Professionalism and Professional Success

We like to think they go together. Here is an example of a doctor for whom they conflict.

“Why wouldn’t I give patients a Percocet prescription? It makes their life easier and my life easier.”

The Students, United Won't be Divided

"College students everywhere are asking tough questions: Why is our tuition so high? Where are our jobs? Can't you see your words hurt me, you dumb piece of $^!+?"

 The cost of college rises and the benefits decline. How can this be? (plainspoken version)

A venture capitalist searches for the purpose of school

Ted Dintersmith wants to re-imagine North American education.

They had stellar resumes, early career success (often in consulting, investment banking, or corporate America), and were driven to succeed. Yet such patently qualified people often proved hopeless in the world of innovation, and I couldn’t quite figure out why.

He's very excited about a "new" approach.

[The Future Project]’s strategy centers on a far more fundamental “flip.” They start by helping students define projects or, in their vernacular, dreams. Motivated by an ambitious personal goal, students are motivated to learn the skills, content, and character traits required to complete their self-directed initiatives. The shift in student engagement is stunning. Given a reason to learn, students bring energy to classroom assignments, and commit “free” time (including coming in on snow days!) to improve their writing, public speaking, project management, collaboration, and math skills.

I suspect he's more wrong than right. I suspect he either overestimates the motivation and creativity of a classroom of students or underestimates the amount of material good students learn in a year. But as school critics go, he's interesting.

Introducing Men Without Chests

C.S. Lewis wrote some of the most astoundingly insightful commentary on the modern world (which came before our present postmodern one). The Screwtape Letters or The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe are light and fun. The Four Loves or The Abolition of Man are more logical and demanding. Even more so for a troglodyte like me who misses half of the allusions. C.S.Lewis Doodle helps the flow with illustrations. Here is the first chapter of “The Abolition of Man” ending with this:

We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the spirited element: the head rules the belly through the chest ...It is an outrage that [men without chests] should be commonly spoke of as intellectuals. ... Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary. It is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so. ...We continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. ...we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and demand of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

Related: How Men Without Chests predicted the modern university's unsoundness

Computers in the Class

Do we want more or less?
Principals, politicians and the public have long been enthusiastic about technology modernizing the classroom. They want to prepare student for the future. I saw a study a year ago providing data to push back on the enthusiasm: computers encourage multi-tasking and distractions.
This year there is a bigger study: less speculation on causes, more detail about how much use is ideal.
These guys are more enthusiastic.

Major Success

College major success rates, that is. Who earns, who works, who is full-time, who is in his field. Ben Casselman of FiveThirtyEight has compiled a list of 173 college majors and correlates it to how much new grads earn and how likely they are to use their degrees.

His method has a pretty big flaw (which he addresses in the details) that you should not miss. As long as you keep this in mind, the results are useful: is it possible that the average petroleum engineer is smarter, harder-working and more motivated than your average library science practitioner? Casselman compares average earnings for university grads to high-school only grads. Is that a similar pool of people?

I've made similar posts before.

Staying Healthy Amid Pressure Not To

For decades people have grumbled that university environments can be unhealthy. The Coddling of the American Mind (A reference to this pivotal work) in the Atlantic examines popular trends in the context of the powerfully successful psychological field of cognitive behavioral therapy. They make the case that emotional reasoning, trigger warnings, labeling microagressions and “catastrophizing” are literally harmful to mental health. Solutions could come from contemporary psychology or ancient philosophers like Marcus Aureluis* or Buddha.

*Relevant at 2:00, Aurelius at 4:20 of 33:00.

(Aug'15) McArdle adds: College as a consumer experience serves to "shelter" students from any benefit. 

(Sept'15) After a massive response, Lukianoff responds to the controversies in this video.

"Learn better how to argue fairly with yourself."

...In case the implications of that original article weren't big enough for you.
The Real Reason We Need to Stop Trying to Protect Everyone’s Feelings

(Jan'16) The habits start in high-school.

(Jun'19) Now a book: similar to antifragile.

Why You Need to Understand Statistics

While this is "honest" in the sense of not being fraud, it is not honest in the sense of giving you the truth. If your skill in logic and statistics is weak, you will certainly walk away believing a falsehood. I'm not sure that is accidental.
More likely, it's a battle: an epic struggle between universities and student. You, to get their education and degree. They to get your money. Their side seems more sophisticated.

