They Were Promised There Would Be No Math

Children R Our Future entitlement generation 34 Comments

it’s been an article of faith for decades that those with college degrees out earn those without. and it clearly shows up in the data.

the correlation is unmistakable. but, and this is a massive but, that does not mean what many suspect. it does not mean that “college creates earnings and opportunity.” for many, it starts to seem to mean the opposite: college is lost opportunity and vast expenditure and debt accumulation that will never pay for itself. and a lot of this comes down to bad expectations and a form of “lake wobegon fallacy” of statistical illiteracy.

the percentage of americans getting college degrees has exploded from around 4% in 1940 to the mid 37%’s now and this actually understates the issue as this is just the number who successfully completed a 4 year degree. over 70% of recent high school grads enroll in college which means that around 45% of 16-24 year olds are enrolled in college and more than half were at some point. what was once 1 in 20 is now 1 in 2. and that’s a VERY different thing and this is where the cargo cult emerges:

an institution for the top 5 percentiles of a society is a very different place than an institution for the whole top half. it must be structured differently, work differently, place different demands, and perhaps most of all: it’s output and the outcomes of those who attended are going to be different. college is not magic. it does not make people more motivated or smarter. it may select for these traits, it does not make those who attend “higher percentile” in terms of innate ability or expected outcome.

past a point, it may be inflicting harm and i would argue that based on the promises and expectations, it’s creating a mathematical impossibility.

it seems like every kid who enrolls in college is expecting to be in the top 10-20% of earners. this is sort of “the deal” that folks are buying into. but if 50% of society is enrolling, it’s obviously impossible. the real world is not lake wobegon. we cannot all be above average. half of society cannot be a top 10% earner and that’s the sort of outcome being mistaken for the marker of “went to college” a thing that used to all but unerringly signify “top decile” but that does so no longer. somewhere on the order of 3/4 of them are going to wind up being disappointed. they have to be. it’s just math. (perhaps this is why high schools and universities seem so increasingly loathe to teach it?)

It just so happens: “The average scores in three of the four subjects featured on the test – mathematics, reading and science – were below the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks. The benchmarks are the minimum ACT test scores required for students taking the test to have a high probability of success in college.”

34 Replies to “They Were Promised There Would Be No Math”

  1. The ‘insane are running our asylum’…
    What was normal is deemed abnormal by our Government Officials and Healthcare professionals.
    Creating these instruments of learning in our scholastic system.

    Having a small person as Doctor and tripping over them in high volume and high stress situations is one example. Nothing at all them being qualified and working in a different setting but having it posed as normal…isn’t.
    I’d be tripping over them myself being such a klutz.

    Gay Healthcare Doctors have a totally different perspective to the populas is abnormal that our politicians and governments pay for as normal.
    And yet they are in charge of assessment in deeming if your qualified.

    This shows how far off the rails that out politicians and professionals are to reality.

  2. If you want to earn money coming out of college? You damn well better know math, and actual science too.

    Who makes the big money? Doctors, engineers, accountants, business majors.

    What do they all have in common? Knowledge of mathematics and science.

    Who has a useless degree from college? Grievance Studies majors.

    1. Agreed. Actually you could add all of the so-called social sciences to the list of useless degrees that go nowhere. Grievance Studies are a subset of Psych and Soc.

      1. And to make it worse … and prop up the government cargo cult even further … those social sciences majors … and all the non-science “environmental studies” graduates get jobs working FOR the government! The government actually CREATES work for the watered-down degrees all their funding has created! How sick is THAT!?

    2. rd
      Some of the most useless “educated fools I’v dealt with are engineers. They are often nothing but arrogant , ignorant assholes. And I’v had to deal with a lot, and in different locations, because I traveled to the jobs. I’ll take and uneducated, self trained mechanic over an well educated “engineer” six ways to breakfast, and twice on sundays .

      1. Engineers are…weird. They are very different from the rest of the student body. Really serious computer sciences folk can also be weird and too often think their competence and mastery of coding is mastery of all. They think they know everything like they know one thing. That being said there is no substitute for serious education, you are not building a bridge with that uneducated mechanic.

        1. Those “uneducated” mechanics are who keep the machinery to build and maintain those bridges in working order, moron. Who do you think does the maintenance work on an excavator? Gnomes?

          2. “…..and it’s much lower on the pay scale than the educated ones.”

            That depends on the “job”. There are many factors that can elevate the pay scale of many “blue collar” jobs to levels of PhD salaries.

            Otherwise many “blue collar” workers have excelled to eventually become successful private business owners leaving any public sector “educated” lackey in the dust.

