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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.
This is correct. When I was in private industry we would issue aptitude tests to all candidates seeking technical positions. It was rare for a candidate from a 3rd or 4th tier school to make the cut... usually the non-STEM majors from top tier schools fared better than the STEM majors from low ranking schools.
I think this is at the heart of the 'anti-college' argument. Too many schools are nothing more than degree mills and people are angry that employers have caught on to the scam.
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.
My university didn't have physics-lite for Engineers. We were in the same classes with the physics majors.
My basic point is that a community college physics course, at best, has a bit of high school algebra in it and most of the students are so poorly prepared that there isn't much math. 3rd tier state schools are similar. The students don't have the background to handle the academic load of a top school. All college degrees are not created equal.
Agree on 3rd tier. I once had to sit in (for an entire semester) on an intro to physics class at a local tier 3 as part of my job. Supposedly these were engineering students. I was appalled. None of them would have made it past drop date where I went. And the course itself was ridiculously dumbed down. Student/instructor interaction were very limited. Cookbook only. The whole thing taught assuming the students couldn't do basic math.
Actual numbers of unemployed people over 25 by educational attainment as of Sep 2017, not seasonally adjusted and seasonally adjusted.
Less than high school ... 824,000 ... 684,000
HS grads, no college ... 1,784,000 ... 1,537,000
Some college ... 1,562,000 ... 1,353,000
Bachelor's degree and higher ... 1,363,000 ... 1,260,000
So to answer your question, out of about 55 million people over 25 who have college degrees, between 1.26 and 1.36 million are unemployed. Most significantly, roughly 1/3 of the unemployed over 25 in the US have college degrees. When you consider that close to 1/3 of the people over 25 in the US have college degrees today, their representation among the unemployed is roughly the same as their representation in the population as a whole. If you are unlucky enough to be unemplyed, it seems having a college degree won't help you. If you are not unemployed a college degree will give you the opportunity for higher paying jobs, because employers can use the lack of a degree as a screening criteria to keep those without a degree our of contention. This works out well for them as the number of lower paying jobs are the majority of what they are offering.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RosieSD
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%
My university didn't have physics-lite for Engineers. We were in the same classes with the physics majors.
My basic point is that a community college physics course, at best, has a bit of high school algebra in it and most of the students are so poorly prepared that there isn't much math. 3rd tier state schools are similar. The students don't have the background to handle the academic load of a top school. All college degrees are not created equal.
You are making some pretty sweeping generalizations regarding community college students. I know many students at top-notch universities that also take classes at community college. My neighbor, for example, is a student at Rice University where he handles the academic load just fine. He takes community college classes over the summer to save money. He's far from an idiot.
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.
Are you a minority or woman? What do you think your experience is more relevant than theirs? What makes you think your experience outweighs the reams of research on this topic? I suspect you are deeply unaware of the research about this subject if you are making statement like the bolded. Research has made it clear that socioeconomic status is one of the major players when it comes to inequality, along with racial and gender biases.
As for the second paragraph, you gave two examples that have almost zero meaning. Sure women win more often in divorce cases they are also much more likely to contribute more to the support of the children after divorce since 75% of women don’t receive the full child support they are awarded. Women are much more likely than men to live in poverty after divorce. Meanwhile while earning more degrees women are still less likely to be in higher earning positions especially in STEM degrees. So enough of this pretending women have more privilege than men. It is nonsense.
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). ...
Yet another approach is to take the Advanced Placement (AP) exam, while still in high school. It is not necessary to be enrolled in an AP class, to be admitted to the AP exam. Score a "5", or in some cases even a "4", and college-credit is likely forthcoming. For engineering-majors, this has been an excellent way to obviate having to pay college tuition for English, Government, History, etc. (and for that matter, Chemistry, Physics or Calculus).
Quote:
Originally Posted by RosieSD
The BLS also has numbers (from 2016) on median weekly pay by educational level.
...
Master's degree $1745
PHD: $1664
Going by that data, earning a PhD diminishes one's income, relative to that of the next-highest degree?
Quote:
Originally Posted by AnotherTouchOfWhimsy
I'm sure that one could learn life skills in college. It's just not the only (or even necessarily the most common) way to learn said skills.
Life-skills are best learned from parents or other direct mentors. The purpose of college is to glean abstract knowledge - not "skills" for employment or personal-finance or independent-living.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Weichert
The never never land BS as you call it forms the basis of what comes later. And what comes later can be very difficult from a conceptual point of view, along with the theoretical aspects and of course the corresponding mathematics involved.
Indeed, the "never never land BS" aspires to epistemic value, rather than to employment-potential. An engineer might in daily practice calculate loading on a beam, or impedance in a circuit, using simplified methods of applied math. And that's useful; I'm not knocking it. But the abstraction behind those methods, is the proving of theorems. Does a solution exist? Is it unique? What assumptions must be made? Is it rigorous, or heuristic? The essential difference between the trades and the professions, is not in the practical knowledge for solving practical problems, but in the overarching grasp of the theory. Often, the tradesman knows what's best to be built, and how best to build it, better than the engineers that designed it... But his appreciation is situational, narrow, contingent on the times. He doesn't delve into the theoretical aesthetics.
Another way to regard the matter: the practical "how do I do it" tasks evolve quickly; specific trade-knowledge quickly becomes obsolete. But the underlying theory in most fields (I mean STEM fields) hasn't much changed since the 19th century.
Agree on 3rd tier. I once had to sit in (for an entire semester) on an intro to physics class at a local tier 3 as part of my job. Supposedly these were engineering students. I was appalled. None of them would have made it past drop date where I went. And the course itself was ridiculously dumbed down. Student/instructor interaction were very limited. Cookbook only. The whole thing taught assuming the students couldn't do basic math.
Curious: what types of jobs were these students training for/what types of jobs did this 3rd tier postsecondary institution state students would be qualified for upon graduation?
Ok. This was in the 90s at the height of the dot com craze, so everyone and his brother expected to be a computer engineer. As best I recall that was the goal of pretty much everyone in that class. Maybe a couple of outliers like myself who were there for business reasons. I already had an MS at the time; the instructor for this class was a real coup for this university to get as he was considered one of the top men in my field who had authored the definitive text; it was really way out of his league to be teaching an intro course. Kind of like putting a major league pitcher into a Little League game.
Oh, if you're curious why I was in that course when I already had an MS? My job required so many credits each year to keep my job, so if I have to be in a course, why not take something easy and happens to have an instructor who's tops in my field. And I got paid to be there.
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