13 Responses to “Quote Of The Day”

1. 1 jennifer Feb 10th, 2006 at 11:50 am

   i don’t think that early education is a proxy for “middle-classness, intelligence, and drive.” i think that those attributes come from community, family, and the individual.

   i think that those who already possess those attributes are typically more successful in college and graduate school. they seem to know how to better navigate the system (e.g., taking advantage of resources, networking, etc.). when you (your community or your family) don’t have that kind of cultural capital, college and graduate students have to work harder for academic and professional success.

2. 2 HispanicPundit Feb 10th, 2006 at 12:10 pm

   Hey Jennifer,

   I agree with what you say, but Jane Galt was referring to college: primarily graduate school and to some degree undergraduate.

   This is what she wrote in a previous discussion on this:
   

   Programs to make sure that everyone goes to college mean well, but I feel that proponents usually aren’t examining the link between what they’re trying to achieve, and the means they’re proposing to achieve it.

   What are we trying to achieve by sending everyone to college? I assume that most of us want to better their economic opportunity.

   Here’s the problem: most college doesn’t train people in economically useful skills. Oh, we’d probably all be better off if we sent more kids to engineering programs or medical school, but that’s not what these programs propose to do: they propose to give kids a free ride for 4 years no matter what they study. And I think it’s safe to say that most of our future engineers and medical students are already going to college. I think what we’re talking about is more English and Art History majors and such.

   I was an English major, which was an enriching experience. I enjoyed the subject greatly. But the only economically useful skill I learned was typing 80 wpm. Oh, later my writing skills came in handy, since I was in a technical field where very few people can write. But for the majority of English majors, it’s safe to say that their ability to deconstruct a sonnet has not proven to be renumerative. Ditto almost any humanities course for almost any student. Even economics students are usually being rewarded more for their conformity and willingness to tolerate boredom than their ability to draw pretty supply curves.

   I have no doubt that someone is, even now, mentally composing the email telling me how enriching humanities courses are. Indeed they are. But I misdoubt that anyone’s fellow citizens wants to toss them upwards of $25,000 to go get enriched. Your fellow citizens want to see you support yourself and contribute something to the common weal; that’s the rational behind giving you money for college. Or they want to give everyone middle class opportunities. Mental enrichment is something we expect people to pay for out of their own pocket.

   But people who want to send everyone to college to ensure they have middle class opportunities have cause and effect reversed. College does not provide one the tools to make a living. For most people it is what economists call a signalling mechanism: something not intrinsically valuable, but only as a signal that the applicant has something else employers value. Which is to say, employers do not value your college degree because they value what you learned; they value it because it shows that you have sufficiently internalized middle class values to get through four years at school, whether through being born into the middle class, or having sufficient gumption to get yourself through college.

   But sending everyone to college will not avail them all of the benefits of the signalling mechanism; rather, it will render the signalling mechanism useless. You’re not going to magically transform every extra person you send to college into someone who earns college wages; college is the gatekeeper to a limited number of such jobs, not a producers of said jobs. While normally I am skeptical of people who claim that there is a limited number of good jobs to go around, and therefore we need to redistribute them so that no class gets to hog more than their fair share, in this case I am hard pressed to explain how sending someone to study Medieval Philosophy or Lesser Poets of the 19th Century is going to magically produce a high paying job for them. The areas where jobs are going begging are the areas we don’t expect to get a lot of extra students, such as engineering. I have no doubt that there are, somewhere on the American continent, some potentially gifted engineers with the requisite math preparation who are not attending college because they can’t afford it. But I can’t imagine there are many.

   She gets into a lot more detail, but that is the gist of her quote, namely, that engineering is dope and that every other major won’t create a job. Needless to say, I think she is 100% right (on the engineering thing, of course).

3. 3 jennifer Feb 10th, 2006 at 12:27 pm

   i think that your author is saying that transmitting middle class values is unimportant. or at least that it as not AS important as job skills themselves.

   i disagree.

   college students need not only an education (in terms of actual skills), but also professionalization. if two people are up for the same job and have the same skills, but one represents middle class values and the other does not, the job will most likely go to the prior. (this may also fall under the statistical discrimination thing you were talking about in a previous post).

   getting a job is just as much about assuring your employer that you will fit in as it is about demonstrating skill, especially when it comes to upper level, professional jobs.

4. 4 HispanicPundit Feb 10th, 2006 at 12:41 pm

   i think that your author is saying that transmitting middle class values is unimportant. or at least that it as not AS important as job skills themselves.

