http://www.slate.com/articles/doubl...s_the_parenting_method_doesn_t_work.html

And although Chua presented her own children as Exhibit A of why her parenting style works, Kim said, “Our data shows Tiger parenting produces the opposite effect. Not just the general public but Asian-American parents have adopted this idea that if I'm a tiger parent, my kids will be whizzes like Chua’s kids. Unfortunately, tiger children’s GPA’s and depressive symptoms are similar to those whose parents who are very harsh.
“Tiger parenting doesn't produce superior outcomes in kids.”

Chua's goal was Yale Law School.

This was her attractor, the destination that guided her actions.

I was there and felt it.

If you do not understand this, you do not understand what this issue is really about.

It wasn't the "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother".

It was the call of intellectual status and elitism, and all of the subordination that entails.

It's a massive practical joke.

Well, that's encouraging to hear--I was starting to feel guilty for not trying to be a Tiger Mom. Of course, the way studies go there will probably be another one next week showing the opposite.

Actually I knew two guys in college who were kids of tiger parents and both had quasi-nervous breakdowns when they weren't able to get the grades their parents were expecting. I felt really bad for them but didn't know how to help. I hope they came through it okay; they were both nice guys.

Tigering appears to work only with kids that a) come from a culture where elders are treated with deference - so that they bother to listen b) are very, very bright - so the high grades are actually acheivable and c) have natural resilience - to handle the constant pressure.

Without at least the above it will probably be a case of the 'cure' being worse than the disease.

Can't we all just get along...(joking!!) But seriously, I think that maybe we should stop relying on this mom or that mom who wrote a book, or this culture or that culture and start relying on common sense for parenting. I don't know about anyone else, but intuitively if I follow my gut instinct it usually leads me down the right path. And if I get stuck parenting, I ask for help but still choose what intuitively feels right for my home and family.

I think a middle ground of being supportive without smothering and offering discipline with compassion is the best approach for my family.

Correlation is not causation. For example, it's no surprise that children who were doing well experienced less criticism/shaming than those who weren't - it doesn't prove that criticising/shaming your kids makes them do less well! (Not that I'm advocating it.)

Amy Chua's essay "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" struck a nerve because Chinese-American kids *are* over-represented at our elite universities and among science competition winners. If Chinese-American kids were underperforming, she would be ignored. I think Chinese outperformance partly results from a higher average IQ (some studies find 105), but few critics of Tiger Mothering want to consider that reason for outperformance.

Culture may also play a role. Chinese parents commonly send their children to Chinese school, where in addition to learning the language (and preparing for high SAT subject test scores in Chinese), enrichment classes are offered in math and English. The math classes are taught at an advanced levels by Chinese fathers who are mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, and they prepare students for math contests and school math. If a Chinese kid and a white kid have the same math talent but the Chinese kid has been exposed to algebra and MathCounts problems
for several years before 8th grade, the Chinese kid may have an edge and think he is good at math.

In my web searches I have noticed that California, with its large Chinese population, has many enrichment programs with mostly Chinese students. Look at the Avid Academy's Physics Olympiad results http://www.avidacademy.com/site-new...s-olympiad-semi-finalists-medal-rankings , for example. What fraction of the U.S. population knows there is a Physics Olympiad?

I think it's worth looking at successful groups to see how they accomplish what they do.

Here's a comment on Amazon regarding her other book.

"Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, is herself the progeny of a market dominant minority: the Chinese of the Philippines. Chinese-speakers make up only 1% or 2% of the Philippines' population. But they own the majority of the country's business assets. They seclude themselves in a luxurious world fenced off from the indigenous majority, whom they hold in contempt and wouldn't dream of marrying.

Not surprisingly, the impoverished natives aren't crazy about the rich newcomers. Chua's beloved aunt in Manila was brutally murdered by her chauffeur. The unmotivated cops made little effort to find him.

It's definitely nicer to belong to the minority than to the majority in these countries. But Chua makes clear that, to Americans used to our norms of congeniality and social equality, it would be an awfully depressing way to live.

A grimmer example: Indonesia. The Chinese made up 3% of its vast population, yet owned the great majority of all businesses. The dictator Suharto, whose family had lucrative ties to the Chinese community, fell in 1998. Democratization set off a vicious pogrom against the Chinese, many of whom fled to Chinese-majority Singapore. The government expropriated $58 billion in assets.

Not surprisingly, the native Indonesians proved inept at running the businesses nationalized from the Chinese, and the economy collapsed."

http://www.amazon.com/World-Fire-Exporting-Democracy-Instability/dp/0385721862

I can still vividly remember my time as a 7 year old schoolboy in England (1970s). The teacher, in the middle of talking about a totally different subject like geography, for instance, would suddenly point to a random kid and yell 'what's seven times eight?' or some other random product. Woe betide the poor kid that couldn't just rattle it off or, even worse, starting counting on his fingers - the teacher would start smacking those fingers with a stick! I was very glad that I had a good memory and that things just naturally seemed to make sense and stick at those moments - let me tell you.

It (public shaming/hitting with a stick) did not seem to help at all either - what a surprise!

I am going to throw some random thoughts here. As someone who grew up in Asia, one of the driving factor is the limited supply/ high demand environment for almost everything including access to first class higher education. It is not enough to be in the top 10%. In fact, if you are not in the top 2%, you have to settle for tier 2. It is all about achievement, dedication to work, and lots of plain hard work memorizing copious amounts of data. Just as the sequoia grow tallest in competition with each other, so do we. That said, the truly gifted are just as left out there as they may be here, if not more so. Gifted underachievers have no place in the system.
Thought number 2, asians are the newest immigrants to this country so most Asian Americans are usually first generation. Their parents came here because in most cases, they were in the top 10% in their native countries and had the drive and desire to do more, work harder to improve their children's lives. So you start with highly intelligent, possibly gifted, driven families and the mix of genes and environment is most likely to produce more of that kind.

What is the goal, though?

Material improvement and more wealth?

Status improvement and more whatever lots of status us called?

In my particular case it is nothing more than trying to do everything that I can to best ensure that my DD is set up for as much self actualisation and independence as possible.

I couldn't give a hoot what others think - this is not about a race - I do not need my DD to think that she is better than others at all.

I was asking from the asian immigration cultural perspective.

Although I will point out that interdependence is generally a better goal than independence, given that we remain both dependent and independent as we go through life.

I not see it that way, but perhaps I should been clearer with my first statement. The way I see it, interdependence is so ubiquitous that I do not see the need for it to be stated. Given that, the proportion of dependence to independence is the thing that I would like my DD to have more control of, i.e., more independence than abject dependence.

Selective college admissions is a race (or contest). I have told my children that in addition to getting good grades, they should try to get really good at something. My eldest thinks he can shine at math (contests). His little brother says he is good at hiding .

No hook, no admission.

Bostonian hit the nail on the head here.

Same as every other culture- a better life for oneself and one's future generation. Now, don't ask me what " better life" means bcos it depends. Also, some of it is not purely personal goal driven but part of the cultural ethos. Hard work, respect for elders, in some cases downright obedience, are ingrained in some eastern cultures just like the American dream is here.

I think that it may also be worth highlighting that Jon is correct insofar as fully Americanized families go, though-- interdependence DOES need to be an explicit thing there, because our culture is profoundly supportive of independence-- maybe even absolute independence-- being the normative goal.

Which, when paired with Tiger Parenting's approach, leads to hyper-competitive behavior sieved through a viewpoint of all of life as a zero-sum game. This is downright toxic for all but a few people with the good fortune to have both extraordinary ability, but also the right temperment to withstand-- actually, to thrive under-- that kind of aggressive pressure.

The children who tend toward introspection, thoughtfulness, and cooperative behavior tend to be thrown under the bus along the way-- or ground into dust by a system that sees them as more or less useless because they won't shout down the aggressive extraverts next to them, but are seeking to get the heck away from them instead...

OK, I will concede that one - you got me LOL

It is most definitely a competition.

A competition for a place in supposedly academic institutions that actually work to not accept the most academically proficient applicants in the name of an unlikely and highly toxic mix of political correctness (the underqualified from 'chosen' population groups) and Establishment self-preservation (the underqualified children of the true rich, aka legacy programs).

No, they do let in a lot of academically proficient applications.

Sure-- they are measured using a carefully constructed rubric which allows them to select the most likely victors. The top competitors are granted admission.




I'm thinking that it would save a lot of time, though, if they just selected for those who are listing things like gladatorial combat and ultimate cagefighting under "hobbies" and quizzed for soft ethical boundaries. But that's just me. Then again, maybe it's the parents we need to be worrying about there. Hmm. Might be an additional sorting criteria, though...

Is it just me, or does this all seem increasingly ripe for a reality TV show?



My DD has been disheartened to realize that playing the piano, having near-perfect grades, and interests in strategy gaming, photography, speech and community service make her....

common. Plus, dog handling and showing experience? Not a selling point.

Of course, doing those things because you ACTUALLY like them and nobody is pushing you to like them, and not having them be exaggerated by an overzealous parent, not-so-much, but that's harder to tease apart on paper. As she and I put it-- the stuff in her vitae is actually HERS. LOL.

Wonder how she'd do in the featherweight classes of cage fighting...

I'll probably have my kid get admitted to one for entertainment purposes.

However, I'm not paying the $300,000.

Yeah, but that's because dog showing/handling is technically a cult.

I hope I'm not the only one who will be perfectly happy if my kids just go to the local community college, or our State University (well, I might take that back since the tuition there will be about as much if not more than at a good out of state small town America college!), or even if they go a different route and don't go to college at all. I know they are smart and I want them to know their potential but to me it doesn't necessarily mean the push for the "best" education. I was a gifted kid back in my days (I think I lost most of it when I gave birth to these two ... :)), I have two college degrees and for a while played with the idea of getting a Phd in Decision Science, I went into real estate right after getting out of college, when the market went down I became a stay at home mom ... and I love it! I have yet to use my education (one of the squeaky points between me and my husband and even my mom ... they both think that I should be using my education and my brain but to me it all just means that I have sharp thinking and can use it in whatever area I decide to be in but I have to desire to join the corporate world). So, my big expectations when it comes to our boys is for them to be HAPPY! And I don't mean smoking weed happy. I mean happy with whatever they choose to be and do with their lives. I also for the most part expect them to fund their own college education. Whatever scholarships, resident adviser positions, on campus kind of jobs they can get, they need to go for it. When they get to high school age, I expect them to be responsible enough to have the college funding in mind and keep their grades up and work hard.

So, to me all this Ivy league school talk is more like a sci-fi. I am not saying I wouldn't love to have a child in one of those schools but only if that's where they truly want to be and work hard for it.

I don't get it. Even the most selective Ivy leagues school accepts 6% of applicants, the 20th most selective is like 17%. They seem like such kiddy play numbers compared to 0.01% and such.

Hey-- it's FAN-DOM.

Just noting. LOL!

Actually, I don't really get it, either, with acceptance rates hovering over 5%, and seriously? I also just really don't buy that you don't get a good education at most places if you're into getting a good education.

So yes, price is a major consideration for us. Particularly for undergrad.

Oh, sure-- we'd like for DD to apply to Reed. Absolutely. She doesn't see the point, already stating to us that there is NO WAY that she'll be going there... but we figure, if she gets in and gets $$ from them, it's leverage elsewhere. WIN.

Except that the purpose of attending an Ivy League school is the credential/network you acquire.

I still don't know *why* I went to college (non-ivy) in the first place, but it wasn't to "get an education". It was more a combination of (1) that's what you had to do and (2) I didn't have any idea of what else to go do with myself.

Although there was a lot of criticism on on how the Ivy's admit, I haven't read an alternate viable solution to weed through a ton of applications when twice as many kids have perfect scores on their SATs than there are spots.

--and Mana, actually ballet is in there. Harvard recruits dancers.

I was surprised about water polo, since I know someone who went on water polo scholarship and said, that aside from Brown, it was a CA thing. But maybe that has changed since he went to school 10 years ago.

I read speculative IQs of famous people. Hillary Clinton was suppose to be 125, her husband 140. I think on pure IQ, most people would put Bill ahead but I think he would never have been president without her. I think her work ethic leveraged her lower IQ so that she could achieve greater success than someone with a higher IQ. Though that didn't play out in the primary, I think she is an example of gifted and good habits make for great success.

Why wouldn't top schools be looking for that kind of discipline in their recruitment?

Ahhhh--but how to tease apart which discipline is the STUDENT and which is the PARENT... now that has become the new challenge.

The admissions committees aren't made up of people who would see things that way. You would think that working on the admissions committee would be a rotating gig filled by professors. But it isn't. A couple of books and something else I read recently showed that admissions is an entry-level job that tends to be filled by...people with...degrees in subjects like...education.

This book, which was written by the former Director of Admissions at Dartmouth, discusses the issue. Click on the page that starts with "Since they did not attend highly selective colleges themselves...."

It's all a bit of a very sick joke, yet people take it all very seriously. It honestly boggles my mind that super intelligent, accomplished, highly capable applicants applying to our "best" universities are being advised to dumb down their essays so that the people on the admissions committee can understand them and not miss nuances.

Still no alternative. This is a perfect time to come up with a different way of parsing the pile of perfect scores.

Make admissions tests HARDER. MUCH harder.

And then-- make them surprising. That eliminates the ability to game the system by 'coaching' for them in the first place. In fact, you know what? LET COLLEGES WRITE THEM. Not for-profit test production companies. Pick a college out of the hat every year, and hey, presto-- they get to write next year's SAT.

Everyone gets ONE shot for free. Everyone. But-- only one chance, mind.

Also-- do something about grade inflation. Seriously. Straight A students didn't use to be incapable of writing a coherent essay at a college level upon graduation from high school. This is a problem. Many college educators now regard "I'm in the honors program" as shorthand for "special snowflake syndrome" rather than actual high ability. Nobody flunks STEM classes like those honors students, though-- and nobody looks more amazed that it is happening to them, either. {sigh}


Then-- have students complete college essays under proctored conditions. Two sessions-- that's fine. Time enough to write and revise. Excellent.

Voila-- meritocracy restored.

What Val said? Absolutely true-- which is why a good many departments have-- long since, in fact-- said "you know what, suuuuuuure, you got into Prestigious University all right, but you know, I just don't think that you're right for Highly Difficult Subject College within our institution. Maybe you should try Easy Fluff Major and see if they'll take you on as a student."

Just getting IN to the larger institution isn't anything like getting into your major, where the real expert admissions screens take place.

Also-- the SAT essay works exactly the same ridiculous, formulaic way. Needs to be 300-400 words, probably, for a "6" score... oh, and don't be NUANCED. My goodness no. Pick a strong position and remember that this is persuasive writing, and that you have just 25 minutes.

I've already flatly told DD that she is to consider this an opportunity to lie without compunction. If she needs to manufacture a cute/warm anecdote to pull off what she needs... OF COURSE she should do that.

Oh, and also remember that the people grading it will spend about 22 minutes less than that grading it.

"Holistically" I mean. Which is fine, except that it's not at all clear that the individuals DOING that grading are very well suited to that task, since it's so unrestricted as to topic and writing style and all. Whatever.

Bravo, HK - you hit the nail squarely on the head in those last two posts.

I wouldn't even be thinking about Ivy's if it weren't for the nose drive that academic standards have taken. It used to be that only the brightest went to university. Now almost everyone gets to go. Did primary and secondary education miraculously improve? Heck no! Instead the bar was lowered so that all but the dimmest could make it.

I have just about given up (and compared to many children associated with this site, my DD is dim) on my DD having mental peers before college. A real college that is and the closest thing to that these days appears to still be an Ivy simply because they are so selective. Lord alone knows what parents of kids 160+ are thinking!

Unfortunately, even the Ivy selection criteria does not bear scrutiny. But the Ivys do still seem to be the best of a bad bunch - I could sent DD to Europe though so all is not lost. Germany, at least doesn't appear to have completely changed its academic stripes.

The ethical question of conning people that will never, ever in a decade of Sundays graduate even from the lowest calibre universities into borrowing insane amounts of money just boggles my mind. I hope that Hell exists purely so that there be a special place for those that have stooped this low.

So its back to the salt mine for me - 300K will probably be 3Mil in 10 years time...

Yes

Yes

YesYesyesyesyes.

Actually, from what I hear, they've been systematically de-funding the universities for years; departments are closing, there's overcrowding and little access to faculty, and time to degree remains appalling. I wouldn't think this is a great option...

DeeDee

Germany in specific. I have little experience elsewhere in Europe.

DeeDee

The main thing that I like about the modern German education system as opposed to the older one is this. Once upon a time, you either went to the 'brainy' high school aka 'gymnasium' and then went to university or you didn't and if still relatively bright you were put on the apprenticeship track. That pretty stark choice and route to higher education was it. Now, you still get the above but those that didn't go to gymnasium still have a track to get into a good university. Firstly, they have to take classes that 'ramp' them up to university entrance level and those that do not make the cut do not get to go the university. Adopting this approach means that the standards at university are maintained and meritocracy is strengthened not diluted.

I have no research to back the following home spun theory up but I cannot help thinking that the (misguided) notion that EVERYONE can go to university regardless of academic merit has been a major contributor to the insane rise in costs for students in this country.

How so? Well, the needless expansion has led to a construction boom on many college campuses - how is this financed? By taking on debt. How is the debt serviced? By raising tuition and raising admissions which means yet more construction is needed ...

I missed this before. But adding the essay question was suppose to differentiate and still perfect scores.

And didn't they just redo the SAT, maybe not for this year.

And more and more kids are taking the AP courses.

I think you are just getting too many kids that can do well on strictly an academic basis.

It was similar for Hunter high school. The test to get in used to be just scores. But too many good scores. So the cut-off on the score got you to the essay. And the essay became the key. But that could eliminate all these STEM PGs that aren't the greatest at essay writing.

I think making the test harder is being tried. But you just get the greater majority of kids hitting the target coming from India and China.

The essay section - very easy to coach - replaced the 'analogies' section (highly correlated with innate intelligence).

Net result - not so smart people got to appear smart, i.e., were awarded higher SAT scores than they would have earned on the old test.

Regarding Hunter, I have no problem with only the highest test scorers getting in (using the old test) - even if it means that all of the students are Indian or Chinese myself.

This is consistent with what I hear from family in Germany. I am keeping an eye on things there because dd12 has German citizenship.

Interesting. We just had this discussion with my in-laws re: nieces and nephews. My 9 yr. old nephew (who I am sure is at least MG) is not perceived as gifted by his school and is a great athlete who is already saying he would rather not be on the gymnasium track because he wants to hang out with his friends. Dh's family's business is painting, and we have great respect for trades, but it seems sad to me that a kid that young could already be making choices that limit his future. If there is a viable 3rd way I think that makes sense, I am curious to ask their take on it.

I was referring to Hunter high school. Indian and Chinese natives cannot apply. You have to live in NYC.

