Kids: Then and Now

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Xan
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Xan » Tue Sep 03, 2019 9:18 pm

The federal government succeeded in converting virtually all "private" colleges and universities into effectively public institutions via grants several decades ago. The only truly private universities are the handful like Hillsdale which reject government funding completely.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Kbg » Tue Sep 03, 2019 10:57 pm

Xan wrote:
Tue Sep 03, 2019 9:18 pm
The federal government succeeded in converting virtually all "private" colleges and universities into effectively public institutions via grants several decades ago. The only truly private universities are the handful like Hillsdale which reject government funding completely.
No the government did not, the universities did. I really get tired of this argument, just because the government sweetens the pot for something and ties strings to it, that does not equate to the government mandating it. There is a huge difference.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by InsuranceGuy » Wed Sep 04, 2019 1:58 pm

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Last edited by InsuranceGuy on Mon Mar 08, 2021 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Maddy » Wed Sep 04, 2019 4:24 pm

Kbg wrote:
Tue Sep 03, 2019 10:57 pm
No the government did not, the universities did. I really get tired of this argument, just because the government sweetens the pot for something and ties strings to it, that does not equate to the government mandating it. There is a huge difference.
Kind of like conditioning more generous Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement on the meaningful use of electronic medical records. When you look at the practicalities of the situation, it might has well have been mandated.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Xan » Wed Sep 04, 2019 5:17 pm

Or the way they got the drinking age raised to 21 everywhere: get states hooked on federal money for highways, then threaten to take it away.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by ochotona » Wed Sep 04, 2019 5:51 pm

I used to get served in bars when I was 16 in 1977. Those were the days! It was great!
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Kbg » Wed Sep 04, 2019 6:03 pm

My point is, unless mandated by law or regulation, you/they make the bargain they chose. A fairly good current example is many smaller universities are opting out of sports all together because of Title IX as really the only two sports that make money are men’s football and basketball...and if that isn’t the case for your college/university then the whole athletics program is funding drag.

I am not saying they aren’t reliant, but just like individuals they made the choice to not be self-reliant.

Good heavens, governments have been handing out goodies for support and to those who support them since recorded history and certainly before that. Nothing new here folks. If your political system is decent, at the end of the day it is so because it hands out goodies in such a way that people don’t start killing each other to take away goodies because the system is tolerably fair to the non-criminal elements of society. We have the legal system and state sanctioned violence for the criminal element.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sun Feb 02, 2020 5:54 am

John Cochrane describes how universities are using essays on wokeness (or political tests, as one professor calls them) to determine hiring and promotions.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Xan » Sun Feb 02, 2020 2:19 pm

MangoMan wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 7:35 am
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sun Feb 02, 2020 5:54 am
John Cochrane describes how universities are using essays on wokeness (or political tests, as one professor calls them) to determine hiring and promotions.
So it's against the law to discriminate against potential employees (or existing looking for raises and promotions) on the basis of gender, race, religion or sexual preference, but not political views? WTF?
In fact it is true that selecting employees based on political views is legal. In a competitive market, if an employer did prejudicially discriminate against some group, then the competition would eat its lunch by not doing that. I would posit that the market for university education is badly broken in a number of ways.

Clearly, what the article means is that we shouldn't trust any research done by the University of California. (If anyone did anyway...) For one, their #1 hiring filter is this ideological filter on "diversity", and not being qualified to do research. For another, they're really clobbering any possibility of their research into "diversity issues" being taken seriously, because they've already assumed their conclusions in their hiring process!

The less said about the wisdom of actually attending UC the better...
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sat Feb 08, 2020 2:40 pm

Since its publication in August, the 1619 Project has been adopted in more than 3,500 classrooms in all 50 states, according to the 2019 annual report of the Pulitzer Center, which has partnered with the Times on the project. Five school systems, including Chicago and Washington, D.C., have adopted it district-wide. It is mostly being used as supplemental, optional classroom teaching material. By and large, school systems are adopting the project by administrative fiat, not through a public textbook review process.
. . .
Even as it is being embraced by schools, the project is facing strong pushback from some leading scholars who say it presents a false version of American history. They dispute The New York Times’ claim that America’s true founding date is not 1776, the year the colonies declared independence from Great Britain, but 1619, when 20 to 30 enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, Va., leading to the creation of a “slavocracy” whose legacy of racism and oppression has been encoded in the nation’s DNA and hidden in plain sight.

