One of Sammler's chief issues (the issue on which we originally crossed paths, interestingly enough) is his staunch belief that we're wasting our time sending so many kids to college.

It looks like he may have found an unlikely ally in Hillary Clinton:

Clinton spoke at the Manchester School of Technology, which trains high school students for careers in the construction, automotive, graphic arts and other industries. The school highlighted one of the nine goals she outlined: increasing support for alternative schools and community colleges.

"We have sent a message to our young people that if you don't go to college ... that you're thought less of in America. We have to stop this," she said.

Well, it's not exactly the same argument, but variations on a similar theme. One that I agree with. I much prefer this route than the more typical policy of expanding college education to an ever-increasing pool of Americans.

While I'm not sure that there is much that can be done about the number of kids attending college, I do believe that there is a lot that states can do to help guide kids towards more economically useful courses of study. One thing that I would advocate is actually increasing college tuitions a great deal, but then offsetting it with scholarships in areas of study that are geared towards jobs.

Most majors I can think of fall into one of three categories:

Vocational - These are degrees that would leave people ready to enter the workforce in a specific line of work. Examples: Engineering, computers, education, medicine, finance, and so on.
Generalist - These are degrees that would leave graduates well-educated and ready to enter the workforce in a number of ways, sort of like a current business degree except more classical or scientific in nature. Examples: Physics, biology, philosophy, political science, language communication, and so on.
Academic - These are more narrow degrees that further the cause of intellectual inquiry but are not immediately appliable to the workforce: Regional history (American history, British history, Russian history, etc), literature, theology, women's studies, ethnic studies, and so on.

Most scholarships would be given to vocational studies. Economically speaking, it would be the default. Part of me doesn't like this because I would prefer that more people get generalist degrees, but for a generalist degree to be useful it requires a degree of intelligence and dedication missing from a lot of today's college students. So the default would be vocational and someone trying to get that sort of degree would be paying the least.

There would be fewer scholarships given for generalist degrees in order to try to select the best and brightest, those that will likely turn their philosophy degree into a law degree down the line or some other line of post-graduate study like medical ethics, social development study, and so on. Competition to get into these schools would not necessarily be horrendous, so those that might not make the grade but are dedicated enough to save for it (or more likely have rich parents) can do it if they want, but they will get little help from the state.

Also difficult to get a scholarship in would be academic study. Some would be more difficult than others. For instance, a degree in history may not be as expensive because they can be translated into teaching jobs (whether teaching jobs would be given to this group or the education vocational group is up for discussion), but others have limited opportunity so there would be limited scholarship slots available. As with generalist degrees, they can be got without the scholarship, but they would be discouraged.

As time progresses the the government would review which degrees are leaving people either jobless, outside their field of expertise, or in jobs for which they should be overqualified, and these degree programs would have their scholarships cut back. Then the government would look at shortages and apply more scholarships there. It would be important to use a time horizon long enough to account for natural fluctuations in the market. Just because environmental engineering jobs are down this year from last does not mean that they won't be up again next year.

There would naturally be a lot of young people that wouldn't fit into this arrangement. They'd be uninterested in a vocational major but not have the grades or money for one of the other options. I consider this a feature rather than a bug. They would be forced to make the tough decisions before all the money is spent. They would have a number of options:

1) Some people excel at the college level and don't do quite as well at the high school level. I would make scholarships dependent on more than just a high school transcript. If the GPA isn't good enough, I'd like to see some scholarship exams that would allow people to prove their dedication and intelligence by studying and learning independently. This would also give opportunities to people that goofed off until they hit the real world and then learned why school matters. There would be an opening here for people to "game the system", but that's more a matter of designing the right test as much as anything. The downside is that writing and administering these tests would not be inexpensive.

2) They can forego higher education and enter a career path that does not require any formal education past high school.

3) They can get jobs and save up money so that they don't need the state's help.

4) They can try to get a loan. This is not desirable and could become an arms race in itself, but as long as there are students in need of money for college there will be student loans. I would think that private loan companies would take into account the student's need for the money is closely related to poor academic performance and/or choosing an uneconomical major. Both of which would suggest that they are a potential default risk.

Part of me doesn't like this plan because it puts an awful lot of social power in the hands of the government. Degree programs would be encouraged or discouraged for political rather than market-based reasons. On the other hand, this is a form of government accountability. Not so much telling people what they can and cannot do but rather economically looking at how it allocates its limited resources.

