Who Needs College Anyway? Distribution of Power in America

President Obama set an ambitious new goal in his speech to Congress on February 24, 2009, proclaiming that by 2020, America will ...have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

But some experts, like author Charles Murray, dont think we need more Americans going to college. In his new book, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing Americas Schools Back to Reality (Random House, 2008), Murray argues that Americans place too much value on the bachelors degree.

Murray and researcher Anthony Carnevale debated Who Needs a College Education Anyway? at the Hechinger Institutes Seminar for Higher Education Reporters in December 2008. Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed moderated the debate.

Murray, the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, contends that because ability varies and 50 percent of people are below average, our current system of higher education makes little sense.

Carnevale, Research Professor and Director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, argues we should encourage as many students as possible to attend and graduate from college, because intelligence isnt fixed at birth and can be influenced by education.

After their remarks, Murray and Carnevale took questions from journalists participating in the Seminar.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• college
• bell curve
• degree attainment
• postsecondary attainment
• college access
• below average
• drive a forklift
• social mobility
• social inequality
• upward mobility
• american education

[centurion180ad]

@movcrit I shouldn’t //need// a bank account.

Because of Debt Syndicate monopoly over transactions the ONLY option I have is through a syndicate affiliate utilizing irredeemable debt currency of fraud-dollars.

Corporations have already PLUNDERED from me all my ancestors land & resources, tens of millions of current fraud-dollars worth. They intend to pay me IF EVER, with a tiny fraction of what has already been robbed from my family.

BANKERS //destroy// most available wealth.

[movcrit]

@centurion180ad To say you don't want crooked bankers is one thing but to assert (if you are) that banking isn't beneficial to the economy or you personally is nonsense. Do you have a bank account? Have you ever work for a company?

[movcrit]

@centurion180ad We want Free Enterprise and private property because that's what we idealize as a perfect economy. A perfect economy is a goal only because it serves to maximize wealth and distribute it not and because not everyone is rich until we have a more perfect economy there is a need to try to achieve that.

[centurion180ad]

@movcrit We don't need a perfect economy, what we must have is Free Enterprise and private property.

I read it in a paper news stand magazine. As far as I know it's not on the internet.

[centurion180ad]

@movcrit I am certain that Doctor Adam Smith was correct in his assertions.

David Ricardo amplified Adam Smith's assertions, and I have concluded beyond any shadow of doubt that we don't need any God damn bankers what-so-ever, and anyone redistributing my wealth is a crooked bastard that I am allowed to shoot.

The article I am remembering to was written in 2003 or 2004, and it was an expose of Ivy League fraud.

[movcrit]

@centurion180ad Yes, I am advent socialist only because a perfect capitalistic society doesn't and can't actually exist.

Hmm, how odd, this article you seem to refer to doesn't come up when i search Ivy League at the Weekly Standard site could you link this article to me?

[centurion180ad]

@movcrit Do you understand the difference between classist bigotry used to degrade people and force them into menial labor such as slavery, and objective judgments of ability?

The Weekly Standard published Ivy League professor confessions that they keep 2 sets of grades, one the 2/3 A-set to defraud the system, and another set of actual grades so professors could gauge who to promote into graduate school, write recommendations from, or grant honors.

Ivy League is crime-in-progress.

[centurion180ad]

@movcrit I've read The Bell Curve and other works or articles by Dr. Murray over the years, and he speaks to the grade inflation fraud. The Weekly Standard published the facts of Ivy League grade & honors inflation.

IF students are that much better then their professors are too, and the professors put that much more pressure on the students, so an A is no less rare.

When an employer says that Bs & Cs make me unemployable for a calculus intensive science, that is classist bigotry.

[movcrit]

Like I've said better, 2/3's of the class getting A's could be the result of a more stringent enrollment process therefore filtering out students who would have not gotten A's. I am not asserting this is the case I am asserting that this is also another hypothesis that also needs to be tested before you or me draw any conclusions.

Where did you get this data anyways? From your head?

[movcrit]

@centurion180ad Do you understand the difference between evidence and interpretation and a controlled experiment?

So, let's assume that 2/3 thirds of the class do get A's. There is no control to know whether or not students who get A's are actually performing at the professor's level.

Furthermore, an A grade does actually have an defined criteria that you have brought. If there is doctrine that suggests this please refer to it for me.