Some people say that analogies didn't involve critical thinking skills, but showed well for people who memorized vocabulary lists. You can go either way. But for someone who would have gotten 200 on the essay portion, because I was focused on STEM, but ended up writing for a job and had to take a college English class to learn to write an essay, I disagree. In a world of techno LOL, and whatever other text language exists (I don't text) I think it imperative to weed out the ones that can communicate with written language.

FWIW, I think the UK university admissions system is a lot more sane than the US one - in particular, admission is overwhelmingly decided on academic merit - and (from talking to many colleagues in both systems) I don't think it's true that students have less access to staff or otherwise have a worse time, at least at good ("Russell group" mostly in the UK) universities. The overseas fees US students would pay typically still look like good value compared with US fees, too. Happy to go into detail if anyone wants.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/us/10iht-letter10.html
Money Cuts Both Ways in Education
By CHRYSTIA FREELAND | REUTERS
May 9, 2013


I don't see the cited paper by Luthar at http://www.tc.columbia.edu/academics/index.htm?facid=sl504#papers , but there are papers with similar themes.

The May SAT scores for the entire country of Korea were cancelled because of widespread cheating.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/09/world/asia/south-korea-exam-scandal/
South Korea cheating scandal hits university bids
By Dan Rivers, CNN
May 10, 2013

Regarding Hunter, I know that only NYC residents may apply and there are a ton of ethnically Indian and Chinese people in NYC, right.

I do agree that articulacy is important so my vote would be to put the analogies back in and to keep the essays

BINGO. (To this and to the article posted above that ID's that same cohort in the US as "at risk")

Americans are fooling themselves if they don't think that the exact same problems are endemic in some places here, too. Why on earth would teachers, parents, and students who think that cheating on state tests is "completely justifiable" have any compunction about doing so with other high-stakes exams? Answer-- they don't.

It's an arms race.

It does society no good-- clearly-- to be offering coveted "elite" educational opportunity to those are aren't (quite) as naturally ABLE, but merely able to appear so...

and it certainly does bright/almost-MG kids no good for their parents to push them so that they APPEAR to be HG/HG+.

I see this locally-- and it's painful and toxic to see. Truly. Parents here are avid-- maybe even kind of desperate?-- to have a child like our DD. It makes me sad for them, but even sadder for their kids.

Admissions tests need to be so difficult that truly, most test-takers never even have the IDEA that they could get a perfect score. Ceilings need to be WAY, WAY higher. Yes, this is partly a selfish thing on my part, but it's also out of concern for a larger societal problem that I say that. I would prefer it if my DD didn't think that "my best" on the SAT was 2400. I'd like it very very well if she had in her head that her "best" was just... well, her best. Not "perfect."



Re-norming has instead seemed to do some of the opposite.

Silly.

That's because your child is clearly inherently superior and therefore worth more as a human being than their children.

*Unless* their children are just as awesome as yours. So, that must be the case! Their children *are* as intelligent as yours!

Winning!

I actually do think their kids are just as worthwhile as mine.

What makes me sad is that their own parents don't seem to notice that they are great just the way they are. It's awful when a stranger or acquaintance is more willing to accept you and treasure you for your own inherent worth than mom and dad, YK? My heart just breaks for some of those kids-- real kids that we really know.

No, they are too busy fluffing up junior's vitae, exhorting them to do MORE-MORE-MORE and trying to minimize what my DD is doing, has done, or is capable of doing... to even notice that their kids are nice, ideally intelligent, and have quirky and awesome interests that they ought to be celebrating rather than complaining that they aren't winning medals in academic competitions, or relentlessly practicing the violin. If that is a criticism of the hyper-parenting that is common locally, then I stand by it.

Like I said-- I see this entire arms race as being PROFOUNDLY toxic. For all of us. Because if those parents succeed at what they seem to be aiming at, I really fear for our future.

I don't have to do all of those things to my child, and she still looks extraordinary. Shouldn't everyone be glad that there are kids like my DD??

I'm certainly glad that there are kids with extraordinary musical or athletic ability, after all-- I don't minimize their accomplishments or make rationalizations for how MY kid could/should be as good as that, too... I view those kids as natural wonders of nature or something, and I think it's lovely for us all that they exist.

Just sad. The whole thing is just sad.

There is a long history of SAT items being added and removed. Whether this is "good" or "bad" is debatable. Analogies were replaced with additional reading comprehension passages. The Writing Section is similar to the Test of Standard Written English (TSWE) that was on the SATs from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s. I recall the TSWE but no one cared about it (I think you really had to bomb it for any colleges to care).

Even now, colleges don't care that much about the Writing Section. Some do not even consider it, and most others do not give it the weight that math and verbal (Critical Reading) are given. Almost all merit scholarships are based upon the M+V score out of 1600.

While no test is a perfect measure of ability or potential, colleges need to have some way to compare the applicants. Grading systems and standards vary a lot from school to school, so grades alone cannot be used (there are "test optional" colleges these days, but many kids still submit the test scores). While the SAT is probably more "coachable" now than it ever has been, there is really only so much coaching you can do.

The kids I see that have really good SAT scores (say 2200+) are very bright/gifted. I won't say it can't happen, but it would be a very rare case to take a kid with a 1500 score and coach them to a 2200. For most kids, no matter how hard they try, a 2200 is just not possible.

So yes, there are kids with perfect or near perfect scores who are not PG. However, I don't think that the "elite" colleges were ever on a mission to serve just PG kids. While I think there should be less weight given to sports and other hooks, I also think that these schools would prefer an MG/HG kid who is very involved in sports, music, community service, etc. over a PG kid who is not involved with any activities. (Not saying that PG kids don't do other stuff - I certainly know some who are involved in tons of stuff, and average kids who do nothing outside of school). I truly think that there are MG kids that can benefit from an "elite" college education.

Investment banks and other high-paying employers hire preferentially at top-ranked colleges. Some mildly gifted kids could have lucrative careers there *if they are recruited and hired to begin with*. Therefore it may be individually rational for parents to push their kids to get into the most selective schools, and studies find that high school seniors tend to choose the most prestigious college they were accepted to.

Ross Douthat has explained another function of the most selective schools

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-secrets-of-princeton.html
The Secrets of Princeton
New York Times
April 6, 2013

Fewer people articulate my views than act on them in their personal lives .

Absolutely, NotSoGifted. I'm not so elitist that I think that. Though I do think that we've jumped the shark in suggesting that all high school kids should take AP courses, and that all people should obtain college degrees...

No, absolutely bright/MG/high motivation people should be in the running for elite educational opportunity. No question.



I just think that the more honest thing to do is to raise the ceiling so that ability is the limiting factor.


As it stands now, even the most elite schools on the planet don't have a WAY to select for PG/EG applicants even if they wanted to do so.

Bostonian, it's a matter of degree of pushing, I think.

I see parents who PUNISH their children for not bringing home A's in honors math classes, and who threaten to take away 'fun' extracurriculars for standardized test scores below the 98th percentile. Seriously.

For those kinds of kids (I'd guess 95th-97th percentile, probably) I think this sort of thing is toxic. It results in what you noted in a previous post-- a LOT of stress-responses, even depression and suicide risk.

*Money* is more of a limiting factor.

As a MG person that got excellent college education that helped me contribute to society in a positive way, I 100% Agree. I was just thinking about how to write the same thought without ruffling feathers, and you did it! Thanks!

I have no problem seeing ceilings raised to generate meaningful variability in the tails of test takers as long as non-test factors capturing "soft skills", like motivation and persistence, are still weighted heavily in admissions decisions. Ability alone cannot accurately predict the contribution a student will make to the university and society at large. For evidence, I simply point to the lawyers of the world.

I'd also like to see nationality quotas on admissions to elite private universities eliminated, because it unduly penalizes smart foreigners.

Absolutely!!

I only want for motivation and ability to stop being conflated with push-parenting (which mostly does not correlate particularly well with college success, and in fact, could arguably lead to a lot of hassle and expense for colleges that find they need to 'remediate' or 'support' students in those situations).

Motivation is huge, and those students SHOULD be taken into account. It'd be a lot easier if grade inflation weren't so rampant, honestly, because transcripts used to reflect that quality extremely well, and not-so-much anymore.

On SAT cheating, it is not limited to Asian countries. There was a big crackdown on Long Island last year.

Back to Howler's comment that her friends are envious of her child, doesn't the current system, allowing for extracurriculars to be taken into account, let all types of kids shine. Maybe they wouldn't be so envious if their kid was a ping pong champ and got into Harvard as a result.

So Howler, it may be a good thing. They would be happy with their kids.

Oh, but {ping-pong}* is frivolous. So that doesn't count. Besides {EG/PG child} also {plays ping-pong} AND earns straight A's... AND worked at a south American orphanage project while doing distance research work for the local flagship university their last three summers in high school and was invited to play at a youth orchestra event at Carnegie Hall.


Nobody {plays ping-pong} at Carnegie Hall. Hmph.

Besides, there are a lot more of these kids around here than there are {ping-pong champ trophies} to go around.

So the problem is that those PG kidlets are making it so hard to compete without making things up, basically...


*ping-pong here being a metaphor for pretty much ANY activity:

AKC dog agility
barrel racing
marksmanship
knitwear design
modern dance
playing the marimba, accordion, mandolin, ocarina, pan flute, or didgeridoo
volunteering at local homeless shelters, daycares, senior centers or libraries
soccer
track
volleyball
golf
skiing
.
.
.


No. Chess, piano/violin/viola/cello, fencing/lacrosse/rowing, exotic/spectacular international humanitarian/research experiences, 99th percentile test scores and a 4.5+ GPA are what matter.

Everyone knows that only children who measure up are worthy. The rest of them are being given pity-trophies for being participants, that's all. Everyone knows that those are mere consolation prizes, though...

(Yes, tongue is FIRMLY in cheek here.) I'm exaggerating, of course... but sadly, there is an element of truth to this, as parents close to either the college admissions process or to other high school parents can probably attest.

So being "a great kid" doesn't necessarily earn even parental approval and pride in this kind of community. Sadly.

Sure, just cut off all federal research funding dollars first.

... or... fund all universities adequately and remove ALL international restrictions on attendance and make tuition completely uniform globally.

(sure... that'll happen, right?)

In all seriousness, though, I think that educational underwriting is a different animal than research monies from tax dollars. Different mission-- the one is about having a well-educated population to contribute to one's national economy, and the other is about innovation and discovery.

It is easy to complain about the "holistic admissions" process at our most selective universities, but a growing population in a country where the admissions process has become increasingly nationalized, while the number of seats at Harvard et al. has stayed constant, will lead to more qualified applicants being rejected, no matter how one defines qualified. Let's see if I can remain philosophical a decade from now .

That is the trick.

This all looked a lot different when it wasn't personal, for sure.

It's hard to remain sanguine about it when you know that your choices, even as the parent of a PG kid, are to "push-parent maybe to a level which isn't healthy for your own child" (in other words, to play the game, since you have a lot of raw talent to work with, should be successful, right?) or to let your child follow his/her OWN natural trajectory, using him/her as a guide to what you should be doing for them educationally and as children...

but knowing in the back of your mind that because of the arms race thing, you're probably making sure that they are destined to look "great-- like all the rest."

That's not really reflective of ability, and it does rankle to be faced with those two choices-- play the game, or look average because everyone else is willing to go there.

We've been burned repeatedly by refusing to pad DD's resume when she applies for awards, etc. We know that those who are winning are doing so by being less scrupulous/ethical about it. We know-- because we know the kids and the parents involved, and we in some cases are even familiar with their vitae. Let's just say that a lot of what is on JUNIOR's vitae actually belongs on mom or dad's.

Science fair projects-- oh my lord. It's no wonder that DD's acid rain and demineralization project conducted independently at 10yo didn't raise any eyebrows-- because it was ASSUMED that she wasn't the one doing the experimental design and analysis work. It was "par for the course" unless you stopped and thought about the fact that she really DID do it herself. THEN, it becomes amazing.

IF we played the game the way other parents around are doing, we'd have a kid who looked amazing in several ways. But we don't. If I volunteer to help her school, or to do something for one of her youth activities, it doesn't go on HER vita. But I'm very obviously in the minority. So much so that other people who work with youth have even commented on it to us-- that they WISH that there were a way to make it clearer to those handing out scholarships and awards that our DD is... authentic, heartfelt, and honest in her achievements on paper and off. We are hard-core and old-school this way. There's a right way to raise kids, IOO, and teaching them to exaggerate and obfuscate to make themselves look better ought to have no place in it.

It makes me mad as heck that this kind of thing is apparently a detriment to gaining opportunities these days. It also makes me pretty sad as a citizen that we're selecting for people who seem to be ethically... adventurous. Worse, a fair number of them genuinely fail to appreciate that there is any difference between the two practices. (That one I find seriously horrifying.)

First, I think schools that your DD may be interested in, MIT, Caltech, are all about the scores and her science projects.

And ping pong is serious enough for a girl on the National team to get into Harvard this year.

I do not know why you are fretting about it Howler. My good childhood friend is seriously PG, did her undergrad in Physics and then her PhD in nuclear engineering. The jobs were handed to her on "silver platters". It was a bit of an issue because her fiance was in the same program and not getting the offers that she was. She is just amazingly brilliant and into science. She has had an long, successful career, in that she can change direction within the company, which she does every 7 years from boredom and they totally support her. She hasn't made billions but has the life she likes and work that satisfies her.

I had a summer job and had to run a small city Canadian day beauty pageant for the parade. I had 15-16 year olds enter (I was 19). I got some free meals for them, we did a local fashion show and got some prizes. I arranged for make up and the lot for the pageant. The girl who won was so excited. A real lovely girl. She had scars from burns on much of her torso, that I noticed when they did changes. I gave her a ride home one night and couldn't figure out where we were going because she directed me behind a strip mall, where I saw a small shack. This kid had very little and appreciated what I created so much. I was happy that she won the contest.

Your kid will have so much opportunity and probably better options than Harvard or Yale. Let the ping pongers get the spots. There may be a bunch of kids in that lot that will so appreciate their chance at to make something of themselves when they don't have a lot. I am not saying there are not a bunch of rich kids. DH found out that classmates paid millions to get their son in and he didn't get accepted. Harvard has some standards.

I have no doubt that the Ivies have high standards. If they COULD choose, they WOULD be choosing the authentic item over the faux-awesome students. No question. They do winnow the field as best they can, so no total slacker/doofus kids are likely to be admitted. Granted.

Yeah, see, I was one of those kids that came from pretty much nothing-- so it makes me all the madder, I think.

My parents didn't KNOW enough to play the game, such as it existed then (mostly it was about counseling kids to seek out leadership experience and things that look good on their vitae if they have choices, YK?).

But this-- meaning what my DH and I see other parents doing, even doing fairly brazenly at this point-- is NUTS.

I'm not especially worried about my DD. She has advantages enough that I don't need for her to have them all-- I'm even okay with her not having a few that should rightfully have been hers if not for said game.

No, what makes me REALLY hot are the parents at our SES who do go after ALL of it like there's no tomorrow, and like ethics don't matter-- only "winning" does. I'd really like it if some of the kids who need those opportunities had them instead of parents-- er, kids-- who know how to work the system the best.

These are the parents who elbow their way (oops-- I mean their kid's way... of course... HA) onto youth activities/boards/councils, etc. and then the kid shows up for MEETINGS, but never "work sessions," never mind actual WORK. Oh, sure-- they may SIGN UP to do work... but guess who never seems to actually show up for what they sign on for? Still goes onto their resume and records, believe me. Scholarship committees are often none the wiser, and supervisors are seldom permitted to say what they ACTUALLY know is going on to the decision-making committees deciding awards/scholarships. We have had people at the local, county, and state levels all apologize to us because they KNOW that our DD was the top candidate... but she didn't look all that different from two or three others on paper, and they weren't allowed to tell what they knew about the veracity of what was there on paper.

Helpful tip for the unethical tiger parenting aficionado, that. Much time savings to be had there, and you can still claim all that the group does within the community if you opt for only "showcase" and "photo-op" activities that take less time! Let the uninitiated or ethically fettered take on all the time-consuming, thankless scut work! Yay!

My kid who actually has a great sense of personal responsibility and ethics is ALWAYS the one asking if the organizers need "extra help setting things up" or doing other things behind the scenes. Because she isn't looking to LOOK GOOD, but to actually DO GOOD.

The upshot, though, is that she winds up not having enough time to do (at least on paper) as much as those kids whose parents are the ones actually doing half of the crap on their vitae. These are the parents who sell cookies etc. and put together science fair projects when their kids are little-- and believe me, it doesn't stop there.

They are ALSO the ones writing essays (or paying someone else to), proposals, competition speeches, and still doing school and science fair projects when their kids are high school aged. I mean, suuuuuuuuure your kid did {high-tech thing that can only happen in your research lab or hospital, or workplace} and then put together this glossy presentation about it... SURE. Which is why said high school senior can't answer any questions about it beyond what you-- oops, I mean the child-- wrote on the PowerPoint slides, and why s/he stumbles over every technical term in them. Hey-- didn't I see that one image in a recent publication with your name on it?

It's really obnoxious. The kids it TRULY hurts are the HG+ kids in the middle two quartiles. Well, and potentially their own kids, as the article Bostonian posted pointed out (and we do see some of THAT here, too in our town's sky high adolescent suicide and mental health hospitalization rates), who are under tremendous pressure on the few things that their parents CANNOT game/control. I really do know a few parents that have doctor-shopped for a diagnosis that they could use to get their child more time on College Board tests, justifying it by pointing out 10-20% increases in scores with double time and intensive coaching... Yup. They discuss which doctors are loose with diagnoses which are helpful. No, not about their kids' PROBLEMS... because they laugh about their kids not HAVING problems. That's what they ADMIT to. That is just disgusting. (And no, I do not count such people as friends, and there is NO WAY that I tell them about anything that my DD does, because all of it seems like a 'challenge' to them to somehow match it on paper... but I do hear them talk, and as an introvert who is well buttoned-up most of the time, people have always told me pretty much ANYTHING. ) DD hears some of her peers LAUGH about cheating-- and yes, on the standardized tests, too. They seriously don't see anything wrong with it, and clearly they got those notions from their parents, I'd say.

High achievement, I'm all for. There are some young people in this area who are remarkable athletes, scholars, and musicians. They are rare, but not vanishingly so (as one might expect in a town with a high rate of terminally-degreed people). It's the grasping/scrabbling horde that I object to.


The lower SES but high ability kids, now they are the ones that most need the individual scholarships and such in order to garner reasonably good educational opportunities. But they sure don't get them with these kinds of shenanigans going on. I feel VERY upset for them, and I count some of them as my friends. Their kids? They are going to get hosed.

Not that I'm bitter. Okay-- maybe I am. But I do think that I'm not crazy to think this is way wrong.