 Once upon a time, we marketed law schools with a printed brochure or two. That changed with the advent of the new century and the internet. Now marketing is pervasive: web pages, emails, blog posts, and forums.

With increased marketing, some educators began to worry about how we presented ourselves to students. As a sometime social scientist, I was particularly concerned about the way in which some law schools reported median salaries without disclosing the number of graduates supplying that information. A school could report that it had employment information from 99% of its graduates, that 60% were in private practice, and that the median salary for those private practitioners was $120,000. Nowhere did the reader learn that only 45% of the graduates reported salary information.

How is Work?

Have you heard of TED talks? Do you know people who won't shut up about TED talks. Well, you're right they can be overplayed and the moments of genius seem to be in decline. Even so, there are gems. Cringing awkward storytelling mixed with crisp insight: here is my favorite from six years ago.

If you want to know more about Mike Rowe and the state of work in North America, go here. For more stories, go here.

What's so bad about work, anyway? John Calvin got it right five hundred years ago. Work is only secondarily that stuff we do to put food on the table. “Follow your passions”, “Do what you love and the money will follow”: that's the third priority, at best. No, work is how we serve one another and a practical way to show love.

Are There Moral Facts?

Compare

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

With

-Copying homework assignments is wrong.

-Cursing in school is inappropriate behavior.

-All men are created equal.

One of them must be wrong.

Our 60 Year Experiment in Moral Education

 Thinking about the two cardinal innovations in teaching morality that began in the 60's,

No one speaks more authoritatively about the Socratic method than Plato, and Plato maintained that it was to be reserved for mature men over the age of thirty. "One great precaution," said Plato, "is not to let them [students] taste of arguments while they are young" — the danger being that they would develop a taste for arguments rather than a taste for truth. Young minds, like young puppies, said Plato, would only "pull and tear at arguments."

If 20% of Your Students Drop Out...

...whose fault is that? the student's? the university's? the public's? some combination?
If the public invested $50,000 and the student (and parents) invested $50,000 in two wasted years, does anyone deserve a refund?

(In the US, the actual rate is ~40%, in Canada it is harder to find.)

Grade Inflation: The Empire Strikes Back

Would you like me to grade easier? Are you sure?

Questions to Ask a University

Universities have a reputation as havens of expanded minds and stimulating thinking. They can be. They can also be among the most closed, fearful places in contemporary North America. If you are interested in your university getting these issues right, here are some questions to ask.
(Aug'15) Now that you about to go, tips from the Factual Feminist.

What Do the Boys Like?

A 2009 study "asked teachers and students to 'narrate clearly and objectively an instructional activity that is especially, perhaps unusually, effective in heightening boys’ learning.' The responses–2,500 in all–revealed eight categories of instruction that succeeded in teaching boys.":

• Lessons that result in an end product–a booklet, a catapult, a poem, or a comic strip, for example.

• Lessons that are structured as competitive games.

• Lessons requiring motor activity.

• Lessons requiring boys to assume responsibility for the learning of others.

• Lessons that require boys to address open questions or unsolved problems.

• Lessons that require a combination of competition and teamwork.

• Lessons that focus on independent, personal discovery and realization.

• Lessons that introduce drama in the form of novelty or surprise.

Actually, lessons that include this kind of stuff tend to get praise from the girls too.
via

Education and Careers

University professors often wax eloquent about the glories of education for education's sake: a noble, but expensive luxury. Students and their parents usually think about education as career training. Here is a list of traditional university majors with a lousy track record for landing jobs.

I notice two things about the list: they are fields people take for the pure love of education and they don't include the women's studies, environmental studies, African-american studies &c. that are the usual butt of career jokes.

OTOH - Good jobs w/o degrees - maybe a good way to follow up that philosophy degree.

Alternative Certification

Some people can learn from books. Some need a teacher. The downside of teachers is that we are expensive and not very responsive at 2:00 in the morning or whenever you might most like to learn. Either way, however, reliable, professional teachers are needed to provide grading: to assure that the student has learned.

Uh oh!

Update: Sept '14
It is only one study, possibly biased (the article says little about method and I am too lazy to research further.) but MIT says that online courses teach as well as classrooms. Uh oh!

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

Job prospects are poor these days and the economic fundamentals don't look to improve. Here are some bright spots (US data). Here are some impostors.

If you are hoping that an education might help, the answer is maybe. Here is how the subject you studied correlates to salaries and employment rates.