Gordon Wood [of Good Will Hunting fame. -K], a leading historian of the American Revolution and emeritus professor at Brown University, told RealClearInvestigations the Times material “is full of falsehoods and distortions.” In its current form, without corrections, which the Times has declined to run, the only way to use it in the classroom, he said, would be “as a way of showing how history can be distorted and perverted."link
“When my editor asks me, like, what’s your ultimate goal for the project, my ultimate goal is that there’ll be a reparations bill passed.”

"If you read the whole project, I don’t think you can come away from it without understanding the project is an argument for reparations"link
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Kriegsspiel » Thu Feb 27, 2020 5:47 pm

link

I mock college students pretty often, but here's another perspective. How shitty must it be to be a professor in the current year? To have to deal with students like these dickheads?
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Kriegsspiel » Thu Mar 12, 2020 9:01 pm

. . . millions of high school graduates actually do better than comparable college graduates. Statistics that suggest otherwise are averages that gloss over the “enormous variability in outcomes at each education level,” Harris argues. As usual, the devil is in the details.

In fact, the earnings of the top half of workers with only a high school diploma overlap with those of the bottom half of college graduates. Moreover, every individual in the top 25% of high school graduates outperforms every individual in the bottom 25% of college graduates with Bachelor of Arts degrees with their earnings.
link
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sun Apr 26, 2020 6:58 pm

Great video of high school students in 1958 discussing college. The usual cast of characters shows up. The guidance counselor seems like a jerk.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:31 pm

WSJ article about college enrollment. Interesting throughout. It's heartening to see that the idea that college is a necessity is fading away, at least among males. Still sad that so many people, especially girls, are wasting their time with it. I suspect that a major reason girls want to go to college is to find collegiate guys.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Mark Leavy » Sun Sep 12, 2021 5:59 pm

This sentence was pretty funny:
American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality, and working on ways to reduce sexual assault and harassment of women on campus, have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Maddy » Sun Sep 12, 2021 7:48 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:31 pm
I suspect that a major reason girls want to go to college is to find collegiate guys.
Yup.

In evangelical circles, it's common for kids to go to bible college. There's an inside joke among the parents of girls, who commonly refer to it as "bridal college."
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by SomeDude » Sun Sep 12, 2021 8:01 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:31 pm
WSJ article about college enrollment. Interesting throughout. It's heartening to see that the idea that college is a necessity is fading away, at least among males. Still sad that so many people, especially girls, are wasting their time with it. I suspect that a major reason girls want to go to college is to find collegiate guys.
Higher interest rates and the government not backstopping student loans would help solve this quickly.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by sweetbthescrivener » Mon Sep 13, 2021 11:44 am

I think young men are much smarter than they are given credit for, even than they give themselves credit for, and that they are just doing a simple cost/benefit analysis.

In the sixties you could get a job and raise a family straight out of high school.

In the seventies and eighties there were good jobs out there for college graduates, and even if you didn't use your degree your education was affordable enough that you could graduate with a small amount of debt.

It was a low risk proposition. You could even attend college just 'for the college experience,' and not end up hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole.

Even before Covid, the college fees have been scandalous for a long time now, and you can pay a heavy price for going to college just because everyone else is doing it.

So why would you pay what a private school used to cost to graduate in debt without any really good jobs waiting for you? (Unless you are in a STEM field, obviously, and most aren't able to do the work.)

And yet you are pressured to go to college your whole life, like it is the only option, and it is like you are being railroaded into a really bad deal.

Now Covid comes along, and, at least in the case of my local university, you are paying the very same fees to sit in your dorm and take classes by Skype, and will become public enemy number one if you attend a party. You don't even get the social benefits of living the college life.

We don't even get to the part where if you are just an everyday heterosexual guy you have been made to feel like a villain since you were a kid.

How does it even make sense to go to college if you are a young dude who isn't good at science?