Oh, and we also know a pageant winner who is just an all-around great kid-- whose parents also refuse to cheat their way to their DD's success. We're REALLY happy for her that she's got that scholarship $. She truly deserves it. No, she's not an academic all-star. She's not a future Olympian, and she's probably not a Miss America contestant either. But she's a good kid, and she'll have an opportunity her family COULDN'T have given her otherwise.

It appears that you are discussing 2 issues. Local scholarships, that appear to be lax in their due diligence and top college admission. I have friends that just went through the college process this year. One has a daughter, without "mastery" and wanted math and got a full tuition scholarship to USC. Another got turned down by Amherst and Barnard, waitlist to Princeton (legacy issue) and accepted by Columbia. The whole Barnard, Columbia thing threw me. She didn't have mastery or top, top scores but got into an IVY.

DYS should be able to help you with scholarship issues, I would think. It seems that should be one of the things they do. Especially since your child has done so well, from an early age, in research.

I have my tantrums and then I look for another path. Oops, did I just admit my helicopter nature? My kid is only 8. But really, that is my nature for my own path. When blocked, turn until you see another way. There is always another way.

ITA. Countries can subsidize their own citizens (or not) as they see fit.

Wren, glad you understood that I'm really just ranting about what I see as a completely toxic culture.

Honestly-- DD has only a couple of "elite" schools on her wish list. We're fine with that. Supportive in the extreme. One of them is only there because we've encouraged her to apply there-- though we know she has about a 1% of actually wanting to GO there, if they'll offer her 30K a year, well then-- she can (hopefully) leverage that into a much better financial aid package elsewhere.



She wants to major in math (at least currently), and is otherwise undecided but leans (right now, again) toward poly-sci or the social sciences, but also has an interest in physics.

So who knows, right? With that set of interests, though, we're VERY wary of having her go to a tech-oriented school, though she'd probably be a reasonably good candidate for one.

My complaint is the same as that voiced by others occasionally-- like the science poster another member recently posted-- clearly done by the child. But will it be merely 'comparable' to that done by the other kids' parents? (Yuck.) Is it "too good" for others to understand that it is really the child's work?

My DD gets caught in the same net a lot. Adults/judges assume a level of involvement by expert mentors/parents which just isn't there. She really DOES do that stuff herself. So, seriously-- I think she compares pretty darned well with the efforts of her classmates' parents with masters degrees and PhD's. LOL.

I console myself with the thought that ultimately, we're raising a child who can self-regulate, and choose things for HERSELF, rather than for US (or anyone else). I hope that we're giving her a sense that she can do things 'right' without us doing them for her. That probably counts for something. At least I hope so.

For one thing, those who do end up at a school where they can't hack it are obvious and not all that happy.

kcab, that is the single BIGGEST indicator that there is something seriously wrong locally-- wayyyyyyyyy too many of these kids wind up dropping out of the high-flown places they go off to college at, or they wind up coming home for a year to retool at the local JC/Uni (at least that is how their parents spin things-- I suspect it's academic).

I've been ruminating about this problem and I think that basically, the entire system is a caricature of a disaster. Getting into the right kindergarten, shelling out thousands for professional college counselors, and trips to Italy designed primarily as fodder for application essays are all evidence of this assertion.

People can analyze the details of this situation, but I suspect that individual problems merely morph as people focus attention on them and force the colleges to "address" them.

The way I see it, it's kind of like the way that big food works. BigFoodCo, Inc. removes fat from processed product X when people are wound up about fat, but substitutes in sugar and salt as replacements. Then it makes "health" claims about the new product. It's not like the food is suddenly good for you. It's still bad for you, only now it has a label proclaiming FAT FREE!* and *a note about fat and heart disease. In five years, the fat will be back and the label will say REDUCED SUGAR!* and *the note will refer to diabetes. It's all about the problem of the moment. The underlying broken process doesn't change.

IMO, it's the same with the US education system. So long as admissions are subjective, the colleges will continue to find ways to make admissions harder or easier for the problem groups of the moment. The groups in question will change, but the underlying broken approach will remain. The problem is that people allow the colleges to be subjective and then accept their arguments about well-roundedness without really asking "Wait. What does that really mean? Helicopter/Tiger parenting produces the opposite of a well-rounded person, IMO. But as HK pointed out in an earlier post, it's what's on paper that matters, and no one can tell if Mummy or Daddy wrote the essay (or the homework or even the Ph.D. thesis, and yes, I've seen examples of all three).

Now, THIS is what we're talking about--


NYT Some College Applicants try a little Dazzle while On Waitlists

The comments section is the really interesting bit. The article itself is just an echo of what some of us (in academia or with HS-aged kids) have noted is going on. Parents really are part of the problem here.

My personal favorite comment--


Indeed. There's plenty of blame to go around, it isn't just parents who have raised kids that expect the world to bow down to their obvious entitlement, but also colleges that seem to have forgotten their mission statements.

I also thought that this one was insightful, if blunt:


This one made me laugh out loud, actually--


Yes, yes, yes. YES.

It really is a complete system failure on some level. Totally dysfunctional.

I don't know the statistics on the importance of extracurricular activities and professionally edited (written?) essays for college admissions. But I do know from personal experience that helicopter parenting is not required for admission to a top tier university. In fact, it can be done with rather minimal parenting.

I don't remember the timeline exactly anymore, but for a significant period of high school I lived by myself. My father would come by once a week to take me to my music lesson and the grocery store. It's a rather odd sequence of events that lead to this situation, but in short, my parents were divorced when I was 10. My father was awarded custody because his father owned the house my family lived in. I was the youngest of 3 children, and by my Sophomore year my older siblings had graduated and moved out. I guess my father was anxious to get on with his life, because he started dating and moved in with his girlfriend, while I stayed in that house my grandfather owned... alone.

My parents did not:
Write my college essays.
Edit my college essays.
Read my college essays.
Enroll me in SAT prep.
Know when I took the SAT (which I took only once).
Advise me about extracurriculars.
Advise me about course selection.
Help me with my projects.
Help me with my homework.
Make sure I did my homework.
Make sure I even went to school.

I went anyway, and not because I liked it. I hated it, and I hated the privileged kids in the "advanced" courses I was in. I tried to avoid spending time with them as much as possible. I refused to join the the NHS. I refused to join the math club until I was kind of recruited in my senior year. I played one instrument, and not that well (budget cuts for music in the public schools took a number of years away from me and private lessons were my attempt to merely compensate for that). I never played a sport (couldn't get along with the kids who did).

I still got into my first choice, and went to the highest ranked college of anyone at my high school. (Lucky for me, that school gave me a big enough grant to actually make attendance possible.)

So who knows why I was accepted. I certainly had strong SAT scores, especially in math, but my GPA was barely top 10% and I had very few extracurriculars. Did the admissions officers recognize the clues of a bored (and frustrated) gifted student? Anything is possible I suppose. Except it's not possible that a schedule full of overwhelming extracurriculars is absolutely required for top tier college admissions. Kids shouldn't be busy 24 hours a day (unless they want to be). They should have some time of their own, to do whatever they want. I think most kids can be true to themselves, avoid activities they hate doing, and still have a bright future. Allowing this will probably lead for a better relationship with their parents, too. And in the end, what's more important than relationships?

You know, I had a similar profile-- only because I didn't really know any different and neither did my (somewhat naive) parents. Right down to the absentee parenting, come to that. My mom was completely AWOL for most of my high school career in one way or another, and often literally... I couldn't stand the snobby kids, so I sure wasn't a "joiner" other than being an enthusiastic band member. I could really rock a standardized test, though.

Heavens, how the colleges stalked me...

CalTech and RPI were both really aggressive in chasing me, even. I was flabbergasted. Seriously had no idea what to make of all of this sudden courting by high-flying schools that I'd only heard of in hushed whispers... it was just bizarre. None of my friends had people from {insert elite college} calling. I checked. LOL.



But things are way, way different than they were thirty years ago.

One can definitely decide to opt-out, as we've done; but we understand that the reality is that we ARE choosing for our daughter to probably not be competitive at an Ivy in doing that. On the other hand, we figure we aren't raising an Ivy student-- hopefully we're raising a well-adjusted adult who can follow her own dreams. It seems that more and more, that path doesn't lead through the Ivies for all but a few kids who are naturally that manic (?) and fortunate enough to have opportunity to spend 20 hours a day racking up activities that will play well to admissions committees.

More power to them if that is healthy for them, I suppose. But I have to think that Dad is right. Kids-- even really high ability kids-- need time to just BE. Time that isn't about how it benefits a vita.

Even if Harvard or Columbia were "the right" school for my DD, I'm not really a believer in the destiny model of college. I think that she could succeed and be wildly happy with her education at any of a number of less prestigious places-- and find a way for that experience to take her where she will love to go. Luckily, she sees things this way, too. Some of her friends are going off to Ivies, but not all of them. Some of them (all of them top 1% of graduating class, mostly) are going to the local regional colleges nearby. And that's fine.

I hear all the time about what a different ballgame it is now than it was when we applied. Why is this, exactly? Can someone explain? Is it because of the common applications that are now used--college get so many applications that they have to weed more assertively early on, so you have to stand out early in the game? Is it because more students are applying to college generally? It seems to me that the Ivies and the other good schools have just as many spots in their freshman classes as they always have, so why is it so much harder to get in now? Why the arms race? Is this a collegiate Flynn effect? What?

My 9yo can write a very nice little esssay right now. I'm sure she's going to write like a demon by 17. Both her parents were National Merit Scholars and she seems to be good at tests. She's going to be fabulous at any memorization-based schoolwork--which, let's face it, is a lot of high school. However, she has no sports talent and we're not forking over bucks for her to develop any fancy skills in anything else (music, dance, whatever) at this time. She's likely to volunteer heavily because she likes it. She's not much of a leader. Artsy.

I still think she could attend a selective small liberal arts college. I don't think Ivy unless she decided to really go apeshit with stuff in HS, but I don't know about that environment for her anyway. Our income puts us in the blue-collar zone.

I guess I don't feel a lot of hysteria about college. Am I kidding myself? Does she have to become a world-class Javanese gamelan player even if she is likely to be an excellent student with top SAT scores who can write a killer essay? Is it really THAT DIFFERENT? (Though, TBH, I still don't see us conducting our lives so differently even if it is. I just can't tell how much of this is hype and how much is real.)

It seems to only be the Ivy League and similar schools, Stanford, etc.

You can still even use dogging to get yourself a full ride at a state school.

You answered your own question. The population continues to grow, and at the top end applicants are less constrained by geography, so there are more applicants and a lower acceptance rate. One reason for my high-IQ-people-are-more-successful posts is that I wish employers gave more weight to IQ and other standardized tests rather than elite credentials, whose supply is artificially constrained. Harvard could expand its class size if it really wanted to, but a 6% acceptance rate signals its exclusivity.

I guess I didn't take population growth into account, but I can't say I believe it would make THAT big of a difference. Obviously, it's true that the US is not magically acquiring new Ivies to match population growth.

A country where a bright student with non-elite, "naive" parents is courted by the best universities could be described as meritocratic, a case I have been making in many posts.

Ah, but if your child is going to Harvard or Yale, it IS a race. Because once they show up at the doors to one of those schools, power and wealth are secured.

And so, the child MUST be valedictorian, and no matter that there are 4 hours of homework a night. The child also MUST fill out other areas of the college application, by election to class president, leading the debate team, starring in the school musical, winning the state tennis tournament, participating in the academic decathlon, and volunteering in the homeless shelter.

The result will be a child who sleeps three hours a night, has no close friends, and does not socialize in any meaningful way. The child will also have no executive functioning skills, because there has never been a time when the child wasn't involved in some sort of carefully organized activity. So, lacking any ability to function independently, suffering from severe mental issues, and unable to connect with other people, they arrive at Harvard and Yale. But don't worry, there's an effective support system at the universities to help them get through... just like if Mom were there. Plus, there's still more competition to be had, and at this point, that's all the kids know.

And then they graduate, with all these same problems, and go on to lead the boardrooms and political chambers of the country. The products of such an environment that rewards competition at all costs might go into politics, where they'd be expected to accomplish nothing other than being re-elected, and turn the halls of power into nothing more than an absurd theater for a perpetual election cycle, right? Or, they might go into finance, where a win-at-all-costs attitude leads to the reckless pursuit of short-term gains, at the expense of stability of the overall market, right?

So yeah, it's a good thing those things never happen.

It's very much an arms race. If you play the game, you lose. And if you don't play the game... you lose.

You do understand that this was in the early 1980's, though, right?

The few elite schools that I visited, it was also clear that I was a "low SES" admit for them-- that is, I wasn't like the other students at the institution. There's a reason why I didn't go to any of those schools.

I figured my kids will possibly get in as "low SES" admits (well, really just "low E"). Whatever works. At this point, the decision for me not to go back into advertising (ugh) and make a lot more money is pretty intentional. It would just jack up college finances. (Well, there is that little matter of retirement...but DH is fully vested in a pension plan, we do have other savings, and we're used to living on a shoestring.) I don't think my kids will have problems with the cultural environment at a school with SOME very wealthy kids and SOME private-school trust-fund babies. There were some at my college and I just wasn't friends with them. (Not on purpose. Just didn't happen.) But a school with a TON? Yeah, that could be weird/toxic.

Well, ultramarina, I think that there are several things at work.

1. Yes, common app means that kids with money (and those whose parents can afford to be throwing a lot at the problem to start with) are applying EVERYWHERE. They no longer apply to one :reach: the way our generation did-- they apply to five or six, as well as the half dozen more 'safe' bets.

2. Yes, many many students who would have been considered "marginal" as college material are now applying. Basically, the top 75% of a high school class is being advised to 'go to college' and the lowest quartile is being encouraged to 'build skills' in order to 'eventually' get there. (Which, to be clear, is probably kinda crazy to start with-- and it creates a LOT of problems elsewhere... a rippling through the system, as it were.) While I'm thrilled that accommodations for disabling conditions exist in K-12, it becomes less and less clear whether or not it's a good thing in higher ed... because honestly, how much "accommodation" is a hospital supposed to grant a surgeon in performing his/her job? Not much way to give time-and-a-half for brain surgery. This is a problem-- supports SHOULD fade through college, and way too many students and parents don't seem to understand that they HAVE to develop personal work-arounds during those years, or switch fields to something that allows for them. Life just plain isn't fair. Boy oh boy do I understand that one. But it really isn't a level playing field. In K-12, "compulsory" education, absolutely critical that it be as fair as we can make it. Yes. But not everyone can be an ______ (artist, brain surgeon, rocket scientist, fireman, etc. etc.)-- this is also a problem which has developed in this system over the past 25y.

3. Elite schools also have competition like never before from international students. So do less-elite-but-still-tier-one public institutions, and those private colleges whose endowments took a huge hit in 2000 and again in '08. They are admitting increasing numbers of foreign students not because (as they maintain) that those students are 'more competitive' than their American peers, though that is a pleasant fiction that they TELL people in PR materials... nope. But they PAY extremely well for the privilege.

This has been a HUGE problem in public institutions along the west coast-- so big, in fact, that there is no longer any way to deny that there is a financial incentive for the institutions to be doing so. Why straight-A's may not get you into UW this year

The situation is even worse in the UC system. Now, the reasons for the financial dire straits are open for debate, certainly-- but the fact that they are hurting enough for money that they are willing to alienate the voting public over it is pretty telling in and of itself.



In other words, it isn't just the US population expansion which is fueling this trend. It's that US residents are often competing for FEWER spots at top universities, among a cohort which has easily tripled in size.


So what used to be "high achievement" that didn't especially worry about what it could 'demonstrate' or 'document' has now become indistinguishable from the grooming that only highly savvy and slightly unscrupulous parents used to indulge in to get well-off but hardly stellar scholars into top universities. Because EVERYONE in that group started the document, document, document (oh, hey, look... I can slip in this exaggeration here and there)... which eventually turned into outright obfuscation and worse...

because the people just slightly lower on the savvy and UMC scale started doing it, and therefore that first group had to up the ante so that mediocre-kid could STILL come out on top...

well. You get the picture.


Jon makes an excellent series of points in his most recent post, by the way.

Caltech and MIT admit more on merit than on the other things that the Ivies like. Did Ivies or Little Ivies chase you?

A few, yes. Some of the seven sisters, Bryn Mawr, UVA, that kind of place.

But as noted (and I think this bears repeating) this was thirty years ago. Reagan era.

I'll also note with some cynicism that even then, I was WELL aware that one reason I was so desirable to the tech schools was that I am... female.

I don't think we all applied at the same time. I applied to colleges in the late 1990's, not the 80's, for example.

I don't think the most selective schools give preferences to low-SES whites:

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html
How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others
By Russell K. Nieli
July 12, 2010

Being in the thick of this, out of 47 kids in my son's math class only 3 are Caucasian. (Not all are Asian-American but a large percentage.) One of the reasons is immigration policy. The PARENTS who are in this country are those who are bright and successful. The poor Chinese don't have a chance to immigrate. So many of these kids are bright, gifted and motivated.

I applied in the early 90s, and I was already conscious of the arms race to the best universities. As a result, I did not apply. That's one part of the selection process for Ivies that often gets overlooked, which is that a great many top candidates opt out.

I was not aware of loose parental morals for those participating in the arms race, but I was aware of overwhelming parental pressure at that time. My peers who were in the arms race were, as far as I knew, doing what they said they were doing, and suffering the consequences.

I did get sought out specifically by my local UC, and it's entirely possible that they were coming to offer me a full ride, but I never heard them out because the idea of living at home and going to college locally was fairly abhorrent to me at the time, as "home" was not a healthy place. The UC sought me based on a practice college admissions essay they were providing to high school juniors, so it was a proctored thing they just happened to get to see from me.

Otherwise, there was nothing on my application to mark me as unusual in any way. For example, there's no way for the school to know whether I got a B in math because it was my best effort, or if it was because I decided that five hours of homework a week was unnecessary. My credentials were clearly good enough to show I'd be successful anywhere I went, but they didn't have that extra something.

I was accepted everywhere I applied, but the financial aid packages offered were fairly pathetic. It didn't help that we were a very low SES family for all but about three years of my life to that point, and that the plant where my mom was working for those was scheduled to close during my senior year of high school. This meant I'd be returned to low SES just in time for college, but all my financial aid applications required the numbers from the previous year, an extraordinarily rare good one. I'd been told all my life that if I got good grades, I'd get scholarships. So much for that.

I decided not to be responsible for liquidating my mom's entire severance package, which is what it would have taken to attend the modestly-priced Cal State just out of commuting range, and so, after a year of trying and failing to work my way through college during the early 90's financial collapse ... anchors aweigh.

I hadn't thought about the international angle. The piece about UW is certainly sobering.


So you're saying that there are 3 times as many strong applicants as there used to be, or that 3 times as many students apply, or...? Are there numbers on this anywhere? I'm not intending to sound challenging. I'm just interested in the hard numbers...


