students and faculty there are trained to be anti-Israel and anti-Jew. Netanyahu could never even get a fair hearing. The University would shut him down due to “security concerns”. The Jewish students who are still capable of independent thought would stay away, because they are intimidated by the rampant anti-semitism which Friedman’s “congress is bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” perpetuates.
What with Saudi Arabia buying the universities, particularly the “Mid East Studies” departments and bringing Sharia onto the campuses in the form of separate facilities for Muslim women the so called Israel lobby is quite paltry among the elitists.
Americans tend to root for the underdog. The Jewish democratic state is besieged by homicidal enemies who declare their hatred and support the return of the Caliphate. Their Jew hate is an article of religious faith, long pre-dating the modern state of Israel or the birth of the United States.
For what it’s worth, reason #1 of the 100 reasons NOT to go to grad school:
“The smart people are somewhere else.”
http://100rsns.blogspot.com/
In order to milk more money in, Universities and colleges created more pseudo sciences, social pseudo engineering, pseudo arts courses for the dumb and the lazy. As these dumb and lazy as*es graduate, they flood the media with dumb and irresponsible Jourpropagandists, even dumber as well as corrupt politicians, and more likely flood the educational system with dumb and lazy professors and teachers, and the cycle goes on.
As a fifth year mechanical engineering student, my perception on the education bubble is that we are rather insanely subsidizing education across the board rather than considering the needs of the nation as a whole.
We tell kids that everyone HAS to go to college to get a degree and that by default, simply having a degree means more economic success. We then offer kids the same amount of money if they go into a STEM degree path, which will take much longer, have much more of a course load, and require much more skill as if they take the easy path and get some stupid degree.
Human beings will always, nine times out of ten, take the easiest path. Its extremely difficult to talk to an 18 year old, out of their parents’ control for the first time, to understand that their decision in college will affect them for the rest of their lives. I routinely get told that a college degree is more than just picking one that makes money…that college is learning about oneself and is a noble path just for the sake of learning. That may have been true when education cost pennies to the dollar that it costs now. Kids are entering the job market lacking a necessary skill set, with the debt load similar to purchasing a house, only their diploma doesn’t have the equity that a house would.
What truly horrifies me is the number of my friends that have already graduated with a bachelors and realize they can’t get a job with an English/Poli-Sci/or whatever flavor of the month useless degree the school sold them so as a whole they are going back, charging even more debt to their name, to get Master degrees in these depressed fields. My ex-girlfriend is about $42000 in debt to get a masters in Social Work. Even if she finds a job, she will never make that amount of money in a year, let alone enough to work that debt down. Within 10 years, that $42000 is going to explode into a massive debt load which she will never, EVER be able to get out from under.
Its insane what we are funding. We have a generation of kids that will never be able to produce anything.
If it were up to me, I’d make a liberal arts degree as hard as an engineering degree (native-speaker mastery of two languages, for example, comprehensive historical knowledge, complete familiarity with the whole of the literary canon, etc.). Jacobi started out as a classical philologist; the great August Boekh told him to teach a math course at the U. of Berlin in the 1820s, and he demurred on the grounds that he had never taken a university level math course. Boekh told him that anyone who could survive his seminar in ancient Greek could teach any course at the university; Jacobi went on to discover the functions named after him. I’ve never done anything remotely as difficult as musical analysis with Carl Schachter and Charles Burkhart. And no-one works harder than instrumentalists at a good conservatory.
This is why I didn’t stay in academia. When I did teach undergrads at a big public university, half the class dropped out on the first day, and I got complaints.
The Left is counting on a huge cohort of “educated” people who are drowning in college debt and who must be “saved” by the government. If the Communist in Chief is re-elected he’ll throw out there a program in which all you have to do is join his Brown Shirts, er, Community Action Corps, and you’ll be absolved of your debt. They’ve talked about it already but just like CommieCare under the Clintons, it hasn’t yet reached critical mass.