            It all takes brains and hard work of course, either side of the coin, but an advanced degree is no guarantee of success. It is the corporate Education System that has tilted the playing field in favour of selling degree’s and smothered the market.

            In today’s jobs market, unless young people have a personal passion that leads to an advanced degree, they would benefit the best from a Trade and advance from there.

        2. Nice to see you’ve taken a break from your deep thoughts of the Russia/Ukraine conflict and re- directing it to the engineering field.
          My God! Is there anything you don’t know?

        3. Was that an admission that mechanics, tradesmen and laborers are needed?

          What happened to your great and almighty automation that will take everybody’s jerbs?

          1. They’ll take many of the labourer’s jobs and some of the tradesmen and mechanics. More skilled = less likely to be automated. Unskilled blue collar types are still likely obsolete. Even many white collar ones for that matter. This has always been my position.

    1. You can learn all the advanced math and theoretical physics you want nowadays for the price of a few of textbooks and an internet connection, rather than pay thousands a year for the “privilege.”
      Same goes for chemistry, robotics, telecom, electronics engineering, applied physics etc if you invest in lab equipment, and that capital investment can also be used to generate revenue once you know what you’re doing.
      The only use universities have now is the chance to use and familiarize oneself with equipment that is way too expensive, like particle accelerators, fancy electron microscopes, research nuclear reactors, etc.

        1. Hahaha ha ha … you could tell he wasn’t one of the crew … the way he was waving his coffee cup over all the control consoles … hahaha ha ha ha … like a long hanging cigarette ash … I was just waiting for the coffee spill and electronics meltdown …

  5. While I’m not a mathlete, I’m just a month shy of 25 years at the same company and that adds up to success in my uneducated little world.
    Paying off a mortgage in 125 months sums up another type of success: less is more.
    (I spent three weeks in university a very long time ago and that was three too many.)

  6. Basket weaving 101 will not get you a very high paying job. Too many university degrees are just that, the equivalent of basket weaving 101.

    1. Yep. These are the people that wind up in HR, diversity departments etc. I believe pilots call it parasitic drag.

  7. Universities today are essentially institutional featherbedding for the over-schooled, mediocre, grad students and humanities Marxists. A few of the best in their field could compete online as a replacement for lecture theatres to a wide audience for pennies on the dollar. The physical aspect should be reserved for technical fields.

    1. It’s worse than that-it has actually good people trapped in academia where they are not productive. If you are a (life) scientist my advice is get out of academia into biotech as quick as possible! And prepare to work hard and efficiently! It’s worth it because you will actually make some money. The tenure pay bump is surprisingly poor.

  9. OTOH, “useless (to society)” degrees from basket weaving to law are what propel useless people into high income brackets in government, academia and (shudder) law. The leaders of cargo cult deluded tribes are still leaders, with whatever perks are available to their version of elitism.

  10. 1) End all post-secondary subsidies. All of them. None of this ‘no money if you have DEI’ which is weak and dangerous meddling. Just cut the money especially the student loans.

    2) Blow up the university as we know it. The graduate-PI relationship is honestly feudal in nature. The power imbalance is massive to the point of being optimized for abuse. Cutting the money is essential to ending this model, I think the regulations are based on the money but deregulation might have to go beyond that. I would love to see what replaces the model we have now. I think it will look like a lot CZ Hubs (the biosciences hub started by the Facebook guy and his wife).

  11. With exceptions most of the degreed people I run into are essentially compliance officers filling out forms all day. Plonkingly boring work.

    Real degrees teaching real hard skills are the exceptions.

  12. Ontario stopped using ‘Departmental Finals’ in 1967. It would be interesting to dig up some of those exams and have present graduating students write those exams. I suspect that the results would cause some head explosions.
    Without the leveling effect of everyone writing the same exams, grade escalation over the next few years was not a small matter. It was an explosion. Schools which had had possibly 1 student with an average over 90%, suddenly had half the senior class above that level!

  13. It’s very much back in the day, but husband and I figured out even before we were married that he would go to university and upgrade his qualifications (had acquired a tech designation in his field). That happened, and he went on to do well in his field.
    Fast forward and our offspings are heading to post-secondary school. We guided them to marketable degrees (any thoughts of drama or other courses were met with a “and how do you propose to feed yourself” which effectively ended the conversation). All offsprings attained degrees which have led them to decent careers, and – fortunately – each landing in the field to which well suited.
    Looking at grandbrats and am thinking for at least one that the trades would be a good fit. Might have looked at armed forces or police for this particular grandbrat as kid could have been an asset and done well, but not under the current DEI (or, more accurately, DIE) requirements.

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