True. (I went to college in the '90s as well. From what everyone seems to say, I'd be lucky to get into Podunk College now. I actually didn't take any science classes my last two years of HS, and I never took calculus. I didn't take every AP class I was eligible for. Not much on leadership, either, though I had some unusual extracurriculars.) I suppose this also makes one ask: WHEN did this change? Was it gradual, or more sudden?

My peers who were in the arms race were, as far as I knew, doing what they said they were doing, and suffering the consequences

Yes. I was already in higher ed at the time, and this is exactly what I'd have said, too-- that in the mid-90's, most of the kids who were being pressured/groomed were REALLY doing what was on their resumes.

Now, though? Not always. It's been an escalation that I watched with dawning horror while I was in the classroom and laboratory, and one that I've continued to witness living in a university town-- some parents have jumped the shark to such an extent that they really-- and I mean, really-- don't care about the means anymore as long as the outcome is as planned.

Before, they were willing to sacrifice their own kids, but not their principles or anyone else's kids. Now? All bets are off for some of them.

My high school AP Calculus teacher (known as Calc II in some school systems) was the one teacher I've met who fits the caricature of the highly-tenured, poorly-motivated, union-protected teacher. There were only about 10 of us in the class to start with, and only 3 of us were actually keeping up with the material. They were all getting help at home, because their parents knew the material.

They were also all Asian.

I dropped the course at the semester break. Clearly the teacher was grading on a steep curve, because I got a B. My test scores started out well because the first few weeks of a new math class are mostly review. My last test score was in the teens.

I'm interested in them, too-- the problem is that I don't think that anyone in a position to pay for the study WANTS to know or publish them. I'm not usually much of a conspiracy theorist, but in this instance, it would seriously damage the machine to be honest about this situation, I think anyone can see.

If one assumes that population growth has resulted in a doubling of the graduating high schoolers in the United States, and that the top three quartiles are being encouraged to immediately apply to colleges (yes, as in plural), I'm estimating that 3X is a highly conservative estimate of the increase from a timepoint during the Reagan administration.



Remember, that was pre-ADA, it was also at a time when manufacturing jobs were plentiful and well-compensated (well, relative to today, anyhow), and therefore, there was not a national push toward higher ed to begin with.

I think that the shift has been fairly gradual.

I do recall that of my 300 graduating classmates, only 2/3rds planned any kind of higher ed at all-- and I went to an "excellent" public high school. A few of my classmates went on to Ivies, but they were solidly UMC and up. The rest of us sort of accepted that Brown or Harvard were probably pipe dreams, no matter whether or not we could get IN.

(For the reason that Dude mentions-- it would have bankrupted our parents.)

That only happened to me when I took differential equations in college.

I never did get to the point of actually understanding what I was doing, but my "brute force hack" method allowed me to pass the class somehow.

In fact, I still don't know how I passed any of my upper level engineering classes since I specifically recall having absolutely no idea what I was doing.

http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/20/college-admissions-the-myth-of-higher-selectivity/

Interesting piece, which I agree with in its details, but perhaps not-- quite-- in its conclusions.

This explains a few things, though--


In other words, OF COURSE he wants parents to keep their kids applying to those 'highly selective' colleges. And most of all, to prepare well for that process.

Brown publishes acceptance rates conditional on SAT scores and class rank http://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/about/admission-facts . Comparing conditional acceptance rates over time at Brown and other schools would be informative.

more: http://hechingerreport.org/content/college-enrollment-shows-signs-of-slowing_8688/

I really don't know anything about this. Just throwing stuff to the wall.

Ultramarina's post illustrates that income taxes (and need-based financial aid is another income tax and wealth tax) discourage work. She thinks it's a problem if a college has too many rich kids. We are rich because my wife and I are full-time working professionals, and we do not like the prospect of paying tuition that is artificially high so that some students with non-working parents get an almost free ride.

I'm pretty sure that ultramarina's family isn't a prime example of welfare freeloading.

I think that what she's saying is that without programs like Questbridge and need-based aid at high $$ colleges, her kids would have ZERO chance at a high-priced college, and that with it, they almost certainly won't if she were adding her income to the household (because they wouldn't qualify, but would still be below the income level which would permit them to pay out of pocket).

Similarly, we have a bind like this in our household. We would be in the original article/study's higher group if I worked full time. But we don't for several very good reasons, and most of them have absolutely NOTHING to do with wanting a free ride for anything.

Unfortunately, that leaves us in the unenviable position of not being able to afford 30K a year in college costs (period) but well above an income level which could qualify DD for 'need-based' aid (at least according to many "college estimates"-- which, by the way, are NOT necessarily standardized, just so that everyone knows that, nor do they have to account for high medical expenses, etc. It's actually a sort of crazy formula that assumes that everyone has the same set of life-circumstances to work from).

So yes, I think that UM's assessment that she'd like to avoid being in the same bind is completely reasonable.

There is definitely a "sour spot" in the UMC in terms of earnings and college purchasing power. We're in it.

It is probably not coincidence that this is where massive push/tiger-parenting begins in earnest in the SES, either. Parents in similar circumstances know that ONLY merit aid is on the table, and they will do pretty much anything to distinguish their kids from everyone else in the fight for a share of that pie.

Hey Bostonian: I work (half-time, but I will probably go back to full-time eventually). I quit working in advertising because it was morally repugnant to me. I am now a writer employed by a university. I'm severely undercompensated and don't get any benefits, but my job is very rewarding and is also beneficial to the public. I don't want to explain exactly what I do because it's too identifying, but it's not fluff journalism.

Do you feel it's every person's moral responsibility to make as much money as they are capable of making?

ETA: I didn't see HK's reply. Yeah, so--my husband (who has an advanced degree) has also chosen a career path that is not well-compensated but serves the public. He still could go another, better-paid direction and we still consider it, but it would likely be very toxic to him personally. (My kids don't come by their sensitivity to justice and fairness out of nowhere.) There are a few other circumstances at work here as well. So even with my half-time salary, we're out of the sour spot, I think. If I were to go back to work FT in my original field, though, we would sure as hell be in it.

We also are consciously opting out of a lot of the consumption merry-go-round. We live in a small, efficient house, drive small, modest cars, and don't spend much on material goods. It's intentional and part of our moral code. However, the one thing I still rather want for the kids is the college education of their choice. This is a dilemma. Fortunately, they're very bright, but we also do have it in the back our minds that we are quite possibly limiting their options in a serious way. I hope they won't resent it one day. My one other concern is student debt. I will advise them to change college plans if their most desired school involves massive debt assumption.

The thing is, I just don't care that much about money. I grew up in a very wealthy environment (we were not very wealthy--UMC--but my town was). I was not impressed. I'm still not. Obviously I recognize that children need health insurance, good clothes and healthful food, feelings of income security, and some opportunities for this and that--and my kids have all this-- but I don't feel the need for us all to have the latest shiny.

Precisely. We are in the sour spot because of our sense of responsibility, thank-you-very-much. Because what we need out of a school system-- and what our daughter is ENTITLED TO under federal law, incidentally-- is unreasonable. Necessary, but unreasonable.

In other words, if I worked and she were the responsibility of the school system? That would be adding to the burden (financially) of that system. Significantly. It would also place her at grave risk daily, and-- significantly again-- require everyone else to make modifications to their daily lives for her. Parents with, er... how to put this... more "self-sufficiency-driven" worldviews tend to tell us to "just homeschool." You know, rather than "punishing/inconveniencing" the rest of them. So we have. Only to be told that not having an extra 200-300K to pay for college (money which-- recall-- we COULD have now if I had been working and not educating our child at home) is our "fault" for making "bad choices."

So I get kind of irritable when I'm told that we've just PLANNED POORLY. I guess that applies to a lot of 2e kids, then. We "planned" poorly when we had kids that required extraordinary or intensive parenting.

There are things more important than income, and the health and safety of my child are among them.

My spouse left a lower-paying job in the public sector for the simple reason that it allowed us to maintain an income level that pays for our necessities (and not a LOT more than that) with a significant margin for error/catastrophe, but it leaves him in a toxic environment. We are already paying pretty dearly for doing the right thing.

We're going to pay again come time to pay the Registrar's office. This does feel deeply unfair in some ways, yes-- but I still haven't seen how our choices would have been "better" had we done things differently.

I, too, just don't care that much about money, but wish that it weren't a factor in college decisions for our daughter. It is. I dread this conflict with my DH, whose parents were emphatically on the "you get in, we'll find a way" bandwagon. It's no longer a prudent or realistic attitude at anything below the top 1% in SES, and we're not in that group-- and otherwise have no desire to be. To be clear, we wouldn't (quite) be in that group even if I did work full time.

The point, though, is that it does make the opportunities to Tiger Parent highly seductive, this particular conundrum.

Yes. I agree. If you're in the sour spot (and especially, if you're in the sour spot and have been spending your money on the latest shiny because you are caught up in the mindset, and thus maybe you don't have all that much money, say, for retirement or what have you, even though your take-home is quite high), it's going to be easy to panic. I have a family member whose income is 3X what we make, but they are spending like mad on this and that. I don't see how it's going to work, really.

And actually, part of the reason we avoid the higher-paying options available to both of us is that I don't want to get on the treadmill. I'm familiar with the treadmill. Bleah.

No, for reasons already expounded on, so I won't beat the dead horse.

It does, however, illustrate how the distribution curves for wealth and IQ separate from each other at the very top ends. There are many other such stories on this site.

btw, Bostonian, I'm not concerned about my kids going to college with UMC, "regular rich" kids--like, moms is a doctor, dad is a lawyer-- but "richer than God" kids. You know what I mean. My kids will have no reference for that and it would be culturally shocking.

HowlerKarma... everything about your post (except for the daily risk of allergen exposure) rings true for us too. Even the part about my DH being in a toxic, high paying job environment so I can be home with the kids.

We're behind in the timeline (my kids are younger) and they're not as gifted, and they're both still in public school, but as far as my DS and his learning needs not fitting and placing a higher financial burden on the system... oh my.

I feel like we're at the edge of a cliff and mainstream society and the school district is getting ready to just SHOVE us over into an abyss.

One of our problems is that DH needs a change (from the toxic job) for the sake of his health and well being, so I need to contribute $$, which means our kids are staying in public school.

In a sense, it's worse when your father *is* the school system and has no idea what to do with you.

Not to use you as an example, but yeah, so, this is why my DH stays in his public sector job which does not pay well. Also, he doesn't want to advance (and earn more) because he would move up into a purely supervisory capacity where he wouldn't do much/any of the work he enjoys, so...We could move, and he might find something better, but WE HAVE A FULL DAY GIFTED PROGRAM that is working okay. I mean. We are not moving.

He does get a hell of a lot of time off! This is quite nice for the family. (Note: his other benefits are pretty awful...so much for the "cushy public sector benefits" argument. But PTO--yes, it's good.)

I enjoyed spending time with "richer than God" people in law school. Both new rich and old international money.

It was the regular rich kids in college who annoyed me.

Go figure.

People would hesitate to write in a public forum the same sentence about poor kids, even if it described their experience. They might not write, analogous to what someone wrote earlier, that a school with a "ton" of poor kids could have a "weird/toxic" environment or that their presence would be "culturally shocking". I don't understand what people are afraid of.

When I first went to college, coming from a public school, I met many students who had attended elite boarding schools on the East Coast. They had all had calculus coming in; I had not. They all had had a ton of experience living away from home; I had not. They did not have to think about money; I did. Academically and in other ways, it was off-putting; they looked down on me for not having had all these experiences, because they assumed all people did.

It took me a while to find anyone who would not treat me as inferior for not having had the same kind of background.

That's not to be afraid of, but it is absolutely to be aware of.

DeeDee

I bet Yeardley Love's family could answer that. (obviously not all rich kids are violent entitled athletes)

FTW

I have seen articles stating that varsity athletes are more likely to commit crimes, but is there any evidence that kids from rich families, controlling for athletic involvement, are more likely to do so? In any case, I don't think other posters are afraid that their children will be assaulted by rich kids. DeeDee's views are more plausible and likely more widely held.

What Deedee said. True; I could have written more sensitively. Culturally different? Alienating? Bewildering? I think any young person is going to find it somewhat hard going when dropped into an environment with a high proportion of people whose life experiences are nothing like theirs. This can cut in all kinds of ways. However, when these people also have more power and wealth than you, I think it's harder. (Example B: I'm also a bit concerned about my DS5 going to school with quite a lot of very poor kids, come this fall. However, he has a lot of privilege by comparison, so the concerns are somewhat different, and lesser.)

In an extremely privileged environment like Yale, I'd feel concerned about my kids not being aware of certain unwritten rules, not having certain experiences that are typical for the wealthy, etc. I would add that if people are judging them by this they probably kind of suck anyway, but it may still matter to my children. I don't think my kids are likely to end up on the Ivy path anyway, but I don't know this for sure. They aren't lacking in ability or drive.


ETA: Am I worried that my kids will be assaulted by rich kids? Hmm. I suppose not really. I worry about d*ckhead date rapists with a privilege mentality, but you can meet those guys at State U.

Yes, DeeDee's views are perfectly plausible. I have many friends who are rich. Like donating buildings to their alma maters rich. (Some also happened to be varsity college athletes). Clearly the situation in Steubenville demonstrates that kids of all socio-economic levels make dumb decisions and stand by and watch without doing what is right.
So, no, I wouldn't send my kid to that environment fearful they would be assaulted. But I would certainly teach them to recognize spoiled entitled kids who had never experienced the consequences of their actions, who had no concept of money or work, and to avoid them at all costs. Sadly many of them don't grow out of it:
http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-tour...-a-member-tournament-spirals-out-of.html

I think the book I Am Charlotte Simmons gets at this--fiction but he did lots of research and captures it well, IMO:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/231.I_am_Charlotte_Simmons

Why American Colleges Are Becoming a Force for Inequality

Richest quartile isn't "rich".

It isn't even UMC.

Experiences like DeeDee's are not limited to wealth issues. I was one of a handful of Mexican kids attending an elite west coast liberal arts school back in the late 80's. I was from a LMC family. I did not speak Spanish. I recall very clearly being somewhat ostracized by the other Mexican students on this basis. I couldn't participate in any of the conversations that were in Spanish, which were many. I also did not share some of the background experiences that many of them did. I don't know if they treated me as "inferior" but I inferred from their comments that I wasn't "like them". This experiences led me to abandon my attempts to be active in the diversity-based groups in college, for which I blame myself.

It was the same thing in law school but I had learned to handle it better because I was older and realized it was all part of life. Good thing, too, because once I started practicing law, the numbers of female Mexican lawyers I encountered was pretty miniscule so I bond with nearly all that I meet, Spanish-speaking or not.

FWIW, on the wealth issue, my two best friends from college consisted of one trust fund baby (literally) who had been born into poor economic circumstances and who is smart as a whip and one gal who grew up in rural Indiana who is also smart as a whip. Both appreciated who I was inside and out and I returned the favor.

I agree. Even quintiles would have been a better statistical measure, though not by much.

But the figures do illustrate how middle and lower class high achievers are being left out.

Maybe it's just me. But I'm getting a whiff of resentment in this thread, especially as regards not wanting one's children to associate with the "rich." I agree with Bostonian's last point.


Also, how do you feel when others get resentful because your kid is "rich" in IQ points and is "smarter than god" as far as they're concerned? And how do you feel when people don't want to associate with your kid because of this impression?

It really bothers me when people focus on one wrong and conveniently ignore parallel ones. Sorry to say something that's going to sting, but if you complain about one kind of injustice (e.g. judging gifted kids based on preconceptions about them) but then make similar sweeping judgments about something else ("rich kids"), you show that you're no different from the people you complain about. And IMO, this kind of narrow thinking doesn't help solve problems. It just perpetuates them!

Maybe moral terpitude isn't associated with SES in any statistically significant manner. On either side.

I do think that DeeDee's point is well-made, however. It is an important thing to bear in mind, but that doesn't mean that it begins only at post-secondary. The same thing happens in elite private prep-schools which have scholarship admissions based on need.

I can only speak for myself. My kids do associate with (nice) rich kids--I am not judging rich kids (or adults). I like to get to know people before I form opinions about them. Some of my friends who have trust funds are the hardest working people I know, they have high expectations for their kids and don't make excuses when their kids fail (or cheat). They don't throw money at them and teach them to be responsible. But I have also seen, with my own eyes, how spoiled, entitled, wealthy college students behave, in the classroom and out of it, and I would strongly encourage my children to avoid that scene. I am not judging their money, but that level of wealth can lead to a very conspicuous attitude and approach to life that causes harm to others. Thankfully they are not the norm.

No, not the norm.

No more than the slacker, lazy 'drain on society' low SES kids who need financial aid are, or the notion that providing that assistance "encourages" laziness or poor work ethics. That may have validity in a small minority of instances, but in most cases the truth is far more nuanced and less damning.

I can't blame a child of a highly privileged background for thoughtlessly assuming that EVERYONE has those opportunities and that confidence that whatever they want to try, money is never an object. It might seem rude, but it's really just lack of life experience.

Similarly, when lower SES parents see kids from higher on the SES acting in certain ways (vacationing lavishly, throwing money rather than time at problems), we may be tempted to ASSUME that there is a moral/ethical explanation... or that our less financially intensive way is more "honorable" but then again, it's because of our lack of life experience, probably.



Both directions-- those are extremely unfair characterizations.

This I will strongly agree with! Having worked for a luxury 5-star hotel company, I have seen this up-close in all of its permutations. I do believe that most people, whatever their SES, are good and kind-hearted.

Rich people are just like poor people.

Neither really worries about money.

Let me also just say that I love that phrase.

moral terpitude
moral terpitude
moral terpitude
moral terpitude



Ahhhh. Love it.

Re: the bolded...the thing is that I have seen wealthy parents consciously teach their children that not everyone has the same opportunities and give them (as much as is possible) the life experience to see more of the world and the challenges others face. So I know it can be done.

Yes, it can-- to the extent that normative adolescents are capable of that kind of internalization to start with. I mean, MOST of them simply cannot (developmentally) really consider other people very well. It is a huge part of why they behave in some of the stereotypically bizarre and socially unacceptable, boorish ways that they do. LOL.

Don't you ever think about other people?? <--- parent's endless lament to their teens

A: Well, no. Actually, not. Why do ask?


The point, of course, is that while parents of high SES may try to give their children this sort of sensitivity, results may be mixed. Some of them will experience an epiphany that allows them to "get it" at some point along the way, and some of them never.

I did not experience anything like what you've described. I easily made friends with plenty of people who attended expensive private schools and had lots of money and experiences. For the most part, I think they thought it was cool that I had managed to equal their academic accomplishments without the benefits they had. I think the highly selective nature of the school made a lot of students feel like we were equals. Of course, I couldn't be included in many of their activities for fear of over-drafting my account, but honestly, the rich friends I made even helped me out with that a few times... but only to the extent that I was comfortable with (which wasn't much).

I certainly couldn't complain about rich people looking down on me at college. Having money for fun activities and putting yourself together certainly helps with dating prospects though.