When I was still working, now almost ten years ago, I had young lawyers coming to work for me in a $60-70K job who had $100K in student loans. My oldest stepson has a basically worthless BA in “Communications” and has over $50K in debt. He’d be unemployed or working retail at the MW if it weren’t for his parents’ connections. His fiance, similar indebted, checked out on the reality of $30-40K jobs with that kind of debt and went back for a Masters, after which she’ll be over $100K in debt. It’s in a demanding, scientific field where she will get a good job, but with that debt, they’re going to have bed sheets for curtains in a lot the rooms in a rented house and think going out to Applebees or Outback is rare and real treat. And it ain’t like they haven’t been warned about it. I’d helped my son get a pretty decent job and he had a good career path. His then-girlfriend is a wonderful, beautiful young, well now, not so young, woman, but when she decided she was going to the Lower 48 to get her Masters and he was planning to follow her, I told him to drop her like a hot rock because they’d be twenty years getting out of debt and setting themselves up to live anything like they way they’d lived growing up. Frankly, the way things look now, they’ll never live as well as they did growing up even though they’re both much better “educated,” or more correctly credentialled, than either set of parents.
Friedman stinks!
Writing-wise, Friedman’s most egregious sin is: “The real test is what would happen if Bibi tried to speak at, let’s say, the University of Wisconsin. My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away”. Following which, he goes on at length and in detail about what those hypothetical students think. Dude, if you have a problem with Netanyahu, just say so. Don’t ascribe it to imaginary friends!
“That Thomas Friedman would spout stupidity and anti-Semitism surprises me no more than the appearance of a gumball after I put a quarter into the machine and turn the knob.”
I wish to apologize to everybody. Next time, I’ll know better than to put a quarter into Friedman’s ear and twist his nose.
Apologies to posters whose comments I just approved. I am Sabbath observant and cannot check comments until after sundown on Saturday.
Well then, I demand you move to the Marshall Islands!
(Nightfall, surely.)
It’s a rough ol’ world out there. Those who sign the forms just to attend collegiate young-adult day care will ruin their lives. Those who understand that they merely represent a revenue stream (“what, it really isn’t all about ME?”) to colleges and universities, but are still willing to take advantage of the opportunities that come with their purchase (the TIME to learn and think) will do okay. The mid-thirties losers will wind up on street corners holding “I’m $xxx,xxx in debt” signs and spewing hatred toward all those who weren’t as stupid. Ultimately they’ll die, having been nowhere, done nothing and made no contribution. Liker AIDS and hemorrhagic fevers, they are self-limiting. All have the same creator-endowed humanity, but they also possess free will. Many make poor choices and will eventually succumb to the forces they’ve set in motion. This is the way of the natural world, and despite the many who hide from nature, quaking under their covers, we are all part of the real world and subject to the very real dangers existing there. The upside is that until they draw their last breath, every single loser has the potential to right their ship. Except for Friedman (lol).
I would tend to concur with Mr. Goldman as to the decreasing rate of return on a college degree investment. Most American universities are indeed vapid institutions, better suited to promulgating leftwing doctrines and pumping students (i.e. their parents) for cash than perhaps anything else. Unfortunately, for all these prophecies of `not enough lefty kids in the pipeline’, liberal left ideologies are certain to outlast even the most infertile lefty. There will also be no crash of university fees, a degree in any field is immutatble and there is there is only a singular method to obtain it, the universities know this well and price in this exclusivity no matter how worthless the degree may be.
First of all, ideology is not handed down genetically; it is a product of environment and education. Mis-education begins in state run grade schools, re-enforced by an equally mis-educated media, and this will perpetuate itself as many of those who gravitate to the educational sphere typically have left of center sensibilities. Additionally, universities are mini fiefdoms, they have no democratic accountability, they even have their own police forces, and they engender the support of the state at large. Many would undoubtedly outlast the rest of society crashing down around them, so it is no doubt that they and their ever upward costs will endure.
If anything were to challenge what is essentially academic strong-arm robbery, it would be the rise of foreign educational institutions that would be able to provide worthy degrees to loads of American students minus the left wing time wasting and brain filling mush at a fraction of the cost.
I hope that the commentariat here realizes that T.F. lost almost all of the family fortune during this real estate bust.