   No, she is saying that colleges will not transmit middle class values. Interpersonal skills, where ever you learned them, are not something you learn in college. So a college education is only a somewhat efficient mechanism at signalling to employers that you have those interpersonal skills, it is not an efficient way to attain them.

   In addition, artificially raising the amount of kids that go to college, say by free education or other policy initiatives, will only make what used to be a somewhat efficient signalling mechanism now less efficient, meaning that employers will look for other more efficient signalling mechanism, mechanism that will most likely be at a greater disadvantage to the poor and lower classes.

   I don’t know if I necessarily agree with everything she wrote, but she makes some good points nonetheless.

5. 5 jennifer Feb 10th, 2006 at 1:43 pm

   check out that first quote again:

   I’ve long argued that most post-secondary education (possibly most post-primary education), does not confer any useful skills upon students, but rather is a signalling mechanism: the education is a proxy for things like middle-classness, intelligence, and drive.

   she is saying that college has become good only for transmitting these values, not at providing job-relevant, practical skills.

   what bothers me about this quote is that she seems to think that the greatest benefit of a college education is to skyrocket into another earning bracket. i would argue that any college education (be it liberal arts of hard sciences) guarantees greater earning potential. yes, engineers make more money than anthropologists, but the anthropologist is going to be just fine in the end.

   i’d say that the real benefit to education is not earning potential attained, but rather knowledge. the kind of knowledge that could potentially transform your world view. the kind of knowledge that could help you to recognize inequalities or injustices and to inspire you to change them.

   here’s a quote that i like from césar chávez:

   Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.

6. 6 HispanicPundit Feb 10th, 2006 at 2:26 pm

   Oh no you didn’t just quote Cesar Chavez on my blog…;-)

   I think were still misunderstanding each other, but since I don’t strongly agree with the author, I won’t argue her point any further.

7. 7 Kjerringa mot Strommen Feb 10th, 2006 at 4:27 pm

   “i’d say that the real benefit to education is not earning potential attained, but rather knowledge. the kind of knowledge that could potentially transform your world view. the kind of knowledge that could help you to recognize inequalities or injustices and to inspire you to change them”

   Hooray, Jennifer - that is just an outstanding statement - as is the inspirational quote from César Chávez.

   Who said that learning is just about financial gain? It is true that engineers generally make more than teachers with equal or greater academic achievement, but then athletes, rock stars, and sometime even strippers make more than engineers.

   I believe I read that Jane Galt said this morning that education is worth less now than it used to be (i.e., your parents made it with a B.A./B.S. but now you need an M.A./M.S.). As a parent of three adult children, I can tell you that one of the most fulfilling aspects of parenting is teaching your children what you know, giving them the skills to learn and a love of learning, and watching them move beyond what you know.

   If we are simply looking for trained technicians, perhaps a lengthy education is not necessary, but couldn’t we replace these technicians with technology and skip the human element? Is this the civilization we really want to be part of or raise children in?

   Michael Lerner, in his latest book, The Left Hand of God, refers to studies of the Institute of Labor and Mental Health regarding work place satisfaction. He contends that his respondents report that the workplace is “deadening”, overly materialistic, all about “watching out for number one”. The result is the spiritual crisis we have in this country.

   I agree with Jennifer. Education should be transformative. It should not only provide us with earning potential, but also with living potential: the wisdom to view life philosophically, avoid the mistakes of the past and improve the world we live in.

8. 8 Kjerringa mot Strommen Feb 10th, 2006 at 4:31 pm

   HP: Read MsABCMoms’ latest “tale from the classroom” for a testimony on the value of educating future parents and today’s children who are the future.

9. 9 HispanicPundit Feb 11th, 2006 at 12:19 pm

   I agree with everything you all write. Certainly education should NOT be about making money, there are many non-monetary benefits to it, that should not be discounted.

10. 10 Daily Texican Feb 12th, 2006 at 1:52 pm

    what the hell is going on in this discussion? Damn Jennifer, you’re rivaling HP in length!

11. 11 HispanicPundit Feb 12th, 2006 at 9:14 pm

    Verdad D.T., but I’m the first to say that there is nothing wrong with a lil verboseness.

12. 12 cad Feb 13th, 2006 at 9:53 pm

    “for sure”. . .”totally”

    

13. 13 HispanicPundit Feb 17th, 2006 at 4:32 pm

    I don’t know if you gals are still interested in whether or not college is merely a signalling mechanism or not, but I found this very interesting debate amongst economists on that very same question, start here and than go here, here, here and here.

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