Me too, but it's spelled "turpitude". Write it out three times ;-)

Then spell it correctly, please.

Lol, gotta love this board! Two seconds apart.

LOL.... I should probably be blushing, but I'm too busy laughing...

my bad. And thanks for pointing out my inherent laziness with the cut-and-paste to go with my bad typing/spelling skills, too.

What can I say? I ran out of coffee creamer this morning. Low on caffeine, this is my brain... asleep.

We could ponder what it says about your psychology that you associate the concept more with Terpsichore than with turpentine...

I don't object based on life experience, but unfortunately, there's a definite social element involved, too. It's a philosophy that everyone could have the same thing if they would just work harder, and that the people who have so much have it because they're more worthy (as viewed through the lenses of genetics and/or religion to varying degrees).

So, since you're somehow "better"... take all you can.

These children get this philosophy from adults, who should know better.

The other day at work I was commenting on how a conversation had gone "tangenital". I will only ever save face on that one by trying it out at a nudist colony.

Nope. I'm really not resentful of the rich, except when they act like jerks. I grew up with a ton of advantages, as did my DH, though to a somewhat lesser degree. I could have a lot more money than I do (upthread, I mentioned how I quit a lucrative advertising job). There is no envy here.

There is a subset of the rich whom I don't want my kid to hang out with, but I suspect they'll probably avoid these people of their own accord. Still, at a few schools there are more of these people, making it trickier. The other issue, which may be more relatable, is that I just think it may be a little alienating to my kids to go somewhere where everyone else has "done Europe" a bunch of times, does a ton of ski weekends, owns second and third homes, has stayed at a lot of 5-star hotels, etc. This isn't what my children are going to come in with. And there's the issue of spending money, as alluded to by others.

Moral derpitude.

While only tangenital to the main thread of conversation, I'm totally keeping that one, ElizabethN.

I don't understand the attitude about rich kids. I have never had issues with the uber rich. I find I dislike the hanger-ons that try to rub something off the uber rich.

And, in my experience, when I was intimidated by conversation that talked about hiring a jet to transport pheasants from Dad's hunting trip, I found those people actually admired me for what I accomplished without the connections. One guy taught me about end caps and price points at a dept store and then took me for lunch and discussed how he was training to collect art. Since he is now in the top 20 of richest men in the world, it was not hard for him to collect art, but he was really nice. And even has a title.

I think it is a little weird, for someone like me, coming from a small midwestern city and you meet the really rich and sometimes famous, when you are young. But if you feel good about yourself, you will be yourself and everyone is accepting.

And kids do not have to travel 1st class to have experiences. First class is definitely better and I would rather stay at the Crillon in Paris than downstream, but it doesn't mean I don't enjoy Paris any less than when I did as a student staying in a hotel with the bathroom 3 floors lower. And makes for a better story.

I attended my nephew's graduation from Yale last year, and my impression is that Yale really isn't like that. He had friends from socioeconomic groups ranging from lower-middle class to extremely rich. Now if a person is quite poor (say bottom 20%), they might have a tougher time at Yale than a State U.

Believe me, if you are that poor, you have a tough time at ANY college. I was one of those students-- you simply lack any experience with the trappings of UMC+ lifestyles, and those things are the social fabric through which your classmates connect and socialize, making new connections through shared past experiences and likes/dislikes.

I had no CLUE what tennis racket I "liked" never having played. I had no idea if I liked caviar, Hawaii, or Europe, nor did I have a spring break preference. KWIM? I couldn't go out to eat or anything because I couldn't afford it. No, not even local coffeeshops.

This was a serious handicap socially. I could either sit out, or lie, and as often as not, I didn't know enough to lie successfully anyway. I did NOT leave college with lifelong friends. I was too busy working full-time to make many, and I was that girl on the sidelines. I have since connected with several people who were in similar straits, and have friends who are also alums. But we all have few "college friends" that we keep up with.

My husband's experience was similar, but for different reasons. He was a city kid who went to a big-league Ag/Science college. Highly regarded, to be sure, and he got a stellar education... but he came out with very few close friends. His classmates had nothing in common with him, and as diverse as his campus (and mine) were, we were still outliers.

Well, I'll add in my own anecdotal experience. I went to a college that most of you would recognize (similar to Reed in feel) but which is not top of the top. I grew up in a UMC environment, but had never been to Europe, Hawaii, etc. I did not own a car and hadn't travelled beyond family vacations to national parks and the beach. I had never been anywhere for spring break. I had an on-campus job my first two years (after that family income went up and I didn't need one) and had limited spending money--maybe like, $20 a week?--saved from my summer jobs. I gravitated towards people like me, socioeconomically--children of professors and scientists. I naturally avoided the prep school kids somehow. This was not actually intentional. I had a few friends who were on a lot of financial aid, but usually this was because they were children of divorce. I had no trouble making friends and had a great time. Consumption was not conspicuous at my school--not considered the thing to do. I would send my kids to a school similar to this and not worry much, even though there were certainly rich kids there and they could fall in with a different crowd. I know people who went to Yale, etc and they report different experiences, but it does seem to be fairly individual. My husband went to a school much like mine but a bit more old-money, and heard some of the "Oh, which part of Europe did you like best?" stuff. FWIW, I would absolutely recommend a "Reed-like" school for gifted kids. There was a real atmosphere of intellectual curiosity there--people were passionate about their interests.

People form social networks in college and sometimes find spouses there, as Princeton graduate Susan Patton recently wrote about. Part of the reason to send my children to an elite college, if they get in, is to meet future members of the elite and children of the current elite. For actual learning there is EPGY .

Susan Patton. I am sure her sons were thrilled with what she wrote. Yes, intellectual peers make good friends and spouses. You don't have to go to Princeton to find them.

His point is that if you want to find intellectual peers (friends/spouses) who are economically and socially relevant, you should go to Princeton or another elite college.

It seems there are different worlds that semi-coexist. In one world the word elite has meaning and trophies and social competition are all relevant. In the other world it is more about ideology and life and friend choices are made around factors like enjoyment, happiness, and the greater good.

What I don't understand is if one group believes in rubbing elbows, why is it the other goup that wears jackets with patches on the elbows?

No, just graduate programs, as a general rule.

I have chosen irrelevancy, I suspect. Not only that, I've done so rather willfully. Well, that may just be a personal thing related to my personality, though; I tend to do most things fairly willfully. As a life philosophy, "Ohhhh yeah?? You're not the boss of me" has few things to recommend it, however.

Being serious for a moment, our considerations as we look into colleges for/with our DD are:

a) cost

b) academic reputation in preferred programs (tied for number one spot)

c) breadth of instructional focus (we want something broad because of DD's particular intellectual interests)

d) small size-- ideally under 5K students total

e) NON-competitive and collaborative environment-- this is critical because of DD's kneejerk reaction to that kind of environment-- she actively recoils and responds VERY negatively to people she perceives to be self-promotional, glory-chasing, insufferably arrogant gits. You know, to use the technical term.

f) NO graduate program-- or at most, an MS program. I want the focus of faculty to be on my kid-- not on the people teaching my kid.


In other words, we're actually looking for a college which is LIKE Reed, but not filled with students who feel the need to "out-compete" one another.

If we found the right regional public university program, we'd definitely do that. Touring one this weekend, in fact. My own alma mater-- which (at least in my own program) routinely sends 70-80% of its admittedly small number of graduates into tier 1 and elite graduate programs and medical schools. This in spite of being a no-name, inexpensive liberal arts college with a large focus on performance art and teaching. The STEM programs there have a reputation for turning out majors who have good common sense, are highly competent in the subject, and possess a can-do attitude in the lab. It's also not a set of programs where one can fall through the cracks easily-- the faculty really know the undergrads.


Of course, many of our criteria mean that we can't use the filters on college search sites, because what we think is important isn't readily measured. Of course. When would we do something the easy way??

HowlerKarma, I PM'd you.

For a particular definition of "relevant."

Ooo-- that's another zinger, isn't it?

Social relevance.

Like Moral Turpitude*-- yay! But even better. I wonder, is economically relevant roughly equal to economic significance?



*Please note-- I have cream this morning, and therefore, also coffee.

I was a science major at Harvard. The environment was collaborative, with students discussing problem sets and not trying to show off in class (which would be pointless, since grades did not depend on class participation). But the element of competition, though latent, was there, and I think it's unavoidable. There aren't many tenure track professorships at research universities and staff positions at national labs. The world does not need many mediocre research scientists. Therefore only academic superstars should try to get PhDs. An advantage of going to a Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford etc. is that you get to compare your abilities to those of the best students in the country. Finding out that you are only mediocre in that crowd is painful but can save you half a dozen years of your life trying to get a PhD unless you have blinders on. Ahem.

You cannot be serious. I would like to put you in a room with my SIL who has her PhD in genetics and is teaching high school science (happily) now. She doesn't consider the years obtaining her PhD wasted because she isn't on tenure track at a major university.

Again, he's only expressing the fact that only certain Ph.D. holders are relevant.

If you are teaching high school, then, by definition, you are not relevant to the further development of novel research at a relevant institution.

It's not a personal question of "waste" or "happiness", but a social, collective, question of relevance.

We have different outlooks, but I was serious, and JonLaw understands where I am coming from. I never considered becoming a high school science teacher.

I was never under the impression that you would have considered it. High school teachers are not relevant to higher levels of science, clearly.

That's a surprising criteria to me. Considering your daughter's aptitudes... if a school doesn't have MS and PhD programs what happens her junior year when she has largely exhausted the undergraduate curriculum or has moved very deep into a specific topical area and is perhaps breaking into some lifelong research passion?

Are you thinking that Reed is a place where people try to out-compete each other? To be fair, I've never actually been to Reed, but my alma mater is very similar, and there was very little competition, though people were interested in each others' interests. I was specifically looking for this after having gone a cuthroat, status-obsessed public high school where class rank was All.

From what you say of your DD, I think someplace Reed-ish sounds pretty promising. I'm obviously biased, though.

Personally, I think it would be a huge benefit to our education system if more high school teachers had subject-specific doctorates or master's degrees (NOT degrees in education). The value students get from people with serious knowledge of a subject is huge. These people understand what's coming in two or four or six years and can put ideas in context. For example, "When you get into x course, you will learn more about today's process and how it applies to this other process."

Also, these people typically have a good understanding of what's required to get through a bachelor's degree in their fields, and likely have a much better ability advise students in a meaningful way about career options.

Compare to someone who follows what the book says and never or rarely goes past it because s/he lacks meaningful knowledge, not only of the subject itself, but also of its work environment.

ETA: IMO, there are serious problems in the American academic research environment, and one of them is the system's rabid focus on output and industrial ways of measuring "quality." But that is a topic for another thread.

If her goal was high school science then she wasted years of her life in underpaid servitude getting a PhD. Yes, we need more academic superstars teaching high school, but they are wasting their time getting a PhD to do it.

In this case she might agree about unpaid servitude. But I think we can all recognize that people's goals change over time. I know many people who are not using their degrees in the way they initially set out to. That doesn't mean they are wasted.

Wasn't it Malcom Forbes who claimed the whole point of education was to turn an empty mind into an open one? (I paraphrase.)

Harakiri next?

I did learn things during my PhD program but estimate that I got maybe two years worth of benefit, not the six that I spent. Goals and values do change over time. I cared more about money at 30 than 20. But my point is that comparing the number of desirable academic positions that open up annually with the number of PhDs awarded annually, and considering that many people earning PhDs do aspire to such positions, the numbers just don't add up.

If my children talk about going to grad school once they are in college, I will have them read essays such as

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/..._ph_d_will_make_you_into_a_horrible.html
Thesis Hatement
Getting a literature Ph.D. will turn you into an emotional trainwreck, not a professor.
By Rebecca Schuman
Slate
Posted Friday, April 5, 2013, at 7:10 AM

so they can't say they have not been warned.

I'm glad dd12's language arts teacher wasted her time getting her PhD. She doesn't appear to be an emotional trainwreck.

Oh, and a response to the article:
Grad school is not the problem, you are.

Financially I suppose a PhD leaves you without debt compared to a masters which you pay for. But then look at the opportunity cost if you take more than three years to do it.

There is more funding for research assistantships in the sciences than the humanities, and a substantial fraction of humanities graduate students are taking on substantial debt:

http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846
Chronicle of Higher Education
January 30, 2009
Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go
By Thomas H. Benton

I think the whole article is worth reading for prospective graduate students and people who care about them.

Law school is still a worse idea than grad school in the humanities.

I mean, if you get a Ph.D. and then go teach high school at Council Rock in PA, you're making six figures.

I just looked at it.

I'm honestly surprised that the highest teacher salary in Council Rock is only about $105,000. I was really expecting more than that.

I'm pretty sure that you need a Ph.D. to max out the pay scale there.

Wow. That is really scary. I spent part of this morning reading through pieces on this subject and while what I read didn't surprise me, it was still depressing. And it wasn't just the dismal job prospects: it was also the apparent pervasiveness of postmodernist garbage in English departments:



and


When I wrote my last message in this thread I was thinking of people with graduate degrees in fields like the sciences or engineering (or even history or other fields where getting the degree means that you have to rely on data). I don't even know what this stuff means.

And I agree completely that pushing students into Ph.D. programs that reduce their ability to get a decent job is a pretty seriously bad idea.

Where is the middle ground between going to university because education is enjoyable, inherently valuable and expands one's ability to think critically v. higher education is a senseless waste of time and (large amounts of) money if you aren't going to use that education "productively"?

That's entirely individual, isn't it? Bostonian has made clear that he views education solely through the lens of cost and direct financial benefit. That's one way to look at it. Your perspective may vary.

For starters I think that the 'ability' to think critically is innate. I also, having been raised in a country where true freedom of speech (then) had yet to have been hijacked, have undiluted scorn most US humanities programs - the people I know that attended them were literally having to write essays pillorying WASP males if they wanted an A. Where was the 'critical thinking' there?

Another friend of mine's son studying civil engineering was forced to study 'women's studies' - what critical engineering knowledge got missed so that could happen? The system in the US is rotten with this kind of enforced dogma.

I cannot wait to see those 'Academics' in the dole myself. Maybe if tuition dollars were not being siphoned off by these parasites college would not be so expensive.

Much higher education in the U.S. is a waste of time and money at the aggregate level, but at the *individual* level, the BA credential still has considerable value, because employers use it as a filter. It's an educational arms race that one is almost compelled to participate in.

I disagree. I think it's a learned ability, especially because there are strong social disadvantages to critical thinking, particularly for the very young. "Shut up and do what you're told!"

If it wasn't something to learn, we wouldn't have had people writing books on logic and rhetoric in classical times.

We teach our DD critical thinking through occasional ridiculous explanations her questions. This has had unexpected consequences... we've received the, "That's not real!" response when describing dinosaurs and the solar system.

In today's metaphysical lesson we learn that critical thinking has some drawbacks with respect to acquiring knowledge in general.

It's not a waste of money.

It's a great source of tax revenue because they pay it back with interest!

"Business has been good for the federal government when it comes to student loans.

Over the past five years, student loans have generated profits of $120 billion for the Department of Education.

And the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) put the take from student loans for the 2013 fiscal year at $48.6 billion - helped along by a change in 2010 that eliminated the middleman and made the Education Department the direct lender for all government-backed loans.

It means the government will reap more in profits from student loans this year than any of the nation's largest corporations. Last year, for example, the most profitable company was ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), which reported income of $44.9 billion.

The money is rolling in partly because the Education Department has stepped up efforts to collect on delinquent loans, but mostly because the U.S. government can borrow money far more cheaply than the students to whom it is giving the loans.

The government's student loans now carry an interest rate of 3.4%, which has proved plenty lucrative.

But unless Congress acts soon, the interest rate on government student loans will double to 6.8% as of July 1. (The temporary 3.4% rate was supposed to expire last July, but last year Congress extended it for one year.)"

http://moneymorning.com/2013/05/16/how-student-loans-became-a-120-billion-government-bonanza/

I'll agree that there are strong social disadvantages to critical thinking.

And the place where those disadvantages exert their strongest influence is the very place where they ought not to - a modern American university campus.

I don't. We pay for things such as art, piano and tennis lessons that cannot be justified by financial benefit. However, the teachers charge us reasonable rates that they also charge others, because they don't ask for our financial data to see how much we can be gouged. When someone wants to charge me $240K (the full-pay price for four years of some colleges), yes I think hard about the financial benefit. Most parents do.

Yeah, that about summarizes my thinking on this question. Multiply that number by three kids (the youngest of whom is only 8), and then increase it by 10-15% if costs keep increasing like they have been, and I don't like those numbers. I don't like them at UC either. UC's numbers are lower, but not by much compared to 20 years ago and maybe not for long.

I ask myself if 8 classes over the course of 8 months, a shared dorm room and some institutional food are really worth $60,000. I ask myself if an equivalent education can be had for less (say, in Europe or Canada). My husband and I both attended colleges and universities in Europe for next to nothing. We both got excellent educations and we're both very employable.

I spent three years at a US liberal arts college. My primary degree is in history, but I minored in chemistry and then did two graduate degrees in biology. I understand the value of the humanities and the perspective that education gave me. I'm not advocating a college-as-certification position. I'm also not arguing that a brand name college is worth the cost for a degree in engineering but not history. I'm questioning the value of any degree that costs a quarter million dollars and climbing. There are other options.

Some being the key word in "some colleges," yes. It's a free market. You can always take your money elsewhere. If you're convinced that the cache of a $240k university is worth the expense, that's your choice.

Otherwise, I suggest you hold tight, because evidence is mounting that the tuition bubble is popping: http://www.businessinsider.com/college-bubble-has-burst-2013-5

I agree with Bostonian. Although at the rate of tuition acceleration, I am estimating 150K per year in 8 years for an top college. And I definitely wouldn't pay that for a liberal arts college. No way would that be justified.

We have all seen the press on the cost of college and salaries expected upon graduation. If I was buying a car or a stove, I would think about what I need it for, how long is going to be worthwhile, how much does it cost, compared it to others. I look at going to a liberal arts college like buying a Porshe. If you have the luxury of not caring about the outcome after, good for you. I am totally recommending an engineering degree for DD. I don't care what she ends up doing. You can use that degree for anything. But if she can't figure it out, she can always get a job.