He gain traction back in the day because he fell into megabucks.
Subsequently it’s become a small fortune.
I’ll spam this thread with stuff I wrote on Ron Radosh’s Friedman thread:
“My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away, not because they are hostile but because they are confused.”
Uh, I think the Jewish students who stay away would be doing so because they either think like Uncle Tomeleh Friedman or lack balls and don’t want to ’cause trouble’, though I’m not sure there’s a difference between the two groups.
As someone above has said, compare and contrast with the reception Ahmadinejad would receive. I don’t recall a Friedman column on A’jads reception a couple years back at Columbia, but then, I stopped reading him a few years ago, as soon as I figured out his Jewish last name was no more than a handle that allowed Jew haters the world over to pick up his ideas and use them as a club to bash Israeli heads in.
Tom Friedman would be far less influential if his last name was Smith, useful Jewish idiot that he is.
Related: Here’s my crack at influencing Obama, Friedman style:
“I was on the way back from a UN sponsored conclave in Thailand, on the holocaust native shrimp populations are suffering as a result of deep see drilling in the South China Sea, and met a dual citizen Bangladeshi-American software engineer at the Dubai airport lounge, telecommuting to his job in Shanghai, where he designed medical imaging software for a Korean company selling equipment into the South American market our own medical equipment makers were not aggressive enough to take advantage of as they refused to learn and speak Spanish. He had his Swedish-born social worker wife along with him, who worked with autistic African children in Zimbabwe, arranging occupational therapy for these different but very special kids way across the continent at the Namibia General Hospital. These two international citizens of the modern world felt that the current Israeli government was far too independent vis a vis what humane liberal policies should be. Right then and there, I felt that if we could have a Chinese style dictatorship for one day in the US, free of interference from a congress beholden to, if not outright coerced and threatened by AIPAC and the Likud, we could demand Israel establish a Palestinian State with technocrat Fayyad at its head, and its capitol on the Temple Mount. THAT is how this problem could be solved, in our interconnected, wireless world.”
Wow. Another diatribe about friedman’s article that focuses on one paragraph and ignores the rest of it. Keep in mind that it WAS in response to clinton’s comment about democracy in israel, and he does expand on those points (and others) so you’d think what he did write would be at least topical, but no. Apparently what he wrote was too hard to engage with using the standard talking points, so better to pick on that one paragraph and call the rest anti-semitism.
And unless I’m mistaken, there no “stupid people” in congress either. I doubt there are very many who haven’t been to a university, either. So all of your points apply (equally badly) there too. His comparison was to point out that congress isn’t the place to be looking for honest opinions about israel’s leadership, because (a) it’s stage-managed, and (b) congressmen who point out the elephant in the room can expect an electoral backlash. Just as congressmen who point out that guns are the common factor in all gun crime can expect an electoral backlash.
I’m 46 yrs old and have been working in the construction industry for the last two and a half decades.
The money has been very good, and the work extremely interesting, and some of the people were quite nice.
All this was possible due to a rigorous and difficult 3 year community college education (absolutely no screwing about if you wanted to pass the courses; some were brutal: calculus, strength of materials, etc.)
I’ve left work and am now enrolled in 2nd yr Philosophy at the local Liberal Arts University, and I can tell you that the kids are going to have a sad and painful awakening, when they finally get out to the real world.
They have been sold a “lifestyle” bill of goods that they will be paying off for decades.
And these kids are all bright and energetic, but have been DUPED into believing that there is a pot of gold at the end of their self-discovery rainbow. If one of them ever asks me if I think they are pursuing the right path i don’t know what i would say: the awful truth, or a palliative lie? A real ethical dilemma.
(BTW my ex-GF is carrying $35k of student loans and she’s not done schooling [aka credentialling] yet!)
Yours truly,
Niall from Winnipeg
Mr. Goldman; I’ve noticed hikes in college tuition following large federal financial aid packages for education.
Is this a coincidence?
Also, An observation I didn’t exactly know how to express back in high school (71), that is, ‘there were those which made political issues out of their social phobias.
If that makes sense, is there a better way to word that?
Chiefparker, I draw a blank on both questions.
