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And in the past in this country and currently in most of the rest of the world, those kids wouldn't be there at all. They would have gone to trade school, directly into the labor force or into the military.
The problem is that public education is selling the misguided notion of everyone going "to college" and it's just a sham. Those kids don't belong there in the first place, and in most of the rest of the world, they simply aren't.
So, to try to say that it's an indictment of the overall level of teaching going on at the K-12 level is simply not accurate.
The solution is to give those kids realistic post-secondary options as opposed to "going to college".
You mentioned the military was where a lot of these kids would have ended up rather than college. You do realize that the military has been lowering standards in order to meet recruiting goals? Which is another stress test for k-12, and the results aren't good. Prospective soldiers can't meet age old standards, so they lower the standards. So is your solution simply to say they don't belong in the military?
I used to work as an accountant, and much of what I used to do also got shipped off to both India and the Philippines. In fact, Wall Street firms outsourced quite a lot of their back room work (quant analysis) to India. Again, follow the money, and the money says that overseas brain power is better than ours, or at least on par with ours....
Well yes, but the bigger reason is because it's SO much cheaper to compensate foreign works than it is to compensate American workers. For example, the average American computer programmer makes about $60,000, whereas the average Indian computer programmer makes $6,000. Acting like brain power is the only reason jobs are going overseas is quite misinformed.
Well yes, but the bigger reason is because it's SO much cheaper to compensate foreign works than it is to compensate American workers. For example, the average American computer programmer makes about $60,000, whereas the average Indian computer programmer makes $6,000. Acting like brain power is the only reason jobs are going overseas is quite misinformed.
Don't understand your last sentence, but yeah, you're right, they get paid FAR less than what we do. But that only underscores the point that a worldwide glut in college graduates exists, and they are quite good, good enough to displace US workers, and good enough to have them shipped over here. Also, the college trained accountants in the Philippines were excellent, and a lot of the audit work from the Big Four (can't believe I would ever say the Big Four, rather than the Big Eight) gets shipped over there as well. Paperless audits and such, which buttresses the fact that technology was created in order to take advantage of well trained, qualified foreigners who work for nearly nothing.....
For what skills are highly profitable private employers willing to pay for w/>$200K/yr starting jobs? Or what learned mechanical/computer skills can command lucrative blue-collar jobs in o&g or precision mfg or elite trades? (Ignore usual nonsense of unionized, self-interested education industry and alleged need for "well-rounded" lib arts education/extracurric activities, etc)
Can these skills be self-learned by kids? If so, at what age via cost/time-efficient modalities like kindle, khan academy,udacity, etc?
Where are parents in role of advising own kids re: career strategics and skills needed? Didn't these parents choose to have kids and all the risks/costs entailed? Why are dumb/inept parents' dumb/unproductive kids fault of innocent taxpayers?
Suspect "best" schools of Germany/Japan/Chindia/RoW are vastly inferior to any half-decent public suburban school in US in terms of allowing any ambitious, middle-income kid to self-learn and figure out what are smartest career choices to achieve economic freedom....and thereby achieve intellectual freedom...and world of kindle, udacity, etc etc has made any formal education far less relevant to anyone who is truly productive and ambitious.....SiliconValley is full of rather wealthy >55yo college dropout engineers who are often far smarter and wealthier than 99+% of alums of Stanford CS, let alone the more archaic MIT/Harv clowns....
Despite growing investment in education, 25% of its population is still illiterate; only 15% of Indian students reach high school, and just 7%, of the 15% who make it to high school, graduate.[5] The quality of education whether at primary or higher education is significantly poor as compared with major developing nations. As of 2008, India's post-secondary institutions offer only enough seats for 7% of India's college-age population, 25% of teaching positions nationwide are vacant, and 57% of college professors lack either a master's or PhD degree.[6]
If you read my post again it was with reference to high tech. The US says there is a shortage and the new push is on STEM.
The "push" I mentioned was about that. We have our own illiteracy problem here in the US as well but that was not what my post was about.
Don't understand your last sentence, but yeah, you're right, they get paid FAR less than what we do. But that only underscores the point that a worldwide glut in college graduates exists, and they are quite good, good enough to displace US workers, and good enough to have them shipped over here. Also, the college trained accountants in the Philippines were excellent, and a lot of the audit work from the Big Four (can't believe I would ever say the Big Four, rather than the Big Eight) gets shipped over there as well. Paperless audits and such, which buttresses the fact that technology was created in order to take advantage of well trained, qualified foreigners who work for nearly nothing.....