That looks high. College costs have been rising faster than inflation by about 2 to 5% a year. Assuming a general inflation rate of 2% and college inflation rate of 7%, the $60K cost today would grow "only" to $60000 * (1.07^8) = $103,091 . A college inflation rate of 5% (slightly higher than recent college inflation) results in a future annual cost of $88,647. Here is some data from the College Board.

http://advocacy.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/college-pricing-2012-full-report_0.pdf

Trends in College Pricing, 2012

PUBLISHED TUITION AND FEE AND
ROOM AND BOARD CHARGES
Average published tuition and fees for in‑state
students at public four‑year colleges and
universities increased from $8,256 in 2011‑12
to $8,655 in 2012‑13. The 4.8% ($399) increase
in tuition and fees was accompanied by a
$325 (3.7%) increase in room and board charges
for students living on campus. At $9,205, room
and board charges account for more than half of
the total charges for these students.
• Average published tuition and fees for out-of-state students at
public four-year institutions rose by $883 (4.2%), from $20,823 in
2011-12 to $21,706 in 2012-13. Average total charges are $30,911.
• Average published tuition and fees at private nonprofit
four-year institutions rose by $1,173 (4.2%), from $27,883 to
$29,056 in 2012-13. Average total charges are $39,518.
• Average published tuition and fees at public two-year colleges
increased by $172 (5.8%), from $2,959 in 2011-12 to $3,131 in
2012-13.
• Estimated average tuition and fees for full-time students in the
for-profit sector increased by about $435 (3.0%), from $14,737
in 2011-12 to $15,172 in 2012-13.
• Published prices at public four-year institutions rose more
rapidly between 2002-03 and 2012-13 than over either of
the two preceding decades, but the average annual rate
of increase in inflation-adjusted tuition and fees at private
nonprofit four-year institutions declined from 4.6% from
1982-83 to 1992-93, to 3.0% from 1992-93 to 2002-03, and
to 2.4% over the most recent decade

My wife and I do have Tiger Parent tendencies, but this article shows that there are other routes to success:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/t...hool-to-get-serious-about-start-ups.html
Before Tumblr, Founder Made Mom Proud. He Quit School.
By JENNA WORTHAM and NICK BILTON
New York Times
May 20, 2013

On average, of course, high school dropouts are less successful than high school graduates, who are less successful than college graduates. How much freedom to give to teenagers is an interesting question.

Anything? How much time do you spend honing your writing skills when you get an engineering degree? (I don't actually know this. I'm just guessing that it isn't that much time.)

And these figures assume that current trends continue... which, clearly, they cannot. The market is already pushing back.

Colleges got into an arms race with each other, based on more buildings and expensive amenities, fueled by expanding debt, which could only be repaid by the constant expansion of the student body, and its willingness to take on increasing debt that cannot be discharged. Obviously, both of these forces would have to reach a limit. The business model was unsustainable.

The important thing, though, is that the school presidents all enjoy seven-figure salaries and generous severance packages as they're driving their institutions over the fiscal cliff.

I used my engineering degree to get into law school.

And I really dislike writing.

I will note that the demand for debt from consumers is basically infinite.

The problem is that only *some* people will be willing to take on an infinite amount of debt.

For example, one of my law school roommates, who, between two years of Harvard grad school and three years of Duke law school, managed to actually max out the amount of money that he was allowed to borrow.

He would have kept borrowing more, but he hit the ceiling.

So, part of the issue is that the amount is capped.

If the email skills of some of my peers are anything to go by... none whatsoever.

There's always a cap, because at some point the lender loses confidence in the borrower to repay, and if the lender doesn't lose confidence quickly enough, default. It would be somewhat difficult to keep up with the interest payments on $infinity, nevermind pay down the principle.

Otherwise, you can't expand the student body AND increase their debt load, because those two forces work against each other.

This is the United States federal government we are talking about.

An entity that issues as much debt as it wants to and poofs billions of dollars into existence on a regular basis.

I know because I watch them poof the money into existence and then I watch the stock market go parabolic.

I also watch money being poofed into existence and funneled into my office on a regular basis because I sign the poofed checks.

Key word being "as much as it wants." It's being run by a body so committed to limiting debt that it passed its own debt cap on itself, enforced by automatic spending cuts so dramatic it would NEVER ACTUALLY allow them to actually happen, cross their hearts. Because that worked out so well for Dr. Strangelove.

Also, nobody beats them in an arms race.

My point is that the federal government is the *source* of the college arms race.

Massive amounts of debt that has no business existing in the first place are being provided to colleges and universities through students.

There are plenty of private organizations all too happy to provide college debt, thanks to the recent changes in bankruptcy laws that render the debt inescapable. They just do so at higher rates of return than the government is currently charging. The market responds rationally to the cheaper rate.

First rule of debt.

Debt that can't be paid back won't be paid back.

You're basically talking about SLABS, which I was interested in (from a bubble perspective) a few years ago, but which died with the bust.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/03/07/student-loan-bubble-babble/

Second rule of debt: debt that can't be discharged, won't be discharged. Sure, some loans won't generate any income without asset seizures, and some won't even come with assets to seize (damned homeless people), but a significant part of the loan pool will generate income for, basically, eternity. So there's that.

I was actually talking about a classic scenario in which a loan originator keeps the loan on their own books, rather than securitizing, hedging, and debt-swapping. But yes, the parallels to the subprime housing market are significant.

YES.

It's a huge problem. I would never recommend an engineering degree over the corresponding science degree. Never.

The science programs teach broader skills-- and if you choose well, you get the hands-on components that engineering degrees generally deliver.

My DH and I are far more employable than if we had the corresponding engineering degrees. Both of us can (and have) been hired to do engineering jobs... but engineers are generally NOT employable as scientists.

For my money, the best degree is the one that can be turned into the greatest variety of different disciplines, and is RAREST. So if you have a student interested in sociology, chemistry, and math... encourage the math major, or maybe chemistry. Fine to DOUBLE major, certainly.

I also disagree that the world doesn't need "average" scientists.

It most emphatically DOES need them. Not everyone can be a superstar, but those superstars need a lot of able hands and collaborators willing to share the limelight with them. Where do those people come from, hmm? People who win Nobel Prizes and multi-million dollar grants aren't doing it by sitting alone in their offices and thinking really hard.

Re: my logic regarding undergrad institutions and not graduate ones-- this is largely a function of having a child who is fairly reserved and introverted. She would be completely lost at my DH's undergrad institution (one of the jewels of the US system-- but LARGE). I also do NOT want my daughter being taught in small classes run by graduate students and not professors. I want her professors to know who she is, and I want her to develop relationships with them. This is critical for her personally, and it trumps the eventual hypothetical problem of her outstripping the math offered. The other thing that I know (and many parents don't) is that even mostly-undergrad institutions have collaborative possibilities with larger institutions with grad programs, and that technology has made those things even easier. So if she needs to have a mentor outside the institution, she can-- and that person can work in partnership with an on-campus advisor while she works on a 4-6hr independent study elective of her own devising.

Personally, the holy grail there is a program that is TINY, but has a small graduate component at the master's level. That way, pretty high level coursework is available, but the focus is still on the undergrad majors and not on grad students bringing in grant money.

At Harvard there were two students in our department who we identified as superior. One was a girl who later won a MacArthur "genius" grant. She did not join study groups I was a part of, because she was out of our league. Discussing things with us would slow her down. (She was earnest and modest and would never say that, but she rationally chose to work alone.) I think there is a hierarchy in science, and mediocre PhDs like me could best assist the stars by taking a larger teaching load and thus freeing their time. I realized what my status in academia would be and left for greener pastures. In business there is considerable demand for moderately gifted people.

Me, too, both parts. And now I write all day at work.

I got 2 points thrown at me, but then there was this whole arms race discussion on tuition.

First, from engineering I did get a writing job. Though it took a while for me to figure out how to write. I had to write tomes on how an industry was fairing in the world.
And Bostonian, I agree that 7% inflation adjusted might be conservative but tuition increases have been increasing per decade, so I would rather be conservative in college savings account. And there is the impact of foreign universities upping the arms race. There are all these schools in mideast, China and India trying to get on the top 20 list and locals are investing research dollars in them. US schools are going to have a hard time competing with them over the next 10 years, they have very aggressive plans.

And I also am glad that I have the Canadian university option.

According to my earlier quote from the College Board, the gap between college price inflation and general inflation for private schools has been DECREASING over the last few decades (but is still positive).

Although I don't think that you went to law school because your engineering grades were poor because you didn't attend class or actually do the work.

I recently pulled my transcript to figure out whether I could escape into the medical profession. I had forgotten that I received so many C's and D's in my last four semesters.

I'm still toying with that idea.

In all seriousness, isn't a B.S. in Electrical Engineering more marketable than a B.S. in, say, Physics?

It was my general impression that you basically had to get a Ph.D. in the sciences for it to be good for employability.

What do average and mediocre and superstar mean when applied to science? How do you define them?

Do you define according to the number of papers people publish, their average journal impact factor score? The number of NIH or NSF grants they get?

If you measure by those standards, you define "master craftsman" as the only type of scientist who will be a superstar. There is no room for paradigm-breaking projects in that world. There can't be: breaking the model takes years of s-l-o-w ponderous thought, and there is no time for that approach when you have to publish constantly! and get grants!! or lose your job!!!

Not to mention that those groundbreaking ideas are way too risky for funding anyway. Forget that! You might as well give up. IMO, a lot of our successful scientists (especially in the biological and medical sciences) are doing incremental work that looks safe on grant applications. In a way, this is a natural but disastrous outcome of over-expansion at universities and paylines that fund 10% or less of applicants.

This list has Electrical Engineering at #5, Physics at #10, with a difference of only 4%:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-57490541/best-paying-jobs-for-bachelors-degree-holders/

In my experience (including observations of many others), it's harder to get a job when you have a Ph.D. This is because there are way more jobs for technicians and research assistants, etc. than there are for group-leader-type or other terminally degreed scientists.

Ok, but someone smart enough to earn a PhD is usually not content to be a technician or research assistant for the long term. I think JonLaw was saying, correctly, that one needs a PhD for a scientific career.

I'll admit that I was thinking of patent law, where the heavier the credential, the better.

For example, see:

http://www.wkmclaughlin.com/JobRetrieve.aspx?spec=1&emp=2&TZ=0

Not sure if that's what he meant, but you're mostly correct. People with Ph.D.s won't get hired to be technicians for the most part. But people without them may be promoted to Scientist roles if they have a lot of experience and impress their employers in industry. This pretty much won't happen in the US in academia.

My overall point was that there aren't a whole lot of jobs for Ph.D.-level scientists compared to people with lower degrees.

When I lived in Ireland, people who did research Master's degrees would typically be employed as "research assistants" in academia. This term was used very differently then over there. It meant "someone who can work independently on a project." RAs there were somewhere between technicians and postdocs. Many of them that I knew ended up writing up their work and getting PhDs anyway. Don't know if that's changed.

First of all, I did not see that. The graph shows accelerated rates for tuition increases. At least, the graph I saw in your link but and inflation adjusted means the nominal amount is more in range with my 150K. Even still, with your FV of 105,000 approx at 7%. You are at almost 450K for 4 years at a top school in 8 years.

The whole point was what outcomes justified the investment in education. And what kind of education. So conceding your numbers, the question still stands.

And what the hell is Reed, I never heard of it. Never met anyone who graduated from there.

Steve Jobs is the most famous Reed student, and dropout.

One source of selective college admissions mania is the unwillingness of many students and parents to actually research colleges rather than relying solely on name recognition.

It's apparently in Oregon.

I hadn't heard of it either, so don't feel bad.

Since neither you nor I ever heard of it, it's not relevant.

It's a funny thing about name recognition. A lot of people don't recognize my alma mater, nor my DH's, despite the fact that both are very selective (albeit small) colleges (DH's is in the US News top 20; mine just out). However, if they HAVE heard of the schools, then that name recognition may well open doors. However, like I say, the name "zing" is nothing like an Ivy or even a good state U. Oh well. I think all this is vastly overestimated anyway, for most people.

I think so, too, ultramarina.

Which is why we've opted out of playing.

$60K at Stanford gets you CS classes taught by *undergraduates*:

http://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/stanford-campus-tour/
2013 May 21
Stanford campus tour
by Kevin Karplus

But since Stanford has an abundance of applicants, and since Silicon Valley continues to hire its CS majors, why make the professors give the lectures?

Has anybody (in US) seriously considered getting college education abroad? GB tuition for foreigners at the leading colleges (I checked 3) is about 15,000 british pounds (~ US $22,500) per year (for math; it is higher for lab sciences) - which looks like 1/2 of US private tuition. Housing expenses are listed as about US $12,000 (comparable to US).

Yes, we have definitely considered it. Our only problem is that it means having a parent living overseas, and that also means dealing with the work-visa situation in whatever country.

BINGO, Bostonian.

That is why we are ignoring all of the hype and ratings and instead focusing on what we KNOW from bitter experience in academia actually translates into authentic differences in instructional quality.

Ergo-- no graduate program. Because if you go somewhere with a PhD program as an undergraduate major, that's who teaches coursework under the 300- level. And, as Karplus notes, the occasional senior undergraduate major. While some of those students are excellent and energetic educators... it's entirely luck of the draw, and the departments who do this absolutely DO NOT care about quality in their teaching assistant corps. Been there, done that. Some of my fellow graduate students were so indifferent that they literally blew off student questions in tutorials and labs, and others were excellent and conscientious. It made no difference to who got hired the following year-- and this was at an institution which actually cared enough about its teaching to bother "training" the T.A.'s as incoming graduate students. Yeah. "Training" there lasted about as long as the HazMat course-- half a day-- and at least the latter had some kind of assessment associated.


On the bright side, every person teaching a chemistry lab at that institution was CPR certified. LOL.

Oxford's "Admission on academic ability and academic potential alone" statement sharply contrasts with well-known US admission practices.

http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/international_students/

AFAIK, college *domestic* admissions in Germany is on merit alone too. (I guess that would also apply to international admissions.)

HowlerKarma - UK in particular has "Exceptional Talent" visa (unfortunately, only about 1000 for sciences / per year) and general science and engineering employment visas.

In the UK admission by academic merit alone is typical for both domestic and international admissions. We're bemused by the US norm!

I worked my butt off TAing graduate thermodynamics at my college. (A confluence of circumstances - the previous professor had failed to get tenure, largely because he was spending so much time teaching a really good thermo course, which was one of two weeder courses in our department. His replacement had been on his tenure committee, and thus was publicly committed to the idea that it doesn't take much effort to teach graduate thermo.) 30-40 hrs/week just teaching that discussion section, dealing with out-of-class questions, and writing the solutions sets for homework (I had a grader to grade the homework, but I generated the solution sets for him to work off of). I had stellar student evaluations. However, they decided not to give me the annual teaching award for TAs, because I was teaching a graduate class, not undergraduate. To his credit, the professor who taught the course was livid on my behalf.

Some state universities in US still charge about 5 k in-state / 10 k out-of-state tuition. UC Berkeley out-of-state tuition is 35 k / year, though.

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1090

In case of Berkeley, the cause is the near-bankrupt state of California. But the way things going here in US, more states may look like California in the coming years.

I feel the same way, although it's fair to note that I never took a course taught by a TA (thank goodness). However, my DH WAS a TA at a large university. He happened to be a good one (very good evaluations), because he's naturally a good teacher--but like you said, a day or so of training. I mean, you HAVE to be kidding me. That's insane. And again, we're paying how much for this?

Although it's also fair to note that some professors aren't good at teaching, either. I recently learned that a family member who is very famous in his field was not made full professor at the Ivy where he taught for many years, despite being exceedingly brilliant as a researcher. Why? He was a VERY VERY VERY bad teacher of undergraduates. Like, ludicrously bad, by all accounts. He was okay with advanced graduate students, but just couldn't be bothered with undergrads. I think it's basically a bad idea to force people who really want to be researchers to teach.

Exactly. And we won't pay for it. Not just for the name-- I want to see to it that what we're paying for is the authentic thing, not just the appearance of it.

I, too, was a conscientious and GOOD T.A. but there is automatically an incentive to NOT be like that as a grad student. The good T.A.s never get 'forced' into R.A.'s by student complaints to the department, see... and therefore, research advisors don't have a good reason to put them on research monies. The bad ones whose advisors have no money get the plum "grader" jobs which take far less time and have much greater flexibility.

Of course, this also means that if you're any good in the classroom, you soon figure out that you're on the nine year plan for your degree... Clearly, you change your philosophy at some point in deference to pragmatism, if nothing else.

Yikes. Yeah, see--my kids are not going to be prepared for this sort of thing culturally or financially. It's an issue. I want them to be go somewhere where there are a lot of social options that aren't about this.

But it's those very social options that allow them to begin the long climb upward from irrelevance to relevance.

They might not make it to the peak of the mountain, but perhaps they can see their children or grandchildren reach it.

The key to achieving a life of profound meaning and sublime joy is to never give up and always look to the destination shining in the distance.

:eyeroll

Yes - but if most of the US students abroad are UMC or UC (at least where the poster above stated), would not it be a valuable experience to acquaint oneself more with non-US students (majority of whom would probably be neither UMC nor UC, because higher education in EU/UK is free or very cheap for many students, with college admissions based on 'academic merit' only)?

Financially, it looks like UK college tuition (for foreigners: $23k) is half of US private college tuition (and lower than UC berkeley out-of-state tuition of $35k). Of course, a decent state university *in the state that you lived continuously for the last several years* may be better financially - if one is lucky to have such a choice.

State university is unlikely to be a good option for us for reasons I can't get into (too identifying).

If we stay at our current income level (which...has its disadvantages--and actually, DH is probably about to come up for promotion), we're probably better off gambling for big aid than going abroad. We're not in the sour spot previously discussed. We would get quite a lot of aid, most likely, although we'll have to fork over a fair bit, too. I remind myself that we once paid for full-time daycare, which isn't cheap, either, and that our kids are just about exactly 4 years apart (nicely done, self). We have some pretty nice legacy options, though I don't know how much that counts past parents (anyone?)

Ah, here we are: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/09legacies.html?_r=0

Btw, I find legacy admissions...gross, but I can't say I'm not going to use what I have, I guess. Maybe I'll rise that far. We'll see.

Princeton's legacy admit sure is high.

"As a case in point, Princeton University's overall admissions rate dipped below 10 percent last year, but 40 percent of legacy applicants were admitted to the Class of 2012, according to an April 2008 ABC News report. Though the practice may be generally accepted among prestigious universities, it has drawn some criticism, particularly from students who do not benefit from it."

http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2009/02/06/legacies-admitted-37-rate

What a great cost-cutting strategy for the university! Why pay low wages to adjuncts or grad students when undergrads will pay you for the privilege of teaching?!?

Holy !@#&! 40%!

I know.

Like you, I'm now really regretting not pursing the possibility of Princeton more aggressively back in the day.

Stanford has been doing this for decades and says it has pedagogical benefits, as discussed in a paper

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/papers/SIGCSE-1995/UsingUndergraduateTAs.pdf
Using Undergraduates as Teaching Assistants
in Introductory Programming Courses:
An Update on the Stanford Experience
Eric Roberts, John Lilly, and Bryan Rollins
Department of Computer Science
Stanford University

I do NOT understand what the legacy system is for-- other than to build institutional endowments.

WE joked heartily with faculty that my DD would make a "third gen legacy" at {profoundly unpretentious alma mater}. You know, if it were the kind of place where that kind of thing mattered.

