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Sunday, June 26, 2011

Online and Decline



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's a link to an interesting article by David Leonhardt who is a columnist in the Business section of the New York Times, which presents strong evidence for the financial benefits of a college education, and also cites a study entitled "The Undereducated American" by Anthony Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose of Georgetown University along with other studies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/sunday-review/26leonhardt.html

The bottom line according to David Leonhardt?

The "case against college is an elitist one — for me and not for thee. And that’s rarely good advice."

P.S. According to the Georgetown study, which can be found at http://cew.georgetown.edu/,

"The United States has been underproducing college-educated workers for decades. The undersupply of postsecondary-educated workers has led to both inefficiency and inequity ... Adding 20 million additional postsecondary-educated workers over the course of the next 15 years will help us meet the economy's need for efficiency and reduce income inequality."

An additional comment. With regard to the cartoon, there is a difference between "information", which is freely available on the internet but which may or not be correct, and knowledge, understanding, and the skills to use that knowledge.

Anonymous said...

"The 'case against college is an elitist one — for me and not for thee. And that’s rarely good advice'."

See. You are overthinking this already.

"Extreme student centeredness" at UT is quite clear in its clarion call: Build it (the Ceder Point of Learning) and they will come, and pay, and play. It is almost too easy for carpetbagging administrators and a BOT suckled on Zemsky and Vedder (not Eddie)to accomplish at this time.

Let's aim instead for providing a high quality public-supported liberal arts educational opportunity to students and really empower them to think for themselves. That creates social equity and preserves the spirit of American democracy in the long run.

Anonymous said...

In the spirit of customer-centeredness, how long before the customer says: I don't like math, I don't think I need math, I won't take math and therefore I won't pay for math? How long before the future employers of temporary, part-time widgets, er... employees tell university faculty what to teach? Our administrators will respond immediately to reshape curriculum to meet the buyer's need and the student won't be the buyer. It will be the "captains of industry" who will decide what is worth knowing unless faculty stand strong to defend a broad, liberal education.