Not that it really matters because this model is something of a pipe dream. The government hates telling middle class kids "No!" and in a way that's what this would probably come across as doing. There is also a significant faction among those whose opinion matters that almost all higher education is good education. Nonetheless, in my little perfect world, this is how I would likely go about it.

The dean of admissions at MIT is stepping down; apparently, to get the job, she lied on her resume.

There have been a lot of lying-on-their-resume scandals in academia lately, some politically motivated, some just as a result of people poking into the backgrounds of administrators.

The school's findings:

Patti Richards, spokeswoman for MIT, said the school had received information about Jones' credentials and investigated them. "At various times she claimed to have received degrees from Albany Medical College, Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute, and Union College and we confirmed that she had not graduated from any of these schools."

I don't know what I should consider worse. On the one hand, she apparently served in her various MIT positions with distinction, and received awards for being an exemplary administrator. On the other hand, her lying on her resume has cost someone (possibly multiple people) jobs that they otherwise would have had.

I know I'd be pretty teed off if I found out that someone who'd been offered a job I'd applied for got it on the basis of a false resume.

Eugene Volokh draws our attention to an interesting article about a bunch of students suing anti-plagiarism site Turnitin.com for copyright infringement:

Turnitin.com is a commercial service that aims to help educators catch plagiarism in student papers. Schools require that student papers be submitted to the site, which (1) checks each student paper against its database, and (2) adds each student paper to its database so that future papers can be checked against it. I take it that the database already contains papers from commercial term paper mills, encyclopedia entries, and the like; but adding student papers helps spot students who are copying from classmates, or from friends at other schools, as well as students who are copying from publicly available sources.

But, the high school student plaintiffs say, step 2 violates our copyright: You folks are making money by copying our papers onto your servers. The consent you get from us is inadequate because we are coerced to give it (especially plausible, I take it, when the students are students at public high schools, and when they are within the compulsory school attendance age range). And your use is not fair use, chiefly because it's commercial. (Here's turnitin.com's legal analysis, which argues that the use is indeed fair.)

I had always thought, erroneously it seems, that when you turn in a paper for a grade you are "compensated" for it by getting a grade and so you no longer hold the exclusive rights to the paper. I assumed that the teacher, professor, or school had rights to do such things as reproduce without permission (as an example to future classes or part of some compilation) and I would have thought that this fell into this category. But I hadn't really considered the fact that a company is theoretically profiting off of students' work, which adds another element to it.

The lawsuit itself is ironic because the plaintiffs are trying to prevent something that would (theoretically) prevent someone else from stealing their work.

The question is what kind of recourse should a student have? The plaintiffs in this case are resentful of the guilty-until-proven-innocent stance that the site (and use of the site) takes. First they investigate the author's work (accusing him of cheating) and then if it's a-go they put it in a database to make sure that no one else uses it (accusing them of selling their papers). Should a student have a choice as to whether or not his work is part of that enterprise? Particularly when school attendance is compulsory, leaving no way to opt out at all?

I don't know what the law says so I will leave that to Volokh, other lawyers, and the judges. But despite compulsory attendance and any objections the students may have, I think that ethically Turnitin is in the clear. If a student demands his work be protected, he shouldn't turn it in for credit.

Addendum: Note that by "not turning it in for credit" I am referring to the specific paper whose copyright the student is interested in protecting. I am not advocating that he or she not turn in anything at all. As an example I was under the impression while in college that any paper that I turned in was no longer solely my intellectual property and so I would not have turned in something that I might want to make money from later. Turns out the precaution may not have been necessary, but I don't see it as an unreasonable state of affairs for academic papers.

There's apparently a new study out that suggests that universal daycare may not be all its cracked up to be:

The growing labor force participation of women with small children in both the U.S. and Canada has led to calls for increased public financing for childcare. The optimality of public financing depends on a host of factors, such as the “crowd-out” of existing childcare arrangements, the impact on female labor supply, and the effects on child well-being. The introduction of universal, highly-subsidized childcare in Quebec in the late 1990s provides an opportunity to address these issues. We carefully analyze the impacts of Quebec’s “$5 per day childcare” program on childcare utilization, labor supply, and child (and parent) outcomes in two parent families. We find strong evidence of a shift into new childcare use, although approximately one third of the newly reported use appears to come from women who previously worked and had informal arrangements. The labor supply impact is highly significant, and our measured elasticity of 0.236 is slightly smaller than previous credible estimates. Finally, we uncover striking evidence that children are worse off in a variety of behavioral and health dimensions, ranging from aggression to motor-social skills to illness. Our analysis also suggests that the new childcare program led to more hostile, less consistent parenting, worse parental health, and lower-quality parental relationships.