As someone recently said, most of our colleges and universities re-educate (i. e., indoctrinate) the uneducated.
Not every college or university professor is brilliant or even well-educated. Many professors, especially in the humanities and social sciences and in the “studies” (e. g. Women and Gender Studies), are just plain stupid.
According to Wikipedia, Friedman’s mother studied home economics at the University of Wisconsin, so he might have a bias.
Interestingly, Friedman has two “studies” degrees. He graduated summa cum laude in 1975 from Brandeis with a degree in Mediterranean studies. He then attended St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford on a Marshall scholarship, earning an M.Phil. in Middle Eastern studies.
“The radicalization of the universities produced a generation of clever people unsuited to productive activity in the real world but skilled at bloviating, and they became the tenured faculty of today. ”
And their students became Obama and Clinton and all of the other far-left liberals in government today. What’s that song from the show “South Pacific,” I think it’s called “You’ve got to be carefully taught.” It all starts when they’re young, gang, and if they’re taught that America is a terrible, selfish, and insensitive place, (rather than the wonderful, extremely giving, and caring place that we know it is), then that’s what they will believe when they become adults. Shun these schools, or start to demand that newer teachers be brought in. If you’re not successful there, then make sure YOU teach your kids what a great country we live in, filled with American exceptionalism. Remember, they’ve got to ge carefully taught.
The education bubble is next. Self-destruction is the Liberal legacy (see abortion, drugs, OWS).
How bad is it? A few years ago my son enrolled at a state university as a freshman. His first semester english class consisted entirely of watching and commenting upon Spike Lee movies and listening to the Lee supporting rants of the “professor”. While in high school my son had submitted an essay accompanied by a recent newspaper picture of several VFW members who were dedicating a memorial. He described the VFW folks as “a bunch of war-mongering old fools” in his essay which was laced with profanities including the “F” word. His work was returned with a “B” and the odd comment that he might get away with the profanities in a college setting but he should hold such down while in high school. I told of this incident to a young public school teacher whom I assumed would be shocked at the story. He said he couldn’t argue with the theme of the essay (war-mongering old fools) but that he agreed that the profanities were somewhat out of line! Once again, how bad is it? These episodes took place in the rural midwest. The cancer has spread.
If the OWS crowd have any brain cell, they would protest big education rather than big big banks. Unfortunately American Higher Education monopoly control by Political left succeed to turn young people and their parents into mindless robots. Congratulation!!!!!!
Don’t be too sure that current college graduates can “read the manual.” The number of kids entering college today who require remedial work in reading, writing, and math is astounding. (I started college in the fall of 1965 and there were no remedial classes for deficient students. If you were deficient, you didn’t get accepted into college, period.) This is a reflection of the dumbed-down curriculum in our elementary and secondary schools. The liberals have been steadily dumbing down our schools for decades. The scary thing to me is that the new dumbed-down teachers coming out of college are being hired by the same dumbed-down elementary and secondary schools that they attended. How do we now break the cycle?
The other destructive policy in our schools is the promotion of self-esteem, even if it eventually cripples the kids when they get out into the real world. I don’t know how we can fix all the problems with our schools when there are so many liberal do-gooders and bleeding hearts who don’t want to make the kids “feel bad.”
Reportedly, individuals live on a dollar a day in the Sudan, Michael Moore’s poster country for doing good since it was unpopular in Hollywood to be doing good in Iraq when doing badly. So, the Solyandra 500 million pissed away by the Obama administration to manufacture in high priced Silicon Valley means roughly, hypothetically, that 1.5 million peopled starved to death last year in the Sudan that would otherwise be alive on those bankrupt Solyandra dollars–and that’s not counting the midnight basket ball programs for the brothers in the hood in Chicago. Consider the doctor brain drain. The U.S. Canada, the U.K and much of the West essentially milks the third world of its trained doctors, leading to extreme doctor shortages, but it does give such NGOs as Doctors Without Borders purpose and meaning in life and a clean conscience after earning windfall incomes during a lifetime of doing breast enhancements in Beverly Hills.