Oh, I would never have gotten in to Princeton. I married up and my kids are smarter than I am.

ROFLOL

Jon, you share my sense of humor.

Graduate study is an opportunity to immerse oneself in a discipline and contribute to it. I understand that many gifted students will go to graduate school, but I want them to do so with their eyes open. A new Stanford program encourages humanities PhDs to become high school teachers.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/...as-emerge-panel-doctoral-reform-stanford
Doctoring the Doctorate
May 24, 2013 - 3:00am
By Colleen Flaherty
Inside Higher Education

Personally, (and this relates to what I noted in the precalculus thread) I think that most teachers for HG+ students ought to have advanced degrees-- or at least have studied the subject intensively that way, and with the intellectual capacity generally found in such programs.

This also relates to Val's recent notes regarding the overall quality of American teachers, on average.

Then again, this does ask those PhD's to be paid only 40-60K annually in most places...

which, come to think of it, isn't so much less than starting tenure-track pay scales at four year institutions. Nevermind, then. LOL.

To decide if a university would be a good fit, reading about seniors' plans at the school could be informative. Harvard's is at

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/5/28/senior-survey-2013/
Where We Stand: The Class of 2013 Senior Survey
By JULIE M. ZAUZMER, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

In retrospect one could view "47 percent of graduating seniors went into finance [in 2007]" as the sign of a financial bubble.

Or a sign that Harvard is not My Kind Of Place.

I'm still wondering if "consulting" is shorthand for:

"I don't have a (airquotes) 'job,' but people will SURELY want to pay me money for my opinions anyway."

Which might well explain why so few of the graduates seem to think that they'll be doing "consulting" long term, and so many think that it's a short-term answer.

The successful consultants that I know in the (actual) working world seem to have done things the other way around; building connections over a period of time in industry before striking out as freelancers. Because in general terms, people pay you better if you have a series of work-connections with people who already know that you're competent.

Consultant must really mean "temporary employee" as consulting is what you do after a decent length successful career when you actually know things as opposed to theory.

You appear to unfamiliar with how management consulting firms such as McKinsey and Bain work. They hire graduating seniors from elite schools and have an up-or-out system where most consultants are asked to leave after after a few years. Since the elite consulting firms are prestigious, having their names on your resume help you get into business school and to find other jobs.

Because young employees command smaller salaries, are far less likely to consume medical benefits, and are more tolerant of poor management.

No.

It's pretty much the BigLaw system for elite school undergrads.

It's an insane inhuman system for the simple reason that it's an insane inhuman system.

Dysfunction is embedded into its organizational DNA.

This.

Management consulting can be a wonderful, engaging career, but there is a lot of compensatory switching going on between personal and professional lives. As in, you fail in your personal life, so you throw yourself into your career 16 hours per day, 6.5 days per week instead of the 13-14 hours you were already working.

I was in strategy consulting for one of the major firms until I was 8.5mos pregnant with DS. It's exhilarating, but it leaves no room for a life outside work, let alone parenting. Every partner I know has a stay-at-home spouse or is divorced, and my sample size is, shall we say, statistically robust. It's great when you're in your early to mid 20s and are single or, as I've seen before, you hate your spouse so much that the hours are worth it, and you don't want to be bled dry on alimony.

Bostonian hit the nail on the head. MBB (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) open doors everywhere. A 3-year stint as a post-MBA consultant at one of these firms can land you in a senior officer role anywhere. Doubly so if you worked in private equity. It's fast-paced, offers years of conventional experience in one, and is both intellectually and politically challenging when done right.

All that said, it's got nothing on parenting an HG/+ child full-time.

Finance is definitely a different world. I see that. Puffin and Dude are more familiar with "consulting" as I know it in STEM, I see.

It's not finance.

In fact, prior to finance, I'm pretty sure that it was a primary track for the children of the elite who sought professional success.

It may become more important again as we enter the sunset days of STEM as a viable career option for ambitious people.

In IT, "consulting" just means "I don't work permanently for the organization I'm currently working for." In some situations, it's just white-collar jargon for "temp agency." In other situations, you're paying for well-developed and/or specialized expertise. It depends on the firm, mostly.

And sometimes you think you're hiring well-developed, specialized expertise from a highly-reputable company, only to find out the person hasn't got a clue.

Sometimes you even find that one of the many consultants working on a major project submitted a timesheet for 21 full work days, in a month with only 20 work days, and the logs indicate he never logged on.

I don't think it's "insane". If you want to make a lot of money in your early 20s, you usually need to make some sacrifices, and employers know it.

Yes.

This.

Kcab, I don't think it's a huge regional difference so much as maybe that I'm thinking of what I'm most familiar with (not being in computer science/IT or in an strict engineering field like EE or ME) and not with big-firm consulting.

Independent consulting is a different thing entirely-- and that tends to be the rule in some domains within STEM, but mostly not the case in IT or engineering (outside of specialty disciplines).

DH has done some consulting work on the side, and so have I. No way would either of us have been competent to be acting in that capacity as a newly-burnished B.S. however.

I think that it is safe to assume that recent graduates are referring to the sweatshop labor pool variety, or the expertise-rich temp-agency variety of "consulting."

I certainly hope that there aren't actually 16% of them thinking that they'd make expert independent consultants.

This is true for other industries too, particularly the STEM-related industries I've worked with and have knowledge of. It's less expensive for large corporations to hire via contract than it is to hire people as employees (pay benefits etc), and going through contract organizations gives the corporations flexibility to increase/decrease work force as needed without laying off people (which also costs $). The employees that are hired either independently or through a contracting firm are commonly referred to as "consultants" within the corporations they are hired to work for, and by themselves, on their business cards

pbear

Ohh-ohhh!!

The other cool thing about this is that you can BECOME a "consultant" with the company that used to actually, you know... EMPLOY you. With benefits and all that other stuff. Like a reasonable salary.

But due to the miracle of "consulting" work, you can be empowered to work on contract now, as a consultant. Doing the same things that you once did when working for Fortune 500 Employer. Only now being empowered to pay for your own benefits, and being compensated by the hour.

If your spouse has good benefits, especially health insurance, increasing the fraction of your compensation that is paid in cash makes sense. The labor market is a market. Employers trying to reduce their costs is not more surprising or blameworthy than consumers trying to reduce their costs.

Consultants in this field tend to be far MORE expensive than FTEs, even the independent types, though major companies are trying to coax Congress into expanding H1-B visa quotas in the hopes of changing that. Supply and demand. In my experience, consultants are brought in when there's a major skill set missing in house, and/or a major project that requires more workforce than normal. Not that there aren't shops out there who try to keep everyone on contract and outsource whenever possible... they're just not the ones I'm going to choose to work for.

As for becoming an independent consultant with your former employer... I've actually seen that work out well to the benefit of both employer and employee. The key word there is "retirement."

If "make a lot of money" is so highly ranked among your priorities that you're willing to accept the kinds of trades they're asking for (and which you've presumably already made in the achievement arms race required to get the job in the first place), then insanity has already been achieved.

If one career pays (say) five times as much as another but requires twice the hours (80 vs. 40 per week), some people, especially males, will choose the former. They can in theory retire early and enjoy more leisure in their 40s and 50s. The start-up dream is to solve your lifetime financial problem with a few "insane" years of intense work.

Oh, this is the new state-of-the-art philosophy of the Fortune 50 with their technical staff, believe me. "Why are we paying all these scientists, anyway? Didn't we get rid of R&D? Maybe we could just call them in when it seems like we want them..."

Ergo, when I say "compensated by the hour" here, what I actually mean is that a 45 hr work week on salary becomes a 50 hour contract week for no benefits and at 2/3rd (or less) the pay on an hourly basis. When you add in the loss of benefits, it's more like 40% of previous compensation.

So sure, I'm definitely seeing how this model benefits shareholders, and why analysts would swoon over it. Just sucks to be a worker bee. And yes, theoretically, workers could just "move on" to a new location, new employment opportunity, new-new-new life... but in practical terms, that is a LOT less straightforward in a tanked real estate market and when the other spouse still HAS employment locally...

I'm also left wondering (and I'm not the only one) where the heck these magical new "product innovations" are going to come from, exactly, since scientists and engineers are not being stabled in any way that fosters innovation to begin with.

As I said earlier, we are now in the twilight years of STEM.

The Golden Age of STEM is gone.

Not coming back.

It's really more of a symptom of the problem than the source of the problem.

Real economic growth is heading toward zero.

Think of the period of time between 1800 and 2000 of being a kind of "technology bubble".

Dude has it right that in IT the BIG money is in consulting. Hourly rates are sky high for specialized consultants. My DH has a fulltime for which he is highly compensated with a nice benefits package yet his bill rate for independent work is often 5x what his salary rate calcs to. He has been able to more than double his salary with a few hours of independent contracts on the side and still keep all the perks of the fulltime job.

He started working independently while still in college with consulting work he sourced and telecommuted to. And his payrate at that time (with no degree or formal training) was only $20/hr less than his fulltime now.

Maybe these grads do actually plan lucrative careers as "consultants" based on their education. I mean if my DH could do it while still IN college with a double-major, surely they might have similar aspirations.

In the US, with the forces that are currently aligned against it, I'd say you're mostly right. There are a handful of companies that still do research (Google), but to do STEM on a large scale, you need massive amounts of investment without any immediate prospect of a payoff, because you never really know what the outcome of research will be. And that massive amount of investment can't happen without at least one of two things:

1) Corporate commitment to bearing the expense: The current corporate culture rewards short-term gains, and cutting/eliminating research is low-hanging fruit.

2) Public commitment to bearing the expense: The current political machine is incapable of accomplishing anything, much less paying for it.

That's not to say that one of those things may not change in the future, so I won't say it's not coming back. The Golden Age is alive in China, among others, and given significant changes in the geopolitical situation for the US (read: danger), it could come back again pretty quickly.

IMO, this is something of a fantasy. The kind of person who knowingly signs up to work 80+ hours per week is doing it for the rush and the money. In most cases, he isn't suddenly going to transform into a dude of leisure.

Plus, there are other very real factors. People get used to or stuck in a certain income level (read: children, mortgage payment, and/or divorce). They look around themselves and see everyone else working umpteen hours and know that they have to keep the pace or risk losing their jobs. We all know how quickly people can become obsolete and unhirable. Not to mention how pointless a lot of that kind of financial consulting work is, anyway. Full of sound and fury....

It's the same way in academia. People work themselves to the bone for tenure and say that things will be different afterward. But things stay the same. That newly minted Associate Prof. still has to publish in order to get the next grant. If she doesn't, the university may not fire her, but it also won't give her money for research. So she gets to teach or work in the clinic if she's an MD. People who want to do research rarely want to do that. If they did, they would have signed up to work a community college or a local hospital way back when. So they suck it up and keep cranking out papers (many of which are mediocre at best).

Plus, many of these people also enjoy heart disease, high levels of stress, divorce, and the constant knowledge that they may outsourced.

And meanwhile, we're cutting our national investments in R&D. So our bad situation is now getting to be like a bad air day in Beijing: Crazy Bad.

So put me in the camp that says, "Yep, this is insane."

The h1b is horrifically abused and is the main reason that IT is not the decently paid niche that it used to be. There now are a ton of cheap gormless morons working in the place of what was a much smaller FTE work force of highly skilled, hard-working and motivated people. The key word here is cheap and by God does buying cheap cost dear in lost quality.

I have seen formerly great IT titans on Wall Street like Morgan Stanley then (90s) and now (2 years ago) the difference made me feel like Charlton Heston in the final scene of the original Planet of the Apes.

Love that.

Has anyone seen Thomas Friedman's facile analysis about employment in today's Times? It's risible. But the comments are bodacious.

In all honesty, now that I have personal access to the Tom Friedman Op Ed Generator, I have been able to satisfy my nearly insatiable longing for his glorious prose in the privacy of my own home.

I just created my own article, which you can feel free to read and enjoy: "Macedonia and its Own Arab Awakening".

http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/Macedonia+and+its+Own+Arab+Awakening+c57aa8

It combines a firm grasp of the true nature of current global realpolitik trends with a warm rational optimism that a better world is truly possible.

If you have any interest in feeling what it must be like to *be* Mr. Friedman, you may create your own at the above link.

Yeah, but do you know *why* he felt that way?

Because "The Planet of the Apes" was really a future Earth!

He didn't discover a new planet after all, he returned to Earth after it had been basically destroyed by people.

The thingy sticking out of the sand was the Statue of Liberty.

It's very confusing if you don't understand that the entire story actually takes place on Earth and not "The Planet of the Apes."

I think they should have renamed the movie "Future Earth".

That would have made it much less confusing to the average moviegoer.

It's also a much more honest title.

I don't know if it's gone, but it has changed. We just filled a junior engineering position in my company. What I saw was tremendous wage compression. The best grads out of college were touching six figures, and many highly qualified candidates with 10 years of experience were making about the same amount.

Now the figures for the experienced grads might be skewed downwards somewhat because of our position's salary cap, but there were many talented people to choose from.

Which is entirely why I wrote what I wrote

Clearly, Charlton Heston is the 12th Doctor. (To have returned to earth in the future, I mean.)

Wonder who his companion was, though? Hmmm...


Oh, GOODY!! I'm tempted to save it for my birthday, but... nahhh...

That's one of the reasons I bailed on engineering and went into law, so there were indicators of it there in the mid-1990's.

I was also concerned about the "industrial scrapheap".

Naturally, I missed the "lawyer scrapheap", which appears to be worse.

In any event, I console myself that I am, at least, not inhaling industrial fumes.

That reminds me about the Twelve Monkeys.

I really enjoyed that movie. I should watch it again.

Granted, I also enjoyed the Planet of the Apes. I would watch it again, but I've already seen it enough. I couldn't be bothered to watch the Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 87%.

Maybe it's a good movie, after all.

I was quite unimpressed with Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

I just found Westworld the other day. How I never saw that movie before is beyond me. Seriously, it was a 1970's movie that I never even heard of before.

JonLaw, were you confused by the mean movie? It's okay. We still love and respect you. <3 <3 <3

Awwwww..... so warm and fuzzy...

Iron Empires and Iron Fists in Iceland was so heartwarming. I laughed, I cried... I... er... smirked?

Well, no matter. I feel cleansed.

It's all about inter-temporal consumption smoothing and the attendant subjective discount rates people attach to consumption now vs. later, be it for leisure, products, or what have you. I wouldn't say one set is "better" or "worse", just that they're different and filtered through different subjective lenses. Just as people vary in risk appetite, so too they vary in intertemporal "patience".

Personally, while I wouldn't want to pull the kind of hours now that I did in the past, I'm grateful I had the opportunity to do so early on. In a few years I gained the experience that people in in-house corporate roles would have had to slog through decades of work to see. Those time economies were definitely worthwhile, and I think they often get overlooked in the work-life balance calculus.

Graduate school cured me of that urge to work more hours.

(Just noting.)

I couldn't agree more. I could go on at length, but I don't want to give you cataracts.

*Mumbles something about automatic revenue elevators and a fixed 24 hour working capacity. Bashes head against wall.*

Some of them will come from outsiders: people who opted out and work a low-impact or part-time job that meets their financial needs while they work away on what will turn out to be something that will disrupt their fields.

I read recently that there's an initiative to encourage theoretical physics in Africa (here's one institute). If I remember correctly, the idea is to encourage physicists who haven't been immersed in current trends, with the hope being that they might have fresh insights that others have missed.

Thanks for the link, Val. I'll read that with interest.

I'd say the 40s and 50s are a little late in the game to be attempting to make genuine connections with other human beings, especially after having lived a lifestyle since K that provides limited opportunities to figure out how to do so.

And since genuine human connections are pretty much a requirement for mental health, I'm sticking with "insane."

Some of these people are fraternity/sorority presidents, etc.

Having roomed with one who went into I-banking, I'm fairly certain of this.

Greg Mankiw, quoted below from a speech he gave at the Chapel-Hill Chauncy Hall prep school, currently chairs of the economics department at Harvard. His views are similar to to mine, but he wised up before I did and switched fields. I don't understand gifted students intending academic careers (and their parents) who avoid the Harvards/MITs etc. because they are too "competitive". Gifted students need to measure themselves against other gifted students, and the most gifted students cluster at certain schools.

https://www.chch.org/ftpimages/39/misc/misc_131313.pdf
Mankiw's speech was mentioned by David Henderson http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/06/greg_mankiws_st.html .

Because is costs $250,000.

So the choice is between the parents being able to ever retire vs. funding their kid's college.

For instance, my BIL chose Duke over Harvard because of the 75% scholarship he received.

That reason I perfectly understand and consider quite valid. My post referred to "overly competitive environment" reason, which has been mentioned by others on this thread.

I suppose then you have the possiblity of reactive depression as their egos are shredded.

It depends on the individual, I'd say.

This isn't about a peer cohort in the intellectual sense-- OF COURSE having a true peer cohort is the best thing for HG children and adults. OF COURSE.

But-- the out-competing mentality associated with Tiger Parenting (and, let's face it, matriculation at any institution that actively PRIDES itself on only admitting 2%, 4%, 6%... of applicants) is setting up that kind of hypercompetitive environment in those admits.

They have to compete like that to GET IN.

Now, if your goal in life is to be at the top of your profession, and you're willing to "out-compete" your colleagues to get there, then that kind of environment is probably a fine idea.

But there are people who are not made that way. Constitutionally, they are collaborative and pro-social in their very souls. It would be a grave mistake to place a person like that into that kind of setting, where one regards peers as "opponents" in an elaborate and very, very expensive game of musical chairs.

Many introverts would also find that kind of environment actively draining-- as any introvert knows all too well, there are people who are intensely draining, and a lot of them tend to be aggressive, competitive, and extroverted.

Not all people have the same social needs.

When "competitive" equals "willing to work 14 hours a day at a single thing," then yes, that's overly competitive. In the same way, if I'm in a foot race with someone, and they're willing to throw themselves in front of traffic, then I'm perfectly content to let them win (if you want to call it that).

I don't think it's as much "opponents" as it is "enemies" or "existential threats".

After all, there is only one winner.

This made me LOL, down to the timesheets.

For some reason this came to mind:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...ncement-speech-brandeis-university-2013#

And this comment on the speech:
"I think, unfortunately, he's shooting the messenger. What's degrading BOTH art AND science today is the crude economic reductionism of the American right. When virtually ALL economic growth is concentrated in the 1%, the rest of us are focusing on survival. If anything is turning all of philosophy into economic utilitarianism, it's the success that the right has had in turning all of human life into a morality play where your very life depends on how much money you make, period. It's not science or 'scientism' which is doing this. We ourselves have chosen this path based on our fetish for economic success as the measure of man. When we cease to legitimize wealth as the basis of the 'meaning of life' then the arts will be safe, as will science. Until then, folks like Mr. Wieseltier will continue to get it wrong."