I think daycare, pre-school, and so on can be quite beneficial to youngsters. However, the results of this study don't particularly surprise me. One of the greatest problems I see in young people being raised is too much exposure to their peers. A kid who spends most of his time with kids will learn much of his value system from other kids. A kid who spends most of his time with adults will learn the value system of adults.

Universal daycare is an extention of our education system, which is very much geared towards kids spending most of their waking hours surrounded by other children. It doesn't have to be Lord of the Flies to have a deleterious effect.

This brings up a couple of issues, most of all the question of what we can do about it. Homeschooling is an option for some, though I fear that can swing the pendulum too far in the other direction. It's also infeasible for a lot of households that simply cannot afford a parent to stay home and others that are not in a position to teach their children.

The other problem (well... maybe a problem) is The Cult of School. Kids not only spend in excess of 30 hours a week in school, but are actively encouraged to spend more time with social clubs, athletics, and so on. More and more, a child's social environment doesn't revolve around the household but around the schoolhouse. Then again, who does want to spend more time with your parents at that age?

[via Douthat]

There is apparently a debate brewing in Texas as to when the school year should start. According to The Chronicle, the state has mandated that school can't start earlier than the 21st this year without a waiver*.

But I digress. The case in favor of an earlier start date is ostensibly so that they can end the first semester before school starts**. The case against an earlier start date has to do with August electricity bills, summer jobs, and summer school. The focal point of the debate, however, comes down to whether or not Winter Break should interrupt a semester.

So I started weighing it over in my mind to try to figure out which, if any, side I was on in the debate. Then it occured to me:

We are debating whether Summer Vacation should be two months and one week or two months and three weeks because we are concerned about how much our students are going to forget in two weeks. Let me repeat. We are worried about cutting down summer break to two months or so in the summer in order to prevent our students from having to retain information after two weeks.

Is an education that evaporates after two weeks of dormancy really an education at all? Is our grip of our kids on what they're being taught that perilously loose?

Of course it is. And this entire debate outlines how much we, as a society, don't care. This is why year-around schooling has never really taken off. We would rather have a flexible summer than not have to seemingly spend the first two months of every schoolyear going over what they've forgotten over the summer.

I've never really been a proponent of year-around school. I've mostly been indifferent. But I completely understand the pull against having a two-week break right before exams. Changing the context, however, suggests that it is more a symptom of a larger problem rather than a problem in itself.

* - This must be at least somewhat new because my sophomore through senior years school started significantly before the 21st. The only thing that actually prevented it from starting on my birthday my senior year was that for the first time ever they started school on a Wednesday rather than a Monday. My first couple years in junior high were had us taking exams after break, but school was practically starting in September about then.

** - I'm not sure I buy this, however, because I'm pretty sure that they have started around the 21st before and still gotten out before Christmas. Some of it apparently comes down to wanting a full week off for Thanksgiving and not having lopsided semesters (I think two of the "six-weeks" periods back then were 5 weeks in the fall and 7 in the spring or something).

Idaho has apparently backed off a plan that would have required students take more math and science courses. The Idaho State Journal has a rather biased article on the subject entitled Plan worries area educators: What would science, math effort cost?

Geez, makes it sound kind of ominous, doesn't it?

The article dutifully carries the banner of the education establishment (teachers, principals, and so on) who are adamantly against it. Not a single person in favor of it is quoted. In condenses support for the plan in a single paragraph, dismissing it at the end:

Representatives from the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, Micron, the Idaho National Laboratory and the state's universities also voiced their support of the measure, leading some to question how much industry stands to financially benefit from the proposal.

Say what?!

I would really like it explained to me how these groups would benefit from a more fundamental curriculum. The only thing I can think of is that they benefit from better educated individuals. The state universities I suppose benefit more directly because they will have to offer less in the way of remedial classes. But if the students aren't taking lower level math courses, they are given the opportunity to take higher level math courses. That may not appeal to the high schooler that wants to take Theater III, but I can see why high-tech employers like Micron and INL might like that idea. They will have to do less recruiting from out of state.

So yeah, it may benefit Micron and INL and state universities, but absolutely not at the expense of the state. Unless, of course, you don't want the kind of educated employees that they are looking for. Or you don't think the state should be educating. Or you think it's more important that high schools offer Theater II and/or Ormanental Art rather than require students to take calculus. In any case, since I've gotten up here Idahoans have been complaining about the lack of well-paying jobs in eastern Idaho. Maybe when companies or organizations that hire such people say they want something -- something that could benefit everyone -- the state should listen to those people rather than the educators who may simply not want to be bothered with having to do it.