Regarding Friedman’s remark: “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby”
I would refer you to Jean-Paul Sartre,Anti-Semite and Jew, Schocken books, 1963:
“What characterizes the inauthentic Jews is that they deal with their situation by running away from it: they have chosen to deny it, or to deny their responsibilities, or to deny their isolation, which appears intolerable to them.” pg. 92
“In a word , the inauthentic Jews are men whom other men take for Jews and who have decided to run away from this insupportable situation.” pg. 93
“The inauthentic Jew flees Jewish reality, and the anti-Semite makes him a Jew in spite of himself: but the authentic Jew makes himself a Jew, in the face of all and against all. He accepts all, even martydom, and the anti-Semite , deprived of his weapos, must be content to yelp at the Jew as he goes by, and can no longer touch him.” pg. 137
Poor Friedman, you’re still a Jew to the anti-Semite,for all your posturing about universalist values. It must be difficult going through like as a coward.
Never mind pitying Friedman. Pity the rest of us Yids, who either care deeply for or live in Israel.
Friedman’s last name is a convenient handle by which Jew haters the world over can use his ideas to bash in Israeli heads.
To the extent his ideas entered the liberal / Democratic mainstream (and they did), or gave license to those in power to apply unfair pressures, he bears a propagandist’s guilt for deaths of the chosen subset.
He is now an open enemy – in effect- of his people of origin. Guilty as Goldstone, no?
Funny how all the old people think the “real world” is the 20th century, “The American Century.” “Tough it out, pray on your knees, think like us or perish. The gooks and chinks can’t make it without US and our schools and teachings.” Hahahahahaha
Like the dumb farm kid telling the old man in the whore house in Catch-22 who supported the Italians, then the Germans, then the Americans that “America will last forever.” This was the last year of the Pearl Harbor Survivor’s meeting.
The young will re-invent the world every generation in every nation and in every language. Trying to teach them 70 year old beliefs and behaviors is a fools errand for old men who no longer matter.
You only get one bite at the apple, then it is the next generation’s turn. Out of the way old man, you drive too slow.
Sorry, punk, you have a few more years to be our subordinates and most of you will never be our equals; you’re spoiled, lazy, and abysmally ignorant, but you feel really good about yourselves as evidenced by your ignorant screed.
I hope you are brushing up on Sharia law and learning to speak and read Arabic, for that is the fate of the ignorant, indoctrinated and poorly educated, young and old.
An important insight is that perhaps a third of a society’s population at any point in history are outright barbarians who are NOT civilized!
Those barbarians are the young. The older members of society have an obligation to civilize them but our universities have become corrupted in their self-interest that they no longer serve the greater civilization’s interests.
It really takes the family.
I am a 50-something y/o grandmother who decided to complete a bachelor’s degree started in the 70s. I chose a so-called for-profit university (all of them are for-profit, but the commercial ones are at least truthful enough to say so). The school I chose admonished that graduates would be able to do three things or they would not graduate. They would be able to read at college level, they would be able to write at college level, and they would be able to make a decent presentation to a group of professionals. I was astonished at how many students under the age of 40 were unable to read above a grammar school level or compose a paragraph, let alone a 1000-word paper. LibertyShip46 and JK are right.
Atilla, your graciousness and appreciation for the generations that have gone before you underwhelm me. You’re a prime example of those who accepted the teaching that government could replace faith in something greater than ourselves.
FourGees,
You have Atilla receipted and filed. It would be interesting to look at his accomplishments and assess how he’ll handle the 21st Century. There are some American young people who will have no problem: star STEM graduates and combat veteran junior officers. I doubt we’d find Atilla numbered among such impressive young Americans.
Circa forty years ago, I earned two engineering degrees, an MBA is management, a black belt in Taekwondo, and a handful of PE licenses. Every achievement, except the legal licenses, were of value in engineering a score of nukes, two score of fossil fueled power plants and several decades assessing advanced technologies (what is coming, the technical barriers, and when). I have learned that there are very articulate people, e.g. Mr. Friedman, who are extremely ignorant in expounding on things I know about. Hence, in areas beyond my knowledge, I put a question mark next to their statements.