I wonder how many of these people can turn away from that worldview after age 40 and decide mankind should really be their business after all. That is, without having a nervous breakdown or other major ten-year emotional crisis first.

It pretty much sounds like the Gilded Age.

Which it is.

It's also completely American and is one of America's economic modes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)

Or, perhaps the Roaring Twenties?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby_(2013_film)

In today's metaphysical lesson, we learn that history doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

What you describe is more representative of higher income families. For those with more typical incomes, Harvard would be cheaper than Duke because it provides more needs based aid.

I'm positive that their income was well under six figures.

It's assets that kill you.

So, they punish savers.

Exactly. It often is a choice between being frugally responsible for your own retirement...

and paying for college. Or neither one.

We figure that we WILL be paying out of our pockets for pretty much any choice in higher ed. If your family income is anything close to 6fig, that's not a bad assumption.

It's like Bostonian said: they go analyze your income, assets (except your primary residence these days) and savings to see how much they can gouge you.

There is the Simplified Needs Test
http://www.finaid.org/educators/needs.phtml
which ignores assets for low enough income.

For FAFSA (not CSSprofile) many types of assets are disregarded (not even reported).

What types of assets are you talking about? And which means test.

Giving this some more thought, it seems like most people would get significant benefit from these programs because they don't have much in the way of savings.

It's not so much a trade off in their minds, since they don't really realize that they're trading off anything.

Years ago, when you could actually make money off of interest or investments, this wasn't a problem.

So, it's a wonderful system for the 1980's and 1990's.

The problem being that we're in the 21st century now.

I started a new thread here
How much does college cost? Unified thread.
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/159046.html
We can consolidate this particular topic there.

Well, that's because the schools are caught up in an arms race of their own. They're willing to pay for certain students from the endowment, because they'll raise the academic rankings of the school. For the rest, they have to gouge them so they can continue building new buildings, unnecessary amenities, etc., in order to compete in the recruiting race.

So basically, rankings is how college got ruined for everyone.

Yay competition.

Not when there are 21 valedictorians!!

Soon everyone will be number one! And the educrats will at last be able to claim VICTORY in the war against unequal outcomes.




I mean, at least until the valedictorians take placement tests in college. But surely, that is someone else's fault and problem.

Exactly. I don't think it's a coincidence that the cost of college began to skyrocket (per Bloomberg) just after the first College Rankings were published by US News and World Report in 1983.

I remember those cost increases. I was in college in the mid-80s. I don't what role the rankings played, but I do know that roughly half of the "elite" colleges had created a de facto syndicate back then. They had annual meetings aimed at fixing prices. I am not making this up. It was a big scandal; here's a summary of the investigation.

Not long before that, people my age had started to complain about the cost of a college education becoming unaffordable and student loan burdens. I also remember that as a group, we were accused of acting entitled because those older than us had "paid their way" by working summer jobs and we were just a bunch of lazy whiners. Yeah right. The year I started, total costs were 12-13K at my college and they jumped 7-10% every year. Like a summer job and work study are going to pay those bills. I don't think so.

See also the Unified College Cost thread. Student loan debt start increasing rapidly when they reformed the bankruptcy laws in 2005.

Exactly-- I was also in college in those years, and I tried to "work" my way through. I worked full time, effectively-- 36-40 hr weeks-- and it still wasn't enough to keep me off of food stamps or from requiring loans and qualifying for Pell grants.

I also recall feeling so helpless when, during my fourth year as an undergrad, I had to get loans for the second time. But I didn't have much choice. Tuition had doubled in just four years. Doubled.

The debt numbers for most college students don't look bad to me:
http://www.asa.org/policy/resources/stats/

According to http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjourn...ads-earn-85-more-than-those-without.html college graduates earn about $20K more per year than high school graduates, so most college graduates should be able to amortize their debt in a few years. The lifetime earnings differential is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I still think college is too expensive, but that is based on total spending by parents, taxpayers, and students, not looking at student debt alone.

Bostonian: The missing piece of the data is how much the parents have gone into hock. This only accounts for student debt.

Doesn't that also assume that the input value there for "income as a high school graduate" is equal to "living wages" as well?

Presuming that HSGI + 20K = ability to make $1000/mo payments on student loans is a bit of a stretch for me personally.

That is particularly so when one considers that not even disability (through accidental injury or illness) or failure to complete a degree-- both of which nullify the earning power of a college diploma-- are sufficient to discharge the debt.

This also fails to account for other forms of debt. As Dude notes, parent loans have been rising even faster than traditionally backed student loan burdens have. Credit card debt has also risen sharply in this cohort (something that I find so sad and astonishing that I simply lack words).

The drop-out rate (46% fail to graduate within 6 years) is the really scary part, and IMO, is where the chipper "Everyone can go to college!" line really falls down and start to look downright irresponsible.

http://politic365.com/2013/01/24/college-dropout-rate-called-national-crisis-in-new-report/

Then there are all the creepy for-profit schools with stratospheric drop-out rates. These places are the educational equivalent of payday loans and rent-to-own. I knew someone who needed a BA to advance at work and go up a pay grade. She got one from a sketchy, weird diploma mill that turned out to not be fully accredited. Money down the drain.

Although it's fair to note that "some college" is better than HS diploma for earning power, though not a lot better.

Why is it irresponsible?

If you have the power to originate a massive amount of debt, aren't you obligated to your shareholders to lard up as many people as possible with non-dischargeable debt?

I mean, the megabanks aren't charities.

They have a business to run.

Personally, I find the numbers on that page to be very bad.

For example, the numbers you quoted are an average for ALL age groups. According to that same site, the 30-39 age group has $307 billion in student loans, and the under 30s have $292 billion. So that's 60% of a one-trillion-dollar debt being carried by people under 40. And remember that some of these loans balloon because people can't even afford to pay the interest each month.

And the implication is that more than 25% of the under 40s have more than your $28K in debt.

Sounds pretty scary to me.


I wonder how much that number went up for members of the class of 2013.

The site also says that 14% of all borrowers are behind on at least one loan (that's 5.4 million people).

It also says that ~37% of federal borrowers between 2004 and 2009 managed to make timely payments without postponing payments or becoming delinquent. How many of that 37% were living on the edge but managing to make payments? How many had to choose between something important (high quality food, turning the heat on, etc.) and making a loan payment? How many had private loans that they couldn't keep up with?

Again, sounds pretty scary to me.

All in all, these numbers (and there are more on that page) sound big enough to have a serious effect on the economy.

They *do* have a serious effect.

They're called "debt serfs".

Ideally, you want to own as many as possible because they generate passive income over their lifetimes.

@Jonlaw...

{SNORK}

I hope there is a special place in Hell for those that set people up that don't have the smarts, maturity or executive functioning to be successful in college just so they can rack up the interest payments.

The mainstream kind of 'never thinking beyond the first good looking move' liberals [read the stupid ones] will hate me for saying this but college is not for everyone. It is supposed to be a place where the brighter people go to delve more deeply into Knowledge. It shouldn't be a place where EVERYONE has to go just to get a halfway decent shot at a job.

Has college ever been like that in the United States?

I would be satisfied with a special place in prison. You know: one that involves sharing a room with a dude referred to as Thag or Monster.


I agree.

For clarity: this problem isn't the fault of the students. They aren't driving this mess. Educators, politicians, colleges, and employers are all contributing to it when they happily bleat that a BA is a magical ticket for any and all holders to enter bright-shiny-future-land.

Yeah, right. Tell that to the people with BAs in Journalism, [insert program name] Studies, etc. who are working as security guards (their BAs didn't get them that job; an inexpensive certification did) or at Starbucks.

Hear-hear. I might even be reasonably happy with just turning a troupe of Howler Monkeys loose inside their homes as a pleasant and diverting surprise.


The most disheartening thing EVER to hear as a college faculty member was a failing student who couldn't answer the question "Why are you here? What is your purpose in pursuing a college education?"

I kept kleenex in my office for those students.

Things like that are why I can't quite keep my blood pressure down where it ought to be without, on some level, believing that karma IS real.






Well, no. Of course not. Unless one assumes that everyone who is brighter is wealthy-- and that NOBODY who is low-income is that bright to begin with.


If one goes with that assumption, however, everything was fine until about 1980.

But their minds were opened and they are now in a position to function as solid citizens in the global financial hypereconomy.

Everybody should have a quality education in this day and age, so that they can guide public policy through the voting booth.

Also, do you want to deprive the Starbucks barista of daydreaming of differential equations and latin prose while she foamifies the six dollar sugary foamy coffee thingy?

Actually, my belief in karma also goes a long way to explaining why in spite of chemical warfare on them over a period of decades, cockroaches don't seem to be suffering from population decreases.



Maybe we can have them shack up with Thag and Monster in this lifetime before doing a little samba to La Cucaracha in the next. Now that would be poetic justice. Which is more than poetry majors are getting out of things working as WalMart greeters.

I had no idea what I was doing there.

I still don't know what I was supposed to be doing while I was there.

I do kind of want those five years of my life back.

Actually, I take that back, sort of.

I was in college to Win. I viewed it as 13th-16th grade.

Once I got my first non-A, I was no longer in a position to Win because no matter what you do, I was never going to achieve a 4.0. It was simply mathematically impossible.

I wasn't sure what to do at that point.

However, I knew that I never wanted to leave school because then I would have to work.

And I most certainly didn't want to have to work.

That required effort and wasn't fun.

Wal-Mart doesn't have greeters.

To my knowledge, beating up on liberal-arts degrees isn't really based in reality. STEM degrees are pretty worthwhile for those who can cut it, but that's in decline right now, IIRC, and business, the most common major in America, has lost some of its shine. I think there's quite a lot to be said for not specializing too early--and for learning how to write, for heaven's sake.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304072004577323754019227394.html

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/01/27/what-is-liberal-arts-degree-worth-these-days/

No such thing as a poetry major, btw.

Plus, can't liberal arts majors become consultants?

That's where the big money can be found and where the relevant networks are created. The same networks that allow young professionals a shot at pocketing the key to the executive washroom.

So, yeah, a degree like that is worth whatever you are paying.

Oops. Sorry. I didn't express myself as well as I might have. I have a degree in history and would never beat up on the humanities. What you wrote even applies to me precisely: Those history and English classes taught me how to write and I didn't specialize early. The degree in history was a deliberate decision to become well-educated based on the knowledge I'd be doing science or medicine later.

I was trying to criticize the degrees that provide little in the way of mind-broadening education for the vast majority of students and little in the way of job training. So, lots of cash (and loans) in, little of value out.

More specifically, I'm thinking of the types of programs that require only 40 pages a week on average of reading and little writing (this number was mentioned earlier in this thread or elsewhere here recently). Most of us here have probably heard about the studies showing that many college students learn very little in their four years of doing a degree. I was talking about the kinds of programs that lead to that kind of outcome.

ETA: I found the message with the reference to 40 pages: read it here.

Exactly. "Education" which is not job skill training is fine. Good, even. This is what collegiate education is supposed to be about.

That's the kind of foundation that ideally prepares an individual to think critically across a wide variety of subjects, and gives the participant a rudimentary understanding of the ways in which practitioners in engineering differ in their interpretations and analysis of observation/reality from, say, those in anthropology. (For example)

That exposure and immersion in a plurality of schools of thinking is what constitutes "well educated" to start with (oh my, what a grammatical mess this sentence has become... my profound apologies).

THAT kind of humanities training-- that is, the old-school variety of "liberal arts" education-- never goes out of style because it produces versatile life-long learners when it is done well.

I'm not a fan of certificate programs and job training being offered on university campuses. That is training, and it's not the same thing as education. In fact, engineering programs have long had uneasy relationships with their home institutions for that very reason-- engineering programs tend to be more skill/certification oriented, and less about broad applicability/education.

I thought we were a post-literate society now.

You should be able to just use YouTube for getting messages across.

Everyone has phones and can film presentations on the fly.

Aughhhhhhhhh....

{Run awayyyyy}

It is rhetoric like that which drives me to the cooking sherry. Seriously.

True. I was thinking more of the community college job training programs (reasonably affordable and often offered in the evening). Some of the programs I've encountered have been outstanding, both for job training value and pure educational value.

From a certain perspective, it's far better for the workplace to be "trained" than "educated," because an educated populace is a threat to the social order. Social mobility is not to be promoted, because the nouveau-riche are so... eww.

The old adage of bread and circuses still holds true, and modern universities provide both... at a hefty fee.

That assumes that 'education' in this country actually encourages intelligent criticism instead of blind toadying to the current 'All heterosexual Christian white men that work hard and expect others to the same are Evil personified.' orthodoxy that currently prevails.

A false assumption indeed from what I have seen, the 'average white guy' today is treated on par with the way that kulaks were treated in the 1920's Soviet Union.

It truly tickles my funny bone that the exact people who in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties encouraged the Young to challenge dogma and the Establishment now that they ARE the Establishment have completely shut down any challenges to the current 'Road to Political Correctness' that we are all enjoying a bob sleigh ride down - emphasis on that last word.

Political Correctness feels good, though.

It's like wearing warm fuzzy bunny slippers.

And the Young are happy now that things have been fixed.

I mean, can you imagine what life was like BEFORE political correctness?

Life was all spiky and rough, and very mean. It made people sad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ools-for-the-gifted-promote-segregation/

Just one symptom of the current sickness...

That is an overstatement, but hostility to men in academia may be one reason more women are getting BA's.

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/05/why_men_are_avoiding_college.html
Minding the Campus
MAY 30, 2013
Why Men Are Avoiding College
By Helen Smith


Sommers wrote "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men" (first published in 2000, with a new edition coming this year -- a good book IMO), and Helen Smith has a new book "Men on Strike".

From Bostonian:

"Many men have just decided that they don't belong in college and, consciously or unconsciously, they are going on strike."

This is a true statement.

Many men don't belong in college.

So more women are going to be larded up with debt, while more men escape being debt serfs.

You're joking, right?

I certainly lost out professionally, in part, because I was not a young attractive woman.

I usually have a pretty ribald and robust sense of humour but I am certainly not joking this time.

I am glad that my only child is a girl quite frankly

There's still a significant anti-female bias (explicit and/or implicit) in large areas of BigLaw.

It all varies by experience, naturally, and it's hard to beat being a young attractive woman (although that comes with its own unique set of drawbacks, too), but I can say that "average white guy" has been quite a door-opener for me, professionally as well as personally.

Honestly, I find it difficult to participate in the pity party, but maybe that's because I'm actually aware of Soviet history, and what daily reality is like for other people:

- Much larger people rarely leer at me or stalk me.
- Store employees don't follow me around.
- Police officers don't look for reasons to stop and talk to me. They are usually polite and relaxed when I encounter them.
- Strangers don't start hurrying away from me if I try to stop them and ask a question.
- Parents don't pull their children away from mine at the park.

etc.

Okay, that last one isn't entirely true, because it does happen when my wife, who is neither male nor white, takes our DD to the park alone. It certainly does not happen when I'm there.

I've learned to use tattoos as an indicator.

Works pretty well, I think.

An example of Canadian HR law in practice-- if you are an employer filling a job in a field with a historic demographic bias, you must actively enact policies that encourage the hiring of the "disadvantaged" group(s).

Having spoken with high-level HR professionals at several banks, consultancies, CPG firms, and governments, if an equally qualified male and female apply for most professional services roles, the female will get the job. Lucrative government work doesn't even rely on the notion of equal qualification--simply belonging to an underrepresented group and being somewhat qualified will get you the job.

As a female, I think it's specious to suggest that females today should be compensated for the wrongs that women of yesterday suffered. It's not as though all women share a bank account and apportion out our gender's earnings based on time worked. I've turned down plum work several times on principle because I was invited as a female professional, not just a professional.

Reverse discrimination is just as damaging as favouring white males. It takes an organization's focus off its core mission and values employees for factors out of their control. I'm a champion of equality of opportunity, not outcome from the starting gate.

As a mother of a son, I'm troubled by the fact that being the best candidate doesn't matter for a white boy. While there are indeed social advantages to being a white male that carry over from antiquated social norms, there is a genuine and systematic bias against white males in professional services in Canada. From what I understand, similar legislation is in place in the Commonwealth and much of Western Europe.

In law, this seems to work to get the women into corporate/government (lower stress/lower pay) roles, leaving the male lawyers with the big law firms (higher stress/higher pay).

Exactly the same in management consulting, in-house C-suite succession, etc.

I suspect that's an issue of culture and similar-to-me bias in apportioning work once candidates are hired. Firms have to be unrelentingly systematic in promoting equalty of opportunity at all stages of employees' careers to achieve fairness across pay grades. Frankly, most firms just don't care. It's cheaper to be inequitable after hiring and just pay off settlements for lawsuits that surface.

There's also the reality that corporate law is absolutely crushing, so there's a self-selection bias at play among women (and men) aspiring to start families and actually spend time with their children. Whoever pulls down the most billables and drives new business gets his way.

ETA: I'm going to plug a helpful book here for managers interested in implementing equity based standards for talent development:

http://m.indigo.ca/product/books/be...988?ikwid=gary%20p.%20latham&ikwsec=Home

I just love the way [not] that most Americans that have a little [tiny] bit of historical knowledge think that they automatically have a superior perspective to everyone else.

I have read extensively about Soviet history - because growing up in a socialist country it was taught in schools, personal interest having had several family members disappear during those times (an entire sub-tree of the family tree was pruned by Lenin) and also from a natural loathing of all things totalitarian and tyrannous.

I find the fact that not only were kulaks universally despised and demeaned but even their children were punished for having the audacity to be the children of kulaks very telling...

Admittedly there are no forced labour (and worse) camps but the current trend is not at all heading towards rewarding merit and ability is it?

Frankly, the notion that one just needs to exercise self discipline by studying hard and working harder seems rather quaint and old-fashioned these days - don't you think?

Pity - who needs it - I certainly don't. I am just stating things as I see them.

Tyrannous rex?

What about debt serfs?

They're a kind of forced labor, right?

Workhouses!!



What we need now are... WORKHOUSES!

The historical facts support the notion that being a kulak wasn't anything like being a modern American white male, so there was no need for you to show off your bigotry.

You know, facts like "forced labour (and worse) camps," for starters.

No, we need more ROBOTS!

There's no problem in the modern technological era that cannot be solved with ROBOTS.

They don't go on strike.

They do what they're told.

They're very efficient.

Let's hear it for ROBOTS!

Maybe the workhouses can be run by robots.

LOL

While I will admit to being guilty of using rhetorical hyperbole to jolt complacent liberals into awareness of the FACT that white American males are aggressively discriminated against, I am not sure how that makes me a bigot.

Perhaps, you could enlighten me...

You decided that something I said was representative of "most Americans." Then you decided that I have "a little [tiny] bit of historical knowledge," despite knowing nothing about me.

And now you've decided that people who disagree with you must be "complacent liberals."

So yeah, that's pretty much the portrait of a bigot.

Dude - you are taking all of this way too personally. If I have genuinely offended you I apologise. Life is way too short for this...