Wasn't really directed toward you, but it was bad phrasing so I apologize. IMO, the crux of the problem is that foreign countries are producing college graduates in a way that hasn't been existent in the past. Those people in India, etc. are willing to work for $6,000 a year, whereas in America that obviously wouldn't fly. Thus, companies would rather pay $6,000 to a foreign worker who is as equally capable as the American worker that expects to make much more than that. I don't think it's a really a matter of talent/brains, it's a matter of money.
For what skills are highly profitable private employers willing to pay for w/>$200K/yr starting jobs? Or what learned mechanical/computer skills can command lucrative blue-collar jobs in o&g or precision mfg or elite trades? (Ignore usual nonsense of unionized, self-interested education industry and alleged need for "well-rounded" lib arts education/extracurric activities, etc)
Can these skills be self-learned by kids? If so, at what age via cost/time-efficient modalities like kindle, khan academy,udacity, etc?
Where are parents in role of advising own kids re: career strategics and skills needed? Didn't these parents choose to have kids and all the risks/costs entailed? Why are dumb/inept parents' dumb/unproductive kids fault of innocent taxpayers?
Suspect "best" schools of Germany/Japan/Chindia/RoW are vastly inferior to any half-decent public suburban school in US in terms of allowing any ambitious, middle-income kid to self-learn and figure out what are smartest career choices to achieve economic freedom....and thereby achieve intellectual freedom...and world of kindle, udacity, etc etc has made any formal education far less relevant to anyone who is truly productive and ambitious.....SiliconValley is full of rather wealthy >55yo college dropout engineers who are often far smarter and wealthier than 99+% of alums of Stanford CS, let alone the more archaic MIT/Harv clowns....
I don't know what skills highly profitable employers are willing to pay >$200K/yr but I am going to guess it doesn't include the skill of going around different forums posting inane banter about the inferiority of those who aren't startup entrepreneurs/programmers.
For what skills are highly profitable private employers willing to pay for w/>$200K/yr starting jobs? Or what learned mechanical/computer skills can command lucrative blue-collar jobs in o&g or precision mfg or elite trades? (Ignore usual nonsense of unionized, self-interested education industry and alleged need for "well-rounded" lib arts education/extracurric activities, etc)
Can these skills be self-learned by kids? If so, at what age via cost/time-efficient modalities like kindle, khan academy,udacity, etc?
Where are parents in role of advising own kids re: career strategics and skills needed? Didn't these parents choose to have kids and all the risks/costs entailed? Why are dumb/inept parents' dumb/unproductive kids fault of innocent taxpayers?
Suspect "best" schools of Germany/Japan/Chindia/RoW are vastly inferior to any half-decent public suburban school in US in terms of allowing any ambitious, middle-income kid to self-learn and figure out what are smartest career choices to achieve economic freedom....and thereby achieve intellectual freedom...and world of kindle, udacity, etc etc has made any formal education far less relevant to anyone who is truly productive and ambitious.....SiliconValley is full of rather wealthy >55yo college dropout engineers who are often far smarter and wealthier than 99+% of alums of Stanford CS, let alone the more archaic MIT/Harv clowns....
I know that they pay $500 for the most informative post, what do they pay for the opposite end of the scale? I would say that you would qualify for that prize....
No, it is. The colleges are simply a stress test to show that these kids haven't learned what they were supposed to in order to precede in life. An employer could have administered tests which would have revealed their prospective employees incapacity to understand what they were taught k-12. Are you then going to say that those kids have no business being employed? That misses the point entirely, those people have to do something, and k-12 is failing a growing number of them.
No, I'm not saying that they should "not be employed". What I am saying is that those kids would have gone into a different track towards meaningful post-secondary employment and not pursued it through "college".
The US educational system has bought into the lie that everyone needs to go to "college". Your assertion that because there are more kids taking remedial classes in "college" that the school system is suddenly failing to do its job is based on this. What I'm trying to tell you is that those kids have >always< existed in the US schools and have >always< existed in other countries.
The difference is that the US is sending these kids to college and the rest of the world selects at a relatively early age, around 8th grade, who gets to continue on the academic track and go to university. So, to compare those two unequal sets of students....in the US it being the vast majority of HS students, and in the rest of the world a relatively small selected subset of students....is simply a false paradigm.
To an extent, this is true. We had a foreign exchange student from Denmark who said they only test their college bound students. .
This is totally untrue. I went to school in DK and took the standard exams. I went to university, but lots of my peers didn't and still tested.
I always read that the US ranks low on many educational levels (as mentioned below), but that the kids here have some of the highest levels of confidence of any country in the world.
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