Is college worth the costs?

Original Post by Papa TaggartRR (e-mail correspondence)
Posted here via TaggartRR
Feel free to join the conversation.

Interesting. I have thought this for a while. If parents took the same $80-90k that the spent on college and invested it in the child's name and the child learned some trade, would they be better off at 50 years old?

Is it worth it to go to college?
For people considering college, perhaps the greatest lesson of the Great Recession is not that you shouldn't go to college but that you should make sure the investment will pay off.

Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38561562/from/toolbar

10.78 G-Force Units

We have some wide receiver named Decker who was impacted (on a well-timed attack) by a Cal Safety.

See video here (00:03:39 in time length):
http://www1.umn.edu/news/features/2009/UR_CONTENT_148395.html

"At one point it was as if Decker weighed 2300 lbs" (1)

We really shouldn't need MRI-imaging of these players' brains and spinal cords to know that serious damage incurs should we? Weigh this cost to the individual against the societal need for violence and destruction; the discussion becomes much more complicated.

1) Morrison, Deanne. "Gee' whiz, Dan Dahlberg University of Minnesota Physics Professor calculates the G-Forces in a Football Collision. UMNews.

Chomsky for a good laugh?

"I had a startling experience a few weeks ago. I travelled to Mexico City for talks at the National University, an enormous and very impressive institution with high standards of achievement and scholarship. Entrance is selective, but the university is virtually free. I then visited an even more remarkable institution, the college in Mexico City established by former mayor Lopez Obrador. Again, the facilities and standards are quite impressive. It is not only free, but has open admissions, though sometimes that requires some delay and sometimes assistance for students lacking adequate preparation. Shortly after I went to San Francisco for talks, and learned more about the California institutions of higher education. They have been at the very peak of the international higher education system. By now tuitions are quite high, even for in-state students, and cutbacks are affecting teaching, research, and staff. It would be no great surprise if the two major state universities, UC Berkeley and UC Los Angeles, will soon be privatized while the remainder of the state system is reduced considerably in scale and level. Needless to say, Mexico is a poor country with a struggling economy, and California should be one of the richest places in the world, with incomparable advantages. I mention these recent experiences only to emphasize that the recent cut-backs in higher education seen in much of the world cannot simply be traced to economic problems. Rather, they reflect fundamental choices about the nature of the society in which we will live. If it is to be designed for the wealthy and privileged, mostly engaged in management and finance while production is transferred abroad and most of the population is left to fend somehow for themselves at the fringes of decent and creative life, then these are good choices. If we have different aspirations for the world of our children and grandchildren, the choices are shameful and ruinous." (1)


Very succinct, very precise, very accurate. He just did what doctors do to patients but on the society level (doctors rarely make a diagnosis simply off one symptom even though it's possible). If that Mexican girl is in BIG this week, then I'm going to ask her more about the educational systems.

1) An email from Noam Chomsky. Chomsky.info Accessed Dec. 1, 2009
http://chomsky.info/letters/20091130.htm

Fish, how do we know what is good?

They all are, they're delicious and that's how we know to eat them. I'm joking of course.

Rosh and I go to dinner on Thursdays and I was looking for a website which offers an assessment of fish species cross-referenced for how and where caught. I'm going to order the Halibut tonight and ask the waiter where it was caught. If he answers the question, I will remain a customer of this restaurant, if he does not, I will not.

NOTE: This article is influenced by Food Inc., a film which was influenced by Michael Pollan who was influenced by Upton Sinclair who also wrote Oil, a book which was made into a movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair

1) Monterray Bay Aquarium Website
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_alternatives.aspx

The Wire - Greatest television show of all time?

Last night I finished season 5 of The Wire. I am more documenting that than anything else as I think I'll need time to process the show and write something meaningful on its behalf. This is likely the best show I have ever seen and may in fact be the best television show of all time. This, of what I've read of Shakespeare, lines right up there (even though the aims of the two are different). It really is like literature on screen.

David Simon the shows creator, worked with Ed Burns, a former detective (and I thought crime journalist for a Baltimore or Washington based newspaper but I may be thinking of Simon). I highly recommend reading any of his books or watching any of his interviews (easily found on google or youtube one of which is linked below). I'll try to find some of his articles from the Baltimore Sun and bring those for discussion here.


http://www.hbo.com/thewire/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire#cite_note-greatest-2

Bill Moyers compares him to Dickens but before that Edward Gibbon!!!
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=david%20simon&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv#

Core Standards Initiative

On NPR this morning a lively discussion regarding national education standards covered the feasibility and reliability of implenting new standards for public education. The difference between this and past attempts according the Hoover Instiute expert and National Governor's Association (1, 2) apparently is that this time the standards are being called for by a coalition of states (all but Texas and Alaska's governors if memory serves).

Maybe Julie knows something about this?

We're looking at questions along these lines:

Why is this set of standards better and how are they different from the MCA's?
Are the standards appropriate for college entrance (and exit), is college entrance the goal?
Are the standards high enough (or maybe they're too high)? Compared to the current standards?
Should there be national standards for teachers (as there are for accountants, doctors, etc)?
Will these standards help the US compete against other countries (we are still lagging I presume)?
Are the standards created objectively or possibly to make sure everyone passes?


1) Hoover Institution, Wikipedia. Accessed Sept 30, 2009

2) Hoover Institution Stanford University Accessed Sept 30, 2009.


http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/09/30/midmorning1/

http://www.corestandards.org/Standards/index.htm

Internet Class Divisions

Kind of funny, but kind of not…an interesting question is broached here. Are there class division emerging online? Read about this microcosm and lets discuss whether it is translatable to the entire internet and is this unpreventable.

http://www.alternet.org/media/142356/facebook_and_myspace_users_are_clearly_divided_along_class_lines/?page=1

“For decades, we've assumed that inequality in relation to technology has everything to do with "access" and that if we fix the access problem, all will be fine. This is the grand narrative of concepts like the "digital divide."
Yet, increasingly, we're seeing people with similar levels of access engage in fundamentally different ways. And we're seeing a social media landscape where participation "choice" leads to a digital reproduction of social divisions. This is most salient in the States, which is intentionally the focus of my talk here today.”