I'm actually not even sold on the plan. My main fear is that it would lead to students learning in four years what they currently learn in two or three. Mandatory classes are always slowed down to the lowest common denominator. One of the joys of the precalculus class I took my senior year was the notable absense of certain kinds of students. Add on top of the fact that I am interested in teaching what is still in most places an "elective" course in computers.

I guess it's the tone of the article and the sinister portrayal of those advocating the plan to sneak more insidious math and science classes into the curriculum that bothers me. The education establishment's motives are not challenged like this, only echoed and amplified. The educators' argument that this plan is unfunded seems like a non-starter. If all you're doing is swapping classes, then the cost should be the same. In fact probably less because in my experience supplies for elective classes cost considerably more than the pencil, paper, and calculator required for math and science classes. Maybe I'm missing something in this argument, but the article doesn't even address possible counterarguments to what the principals are saying. There is the layoffs argument, but it's not up to school districts to provide theater majors with jobs. Of course, many majored in education rather than what they're teaching, which is a problem in itself.

Anyway, the educator and state senator Bert Marley (D-nearby) could be correct in that it's simply a matter of rowing faster in the wrong direction. Though he thinks the issue is relevence. I presume that he is challenging the relevence of calculus, which is fair, but I would want to know why calculus - and learning the thought processes involved in calculus - is (or are) less relevent than than that fourth year of band or choir. Additionally, he would need to explain to me how exactly it is that our kids are getting such a great education that it's worthwhile to preserve the arts classes.

On the other hand, those in favor of heighening requirements would need to explain a couple things as well. First, as I mentioned above, how can we be assured that instead of teaching everyone what's in calculus classes now we won't end up teaching kids in calculus considerably less? That's a real problem and that's where I think that Marley may be correct about rowing in the wrong direction. One of the biggest obstacles I see in public education is the refusal to sufficiently differentiate between kids that are smart and those that aren't and those that want to be there and those that don't (and those whose parents require that they get an education and those that don't).

There are some kids that simply don't belong in calculus. But by making it optional, you're giving kids that should be in calculus the ability to get out of it. Few kids would prefer calculus over Positive Mental Attitude class, after all. And the way students are measured (Grade Point Average) will often actually reward the PMA student over the calculus one.

So I'm not sure. Thoughts?

Clarification: The classes I use above are examples. I use Theater and Positive Mental Attitude and fourth year of band and choir as examples of inessential electives. I use calculus as an example of upper-level math. Other electives include things that I find more useful such as computer programming and the like and it's quite possible that IT classes would be cut as well as theater classes. And in most cases, four years of math in high school would lead to precalculus or trigonometry (I took four years and ended up in precal).

According to a poll, roughly half of Europeans can speak two or more languages.

Honestly, I thought that number would be a bit higher. I guess it's just my thinking after being drilled and drilled about how "all" Europeans can speak at least two languages and many can speak three. I never expected that all could, but I figured more-or-less all but their underclass could. I was a bit surprised that Britain had the second lowest rate of bilingualism at 30%. I was less surprised that the most common foreign language known and understood was English as the European superiority myth that I was familiar with was that everyone was taught their native language, English, and some other language. But anyway, that actually helped explain the first. People that can speak English have less need to learn another language than those that can't.

That said, America's 9% bilinguilism is abysmal. That's made worse by the fact that we're an immigrant nation and therefore for a large chunk of the bilinguals English is the second language.

I tried to learn Spanish in high school and know some, but never became fluent. Of my closest friends (most of which have college degrees) only a couple are bilingual. Interestingly I know more bilingual people here in Idaho than I did in multiculti Houston. But they did not learn it in school, they learned it while training to become Mormon missionaries abroad. So even that success doesn't vindicate our school system - and ourselves, of course, for not demanding a better school system.

The school systems are, by-and-large, not serious about teaching us foreign languages. It's rarely a requirement and when it is you spend one hour a day spaced out over the course of a couple years starting past the age where our understanding of the world in English has solidified. I suppose I'll eat my words if that's how other nations do it it as well, but that strikes me as a very bad learning schedule. Not only are the schools not serious about teaching it in any meaningful capacity, but students seem to have little interest in learning it. The fact that so many high schoolers and college graduates take the much less useful French and German instead of Spanish or Asian languages and that parents let them make these decisions suggests to me that it's all approached quite leisurely.

