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This is total nonsense. My physics courses had real math in them. A community college or 3rd tier state school physics course might have high school algebra and half the class will struggle with even that basic math skill. Quantum mechanics had probability theory as a prerequisite math course. You had to be pretty good at integral calculus to handle the field theory course. Even the first Newtonian physics course I took had differental equations in it.
Somebody refuting this kind of needs to name the college and provide a link to the syllabus and the textbook. That's not what a top-50 university physics curriculum looks like. Universities also offer survey courses in the sciences with little math in them but those aren't going to open any doors for you if you think you're going to be seeking high tech employment. Real STEM courses at top universities are hard.
In my state every 4-year degree requires freshman English, sophomore literature, US History, government, psychology, and others. Even if you are getting a degree in quantum mechanics. No reason these classes can't be knocked out at a community college. In fact, many public high schools, including the one my kids will attend, actually offer community college courses as part of the curriculum, so students can get dual credit (high school and college). A large percentage of students who graduate from these schools enter college as a sophomore.
I think the "introductory physics" discussion comes down to what the definition was where you went. For example where I went has at least three introductory physics courses. Introductory physics for liberal arts majors which is algebra based cookbook physics; physics for engineers which has calc as a corequisite; and introductory physics for physics majors which has calc as a prerequisite. Content between the three was most definitely not the same.
You seem to acknowledge that rich people have privilege based on their wealth but then arbitrarily decide no such thing can exist regarding gender or race. Why because those are your privileges? Many rich people downplay the privileges they have too and insist their good fortune is solely due to their hard work.
So for the typical poor kid who also happens to be not white, take all that lack of privilege based on wealth and add on the ones regarding race and/or gender, and they are starting even further behind the starting line.
Gender/racial privileges exist, but are seriously overplayed and countered by privileges that women and racial minorities have. I don't doubt that a black youth in East Cleveland is underprivileged, but this is primarily due to their class and only secondary because of their race. In modern social justice, the emphasis is so heavily on race and gender that the aforementioned youth and Lebron James may as well be equally oppressed in their eyes, and a poor white kid from West Virginia and a rich white from Cape Cod are equally privileged. They basically have the opposite view that I do in that they believe a white rich boy from Cape Cod is privileged but primarily due to his race and gender and only secondarily because of his class.
Women in particular have many privileges that men don't have. They are the parents who tend to win in child custody cases and they are far more likely to be taken seriously when reporting domestic abuse. In college they get their own major and are better able to exploit support opportunities available to them, a major factor that allows women to graduate more than men. Third wave feminism, which teaches that women are superior to men, has traction on many college campuses.
Just because you don't know many of them, doesn't mean they aren't out there.
Tell us about some of the college graduates you personally know currently who haven't found jobs. What type of jobs are they looking for and where are they looking for jobs? What is the main challenge they're facing in finding a job? What types of steps are they taking to find jobs?
That would add more to the discussion, I think, then broad statements like the one above.
I think we also have to keep in mind that there are plenty of people who never went to college who have trouble getting jobs too. I would venture to guess that number is probably larger. Let me see if I can dig up some facts on that.
A few posters have suggested that college graduates can't find jobs, so I thought it might be good to pull up some factual data on current unemployment rates by education level.
The data is from the U.S. Department of Labor for September 2017.
Unemployment rate by educational attainment, September 2017
Less than high school diploma 6.5%
High school diploma, no college 4.3
Some college or associates degree 3.6 Bachelor's degree and higher 2.3%
Gender/racial privileges exist, but are seriously overplayed and countered by privileges that women and racial minorities have. I don't doubt that a black youth in East Cleveland is underprivileged, but this is primarily due to their class and only secondary because of their race. In modern social justice, the emphasis is so heavily on race and gender that the aforementioned youth and Lebron James may as well be equally oppressed in their eyes, and a poor white kid from West Virginia and a rich white from Cape Cod are equally privileged. They basically have the opposite view that I do in that they believe a white rich boy from Cape Cod is privileged but primarily due to his race and gender and only secondarily because of his class.
Women in particular have many privileges that men don't have. They are the parents who tend to win in child custody cases and they are far more likely to be taken seriously when reporting domestic abuse. In college they get their own major and are better able to exploit support opportunities available to them, a major factor that allows women to graduate more than men. Third wave feminism, which teaches that women are superior to men, has traction on many college campuses.
A few posters have suggested that college graduates can't find jobs, so I thought it might be good to pull up some factual data on current unemployment rates by education level.
The data is from the U.S. Department of Labor for September 2017.
Unemployment rate by educational attainment, September 2017
Less than high school diploma 6.5%
High school diploma, no college 4.3
Some college or associates degree 3.6 Bachelor's degree and higher 2.3%
I'm assuming they're counting baristas with bachelor's degrees as employed. Which they are... but they'd be similarly employed if they didn't have the degree (and they wouldn't be paying back loans on their meager incomes). Underemployment was 13.7% a year ago. That's more the issue. There are some people who can't find jobs at all, but being underemployed (someone with a bachelor's degree who is working at the Dollar Tree or Macy's or Wendy's as a cashier) is more common.
There are also people with degrees who are doing the same jobs as those without degrees. Maybe they're making a reasonable income. They are underemployed, but not grossly so. So maybe someone with a degree is history is an EMT or someone with a degree is sociology is a receptionist at a doctor's office or works at a bank. Those jobs are available to those without degrees and they pay reasonably well.
Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) and Bob Jones University are two examples that come to mind.
Now, not every religious affiliated school (i.e. Duke, Wake Forest, Notre Dame, etc.) affiliates with the political religious right, but these two certainly do.
Right. There is the 'old' conservative. Bill Buckley, for example. A highly educated libertarian. Then there is the 'new' conservative. Social conservatives who reject science in the name of their dogma. Evolution? Nope. They have more in common with Iranian Muslim fundamentalists than with Bill Buckley. It's kind of unsurprising that the 'new' conservatives have anti-College sentiment. They tend to be poorly educated white people who are pretty closed to expanding their horizons. We've seen some of it in this thread. College isn't supposed to be a trade school. It's supposed to teach critical thinking. That includes challenging all those cherished beliefs of poorly educated lower income white people.
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