These young guys are smart.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by D1984 » Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:08 pm

SomeDude wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 8:01 pm
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:31 pm
WSJ article about college enrollment. Interesting throughout. It's heartening to see that the idea that college is a necessity is fading away, at least among males. Still sad that so many people, especially girls, are wasting their time with it. I suspect that a major reason girls want to go to college is to find collegiate guys.
Higher interest rates and the government not backstopping student loans would help solve this quickly.
What would really help is making student loans non-Federally backed and immediately dischargeable in bankruptcy....or at the very least copying SC/Pennsylvania/TX law as regards wage garnishment (hint: in those states the anti-garnishment laws are such that God himself pretty much couldn't garnish somebody's wages), codifying it into the USC and CFR as Federal law, and applying it to both Federal and private student loans. At that point, "student debt" would become essentially meaningless and toothless as (even assuming you couldn't discharge it in bankruptcy) all they could do is ruin your credit and even that would eventually drop off after seven years and one day when the debt was fully defaulted (i.e. usually after it became 180 days from making your last on-time payment).
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Xan » Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:15 pm

D1984 wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:08 pm
SomeDude wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 8:01 pm
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:31 pm
WSJ article about college enrollment. Interesting throughout. It's heartening to see that the idea that college is a necessity is fading away, at least among males. Still sad that so many people, especially girls, are wasting their time with it. I suspect that a major reason girls want to go to college is to find collegiate guys.
Higher interest rates and the government not backstopping student loans would help solve this quickly.
What would really help is making student loans non-Federally backed and immediately dischargeable in bankruptcy....or at the very least copying SC/Pennsylvania/TX law as regards wage garnishment (hint: in those states the anti-garnishment laws are such that God himself pretty much couldn't garnish somebody's wages), codifying it into the USC and CFR as Federal law, and applying it to both Federal and private student loans. At that point, "student debt" would become essentially meaningless and toothless as (even assuming you couldn't discharge it in bankruptcy) all they could do is ruin your credit and even that would eventually drop off after seven years and one day when the debt was fully defaulted (i.e. usually after it became 180 days from making your last on-time payment).
There would be effectively no student lending, then. I'm not sure whether that's part of your plan or an unintended consequence?
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by D1984 » Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:16 pm

sweetbthescrivener wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 11:44 am
I think young men are much smarter than they are given credit for, even than they give themselves credit for, and that they are just doing a simple cost/benefit analysis.

In the sixties you could get a job and raise a family straight out of high school.

In the seventies and eighties there were good jobs out there for college graduates, and even if you didn't use your degree your education was affordable enough that you could graduate with a small amount of debt.

It was a low risk proposition. You could even attend college just 'for the college experience,' and not end up hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole.

Even before Covid, the college fees have been scandalous for a long time now, and you can pay a heavy price for going to college just because everyone else is doing it.

So why would you pay what a private school used to cost to graduate in debt without any really good jobs waiting for you? (Unless you are in a STEM field, obviously, and most aren't able to do the work.)

And yet you are pressured to go to college your whole life, like it is the only option, and it is like you are being railroaded into a really bad deal.

Now Covid comes along, and, at least in the case of my local university, you are paying the very same fees to sit in your dorm and take classes by Skype, and will become public enemy number one if you attend a party. You don't even get the social benefits of living the college life.

We don't even get to the part where if you are just an everyday heterosexual guy you have been made to feel like a villain since you were a kid.

How does it even make sense to go to college if you are a young dude who isn't good at science?

These young guys are smart.
The only issue is that nowadays with the automated resume pre-scanning that virtually all major companies (and plenty of mid-sized and small ones as well) do, not having a college degree pretty much means that for 95% or so of non-menial jobs you may not even get to the point of being called for an interview even if you are otherwise very well qualified for the job (and don't even get me started on companies that--even when promoting from within--will only promote BA'd or BS'd people--even if the degree they got has little or nothing to do with the actual position--regardless of whether the position actually requires college degree-level qualifications and/or whether OTJ experience actually has prepared a non-college educated employee just as well if not better than someone who has a degree). Unless we are willing (despite potential inflation risks) to run the economy really hot for an extended period of time (think unemployment at sub 4% like it was in 1968-69, 2019, and 2000) such that employers have no choice but to not be so damned picky and choosy about meaningless degree requirements then I can't see this changing.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by D1984 » Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:26 pm

