Higher Education, The OG Ponzi Scheme

How School Trains Us To Fail In The Real World

Instead of learning critical life skills on how to manage money, how to negotiate, or how to communicate, kids are mostly taught to memorize information.

School is an unsuitable learning environment for many jobs

For those that say school is not the place to impart wisdom to youngsters, but to prepare them for the workplace, I hear ya, but sorry. You just walked into a nasty trap with that point of view. If school is to prepare us for a career, then why is it that it’s absolutely horrible at accomplishing that?

College claims to be the safe, sure way for a great career (it’s not)

Some may think that employers love to train employees their way, but I think the truth is more often a “plug and play” preference. Would you rather hire someone who has proven they can do the job well, or someone who has a piece of paper that says they “might be a good employee, after training of course?” It hurts to be rejected on the basis of limited experience, but it’s an employer’s market out there, and businesses tend to play it safe when they can.

(Medium.com)

A Good Read

Education Isn't the Key to a Good Income 

A growing body of research debunks the idea that school quality is the main determinant of economic mobility. 

Rothstein is quick to say that his new findings do not mean that Americans should do away with investments in school improvement, or even that education is unrelated to improving opportunity. Certainly the more that people can read, write, compute, think, and innovate, the better off society and liberal democracy would be. “It will still be good for us if we can figure out how to educate people more and better,” he says. “It might help the labor market, our civic society, our culture.” But Americans should be more clear, he says, about why they are investing in school improvement. His research suggests that doing so in order to boost a child’s chances to outearn their parents is unlikely to be successful. According to Rothstein, education systems just don’t go very far in explaining the differences between high- and low-opportunity areas.

According to Marshall Steinbaum, the research director at the Roosevelt Institute, economists have long believed that differing levels of skills and education (what the field refers to as “human capital”) is the most salient explanation for why individuals achieve such varied economic outcomes. “I think it’s becoming harder and harder to accept explanations like the so-called skills gap,” he says, referencing the popular idea that low-income people merely lack the necessary skills and training to thrive in the modern economy.

(TheAtlantic.com)

No Kiddin'

Report: Los Angeles Residents Are Dumb

A new report from personal finance site WalletHub suggests Los Angeles is not the smartest city around. In fact, by some metrics we're downright dumb.

The site looked at nine metrics in 150 of the nation's largest cities to come up with its ranking of 2016’s Most and Least Educated Cities. Los Angeles came in 85th overall, nestled nicely between the Florida city that Scientology built, and something called "Fayetteville, Arkansas." Our ranking for "educational attainment" was even lower — 101st. And for "quality of education," Angelenos ranked 32nd.

We did manage to come in 26th when it comes to the "average quality" of our universities — we can probably thank highly regarded institutions including Caltech, UCLA and USC for that. The problem is, you have to actually go to those universities to help our standing. We came in 57th for the number of students enrolled in top-200 universities. And WalletHub says we ranked 141st — nearly at the bottom — for the percentage of residents who hold a high school diploma.

We ranked 84th for the percentage of locals with a two-year degree or college experience.

(LAWeekly.com)

The True 'New School'

What actually happened to make the cost of college in the US practically unaffordable without a loan?

Demand for college degrees increased, two main factors, ∞ other smaller factors

Factor 1: financing for college became more readily available, increasing number of people who can actually go to college, increasing demand

Factor 2: the workplace environment shifted to more specialized skills (away from manufacturing), requiring a college degree to get a “good” job, increasing demand
Graph Showing This Numerically (link )

Factors 3-∞: women go to college more now, globalization increases competition for workers, internet allows for more aggressive college advertising, tacobell announces the quesalupa, immigration increases raise demand, etc.

fast forward 30 years…graduate school is now required to get a “good” job

(CavemanCircus.com)

How Times Have Changed

Student loans have passed credit cards and auto loans to become the second biggest source of personal debt in the U.S., trailing only mortgages.

For years we trumpeted education as a way out of poverty. Now it seems to just be trapping people in poverty.

(CavemanCircus.com)