How to Figure the Least Common Factor : Math Conversions

More Money, Shorter Buses

This morning on WMAL (now on FM 105.9 in DC instead of that classic rock music!) I heard the Morning Majority discuss Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan comment on his desire for year-round school.  He claims it would help improve academic performance and help keep students from having to relearn a lot of their knowledge that they supposedly gained the previous year.  All three show hosts tended to agree with Arnie Duncan on this because they believed it would be better for them.

The fact of the matter is, most education from government skools (and I suspect most private schools) is utterly worthless.  Academic credentials are not as all that hard to obtain, especially in this day and age with the ever increasing supply of college students.  Most of the time, a degree is used to get an interview, not a series of important lessons to help you in your career.  If I could have gotten a job as a computer programmer without a degree, I would have done it, although I have met others who have managed to do this.

For example, most school curriculum are more concerned with sex education than teaching basic economics.  Which is more important, understanding the basics of supply and demand or putting a condom on a banana?  To most teachers, administrators, parents, politicians, and union thugs, safe sex takes precedence over learning how the world works in terms of economics.

Personal finance is another thing.  Pretty much everything I learned about personal finance I had to learn on my own.  If our kids do not know how to properly balance a checkbook, calculate simple interest, or figure out their own spending priorities, then why do we keep on questioning why they still live at home with their parents at age 33?

This notion of year-round education has been compared to other countries like China and India, but I can say that there are countries who have less days than we do and still produce better test scores than us.   I think what we need is less education in America because forced learning is no learning at all.

Human beings only learn the things they want to learn, even when they claim they have to.  The truth is, we are learning more and more these days but forget most of it once we graduate from high school or college.  And this is often times because the knowledge gained in those years is utterly useless to us as working, productive adults.

If Arnie Duncan and his ilk were concerned about the lost knowledge that was gained by students, he would declare all of us to be in perpetual schooling.  The truth is, there is no magic number of days or years of forced learning that can make any of us into finely tuned and highly knowledgeable geniuses.  There are upper limits that every human being can reach and most of us are more concerned with football, primetime television, and maintaining our job skills than philosophy and banana condoms.

With the rise of the Internet, most topics can be researched and discussed online.  I have learned a lot about economics, history, and political theory from just browsing the Internet.  The way in which information retrieval is changing and I firmly believe that Arnie Duncan is nothing more than a dinosaur in the education game.  His ideals seem to be oriented towards more money (tax-payer funded of course) to schools which seems to lead to shorter buses.

If you have any good sense, you would know it is better to homeschool your kids than to subject them to forced learning.  Too bad most parents like to outsource their parenting to the teachers and day care professionals.

Question of the Day: Is There An Education Bubble?

It’s something about the scarcity and the status. In education your value depends on other people failing. Whenever Darwinism is invoked it’s usually a justification for doing something mean. It’s a way to ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if they could just go to Harvard, they’d be fine. Maybe that’s not true.-Peter Thiel

A friend, a very big wheel indeed in finance, tells me that the higher ed bubble is about to pop, and about time, too, since federal interference in education has led only to vastly higher prices and a humongous administrative-faculty nomenklatura living high on the hog for not much effort. “I worked my way through school,” he said. “That’s impossible now, thanks to all the ‘aid’ to students. And while it’s true that outfits like the University of Phoenix have a market aspect to them, virtually all their profits come from saddling students with federal loans they can never pay back.” The future of education is in independent institutions like the Mises Institute and maybe LRC, not state and para-state universities and colleges which offer, with few exceptions, a rip-off.-Lew Rockwell: The Next Big Bubble

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, weighs in:

...for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble. “A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.-Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education.

Thiel is attacked for telling the truth:

Thiel's point is that we shouldn't require college degrees—and ask students to go into such significant debt—for jobs that don't take advantage of that education.

...

But Thiel's program isn't just a little hypocritical, it's also irresponsible. As he must know, the romantic story of the dropout who makes it big is an exception.-PayPal Billionaire Peter Thiel Should Stop Telling College Students to Drop Out

Which misses the point, but what else do you expect from the "educated".

US post-college debt, jobs and value

More and more American students are facing enormous tuition debt and low job prospects after graduating from college. Some find the solution of finding work abroad, but millions are settling for less. Is the US raising a generation of janitors with PhDs?

College and business interesting numbers.

64 percent of the owners of respondent firms had at least some college education at the time they started or acquired ownership in their business; 23 percent had a bachelor's degree; and 17 percent had a graduate degree. A bachelor's degree was the highest college degree completed by over 20 percent of all owners of both employer firms and non-employer firms. Just under 1-in-4 of all owners of employer firms had a high school education or less, compared to 28 percent of the owners of non-employer firms.

The numbers would contrast the value of money expended compared to the propaganda fostered on the American public that only college guarantees success.

31 percent of the owners of respondent firms were over the age of 55, with 20 percent of these owners between the ages of 55 to 64, and 11 percent are 65 and over.

Twenty-nine percent of all owners of respondent firms were between 45 and 54 years old; 24 percent were between 35 and 44 years old; 12 percent were between 25 and 34 years old; and only 2 percent were under 25 years old.

Differences in age distribution also varied among owners of employer respondent firms with 32 percent of the owners between the ages of 45 to 54; 25 percent between the ages of 35 to 44; and 32 percent over the age of 55. Less than 1 percent of employer respondent business owners were under 25 years old.

Reviewing the best undergrad college degrees by salary reveals an interesting list of the needs for business and of course possible jobs and income. The vast majority involve skills and knowledge specific to the production of goods or the workings of society. On the other end college majors that tend to have to the least return on money expended are revealing.

Funny thing about the human condition is reflected in the bottom 10% of return on educational investment the two highest earners from the bottom 10% are Fine Arts and Drama even in the worst of times thousands of years ago artists, musicians, and actors fill a need in humans for entertainment and decoration.

The religious knowledge test

Based on the religion test by the Pew Research Center poll on religious knowledge.

The results and the breakdown are worth the long session it will take to review, very worthwhile.

When this first was released I was fascinated and had more than a handful of post on this study/poll. I went so far as to dig up the original test and reformat it for an on-line test that will give you your results - It could be fun.

General religious knowledge test » online exam

ADHD: The Tonsillectomy of the 21st Century?

Sir Ken Robinson compares the current wave of ADHD diagnoses to the "plague" of tonsil removals during the mid-20th Century. He argues that while ADHD may be a real condition, it is currently being over-diagnosed to treat children underperforming among rigid, one-size-fits-all educational systems.

Sir Ken Robinson: The Element the full video.

Shake Up A Rotten Educational Establishment With Spending Cuts