We need people learning Japanese and the various forms of Chinese and Indian and increasingly Arabic and other languages of the middle east. This is important stuff for the US to retain its competitive advantage. I don't know if I'm a hypocrite for saying so since I can't speak Spanish or if I'm in a better position to object to the system because I'm a part of it and the mindset because I've lazily conformed to it.

I was reading a rather impassioned and biased article about a Georgia Tech student whose case helped spur Georgia's acceptance of the "academic bill or rights." What actually caught my interest was this:

Georgia Tech was originally a military school. Even today, the school offers an ROTC program, which is rare in higher education. On the technical side—in the agriculture and engineering departments particularly—the school leans conservative. Nonetheless, the liberal arts departments at Georgia Tech live up to the worst connotation of that phrase. For example, Ruth has even heard one political science professor make fun of some students’ Georgia accents right in their own home state.

Since when are ROTC programs rare? I thought they were pretty commonplace in public schools. In Texas - hardly a representative example, I acknowledge - every university I pinged had some sort of program (possible exception, Sul Ross State, which is half the size of my high school). In California, I'm not sure about the California State system, but every notable school in the University of California system (even Berkeley) has a program.

Am I using a different definition of ROTC than the article is?

The NEA is trying to get NLCB waivers for those schools taking in New Orleans refugees:

Schools welcoming the displaced students must not only provide classrooms, teachers and textbooks, but under the terms of President Bush's education law must also almost immediately begin to raise their scholastic achievement unless some provisions of that law are waived.

Historians said that those twin challenges surpassed anything that public education had experienced since its creation after the Civil War, including disasters that devastated whole school districts, like the San Francisco earthquake and the Chicago fire.

"In terms of school systems absorbing kids whose lives and homes have been shattered, what we're going to watch over the next weeks is unprecedented in American education," said Jeffrey Mirel, a professor of history and education at the University of Michigan.

I'm quite sympathetic to the dilemma, though I have some questions here. The fall of NO was undoubtedly a uniquely catastrophic event. On the other hand, its damage will presumably be diffused among many schools and the net effect could be no more than that of other circumstances. That's what has me concerned - it opens the door for other exceptions. Some school districts in the southwest may take more first-generation ESL immigrants that could off-set whatever gains that they make. Complaints on that score have been raised before. You could make an exception there, but once waivers start they can be rather difficult to stop.

On the other hand, a school that's barely treading water could really sink for reasons having nothing to do with their competence. An improvement among existing students could be turned in to a downgrade due to the influx of outsiders. That's not particularly fair to anyone.

It's a tough question.

Toyota recently announced that it was building a new plant in Canada instead of the South:

"The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States," said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, whose members will see increased business with the new plant.

I'm not sure, but I think he's calling us stupid.

Well no, not stupid, but uneducated. And not "us" but the types down there that would find themselves working in a non-union auto plant. Not to demean those that do, of course, but rather to assume that most people who take such jobs would make more money and may get more job satisfaction doing something else.

My first instinct is to sarcastically comment about how this is another victory for our public education system. But even my prefered solutions - such as vouchers, charter schools, and so on - are of limited utility in the rural South (or the rural anywhere, for that matter). And besides that, things like this are a black eye on us all (though they're saving millions in subsidies!), just as when we come up short on national studies on education.

And even if we have a lackluster education system, no matter where you go to school you can get enough education to work at an auto plant. At some point a number of the employees that Toyota is dissatisfied with made a choice to remain uneducated. And it is a choice that is unfortunately not too difficult to make, for some people.

Bill Cosby's critiques on urban black culture is reasonably well known. We have a large segment of our population that eschews education as something that 'other people' pursue. Much of Chris Rock's humor falls along similar lines. But there is a similar strain of thought in their cultural adversaries: uneducated, rural whites. Rednecks and Gangstas, united at last.

I don't consider anti-intellectualism a negative thing in and of itself. Indeed, there is a lot to disdain about know-it-alls who are neither as open-minded as they believe nor as enlightened as they pretend to be. That being said, an education is an education and the lack of an education is a lack of an education. I believe there to be a point of diminishing returns when it comes to formal education, but I believe it falls well after the point of being functionally illiterate and would have to be after the point where some critical thinking abilities are obtained.

What's most frustrating is that this is something that no government program can fix. Very few of these students did not have the tools available to them to learn. They may have been failed by our education system because they weren't given adequate attention and reinforcement, but it comes back to leading the horse to water.

And as much as I would like to think that vouchers would fix this, and as much as others may believe that flooding the system with more money, I have real doubts.