One result of their influence is that my profession, engineering, is in shambles. Indeed the vast majority of “engineers” in America are not. They never earned a Professional license, or even applied for one. There is no defacto or enforced definition of who is an engineer, and what they do? Mr. Friedman, Al Gore, many lawyers, and even buxom actresses speak about energy and people listen. Have you ever known one Professional Engineer who spoke about energy on the Sunday “news” shows? Do you know any PE of national prominence? How do you reach a position on: the New Orleans levees, the BP well blow out, coal fired power plants, EMP, Fukushima, the proposed Canadian pipeline, or a rational energy policy?
About 2/3 of Americans who earn an engineering degree, leave the vaguely defined profession by mid career. Why? It is neither lucrative, or secure, and it is getting worse. Engineering is a hire and fire career in the private sector, lacking any authority in large corporations, wholly subservient to financial and legal types. (In each of the above disasters, there was one technical employee who knew the score but had zero authority to stop hell cracking open.)
hus I know a number of parents who discouraged their bright kids from entering a difficult academic field for this reason. It has taken a generation but our main national supply of engineers, Asians, now have learned this hard lesson. The intentional ambiguity is the root problem to the H1-B visa, a naked salary control on scarce talent. However it has backfired on America. In recent years, there has developed a nascent reverse brain drain, because the professional status for engineers in Asia is better than in the US. If this continues, our grid will collapse,and our toilets will not flush. We have destroyed our heavy manufacturing industries, and their productive careers.
Why is this? Because we listen to people like Mr. Friedman. If your kid had brain cancer, would you consider his eloquence on a cure?
Excellent and informative post. Thank you.
The only quibble I would have is the suggestion that Friedman is eloquent. His writing is pure stream of consciousness, bounded only by the most conventional multiculti and economic constructs as taught in universities these days (which verge on of more often simply cross over into nonsense), easily assimilated and therefore appealing to the lowest common denominator mis’educated’ class, who are the subject of this thread. Mental diarrhea, committed to paper.
Anyhow, its a tragedy what has happened to engineering.
I can tell you that hospital based medicine is very similar, vis a vis control versus knowledge, if that is any consolation (though it shouldn’t be – it is just more sadness.
Ok, I’m off topic but I’ve just read NYT Krugman and it seems that he discovered hot water and finally caught up with China real estate bubble I remember reading about on this page and/or AT Spengler. Now I suppose we will be hearing all kinds of (mostly wrong) theories from leftish quasi intellectuals about world future after China contraction and be amazed by their stupidity. And NYT will undoubtedly be there to publish all of them after they get some time to recover from mourning for C.Hitchens who was I bet very much surprised after he died, pleasantly I hope.
What a disjointed piece. I was actually hoping to learn more about student loan debt bubbles and all I got was thinly veiled liberal bashing. Stop posting misleading titles! And stay on topic!
My respects to Spengler, so ably ‘channeled’ by Mr. Goldman. My respect for this duo is such that I would like to imitate, if not to emulate, this dyspeptic duo’s wit and pith.
In that spirit, while I note that Yanks give all sort of excuses for what appears to be their near-terminal laziness as regards learning anything useful or helpful (e.g., jobs being outsourced, STEM degrees not being valued, such degree holders having to dwell in Dilbertland, etc.), such comments fall into the running gag of the late Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “This is true, but unhelpful.”
I, for one, believe that Yankees and other Americans can still get their collective act together, if they will just have the good sense to fall back on their guiding genius and become auto-didacts, or self-taught, again. I believe that depending on the colleges and universities to do the job of educating people has led us to this pass.
In the belief that it is better to light one small stick of dynamite than to curse the silence (or something like that), may I recommend two websites:
http://khanacademy.org
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
The first provides free YouTube lectures and tutorials of the math and science necessary to understand college coursework. The second provides free MIT courseware for 2300+ courses. And as of 2012, MIT will be giving credentials for those who have completed those courses.
It is my hope that by providing the Good Will Hunting option to millions of Americans, and giving credentials for their work, we might see the first steps in the puncturing of Higher Education Bubble.