Xan wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:15 pm
D1984 wrote:
Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:08 pm
SomeDude wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 8:01 pm
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:31 pm
WSJ article about college enrollment. Interesting throughout. It's heartening to see that the idea that college is a necessity is fading away, at least among males. Still sad that so many people, especially girls, are wasting their time with it. I suspect that a major reason girls want to go to college is to find collegiate guys.
Higher interest rates and the government not backstopping student loans would help solve this quickly.
What would really help is making student loans non-Federally backed and immediately dischargeable in bankruptcy....or at the very least copying SC/Pennsylvania/TX law as regards wage garnishment (hint: in those states the anti-garnishment laws are such that God himself pretty much couldn't garnish somebody's wages), codifying it into the USC and CFR as Federal law, and applying it to both Federal and private student loans. At that point, "student debt" would become essentially meaningless and toothless as (even assuming you couldn't discharge it in bankruptcy) all they could do is ruin your credit and even that would eventually drop off after seven years and one day when the debt was fully defaulted (i.e. usually after it became 180 days from making your last on-time payment).
There would be effectively no student lending, then. I'm not sure whether that's part of your plan or an unintended consequence?
One, it would effectively deal with the current student loan debt mess.

Two, student lenders would still make loans to students who took good degrees (i.e. STEM or at least business degrees or econ or finance or medicine or the like....not stuff like "ethnic studies", or underwater basket weaving, or recreation) and whose credit score actually indicated a chance of them paying it back. Consider that even though credit card debt is unsecured, fully dischargeable in bankruptcy, and (at least in those three states) unrecoverable by garnishment (and actually in almost every state if the person is below 13K or so a year in income unsecured debt is also ungarnishable; some states go up to 15K or 20K a year before you can start being garnished), credit card lenders still issue credit cards in said three states.

Three, if not everyone goes to college (because not anyone who can fog a mirror gets a student loan anymore) employers will have little choice but to be less picky about requiring degrees unless it really is absolutely necessary for the job.

Four, I admit that what I proposed is a Rube-Goldberish kluge Charlie Foxtrot pasted together redneck-engineered duct-taped Mickey Mouse half-solution (as indeed our entire system of governance is at this point, sad to say) but my preferred choice (full public funding of 2-yr and 4-yr public college for academically qualified students just like K-12 is funded today) is politically out of reach at the moment. This is the next best thing.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sat Oct 30, 2021 8:52 am

The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them

It’s a fault line that crisscrosses industries and issues. At a retail business based in New York, managers were distressed to encounter young employees who wanted paid time off when coping with anxiety or period cramps. At a supplement company, a Gen Z worker questioned why she would be expected to clock in for a standard eight-hour day when she might get through her to-do list by the afternoon. At a biotech venture, entry-level staff members delegated tasks to the founder. And spanning sectors and start-ups, the youngest members of the work force have demanded what they see as a long overdue shift away from corporate neutrality toward a more open expression of values, whether through executives displaying their pronouns on Slack or putting out statements in support of the protests for Black Lives Matter.
. . .
Ziad Ahmed, 22, founder and chief executive of the Gen Z marketing company JUV Consulting, which has lent its expertise to brands like JanSport, recalled speaking at a conference where a Gen Z woman, an entry-level employee, told him she didn’t feel that her employer’s marketing fully reflected her progressive values.

“What is your advice for our company?” the young woman asked.

“Make you a vice president,” Mr. Ahmed told her. “Rather than an intern.”
. . .
Ms. Rodriguez’s co-founder at Unbound, which sells vibrators, called to say that their social media manager, a younger employee, wanted to know what the company planned to do to support the protests. Ms. Rodriguez didn’t usually receive calls on the weekend; she knew that for her employees this signified a state of emergency. But she also wanted time to plan the team’s response. Within days, her company hired a diversity, equity and inclusion firm to offer employee trainings and started a fund-raiser for a group supporting sex workers of color.
link
Horrifying throughout. Combine this trend with the push for ESG and DIE from large investment firms and the country might be doomed.
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by dualstow » Sat Oct 30, 2021 3:48 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sat Oct 30, 2021 8:52 am
The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them

link
Horrifying throughout. Combine this trend with the push for ESG and DIE from large investment firms and the country might be doomed.
I feel like torturing myself and I don’t have a loose tooth, so i think I’m going to read this article in full. O0
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Re: Kids: Then and Now

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sat Oct 30, 2021 4:43 pm

Then again, you see something like this and you could see all hope is not lost. The huge number of kids who've been failed by the adults in their lives is fucking sad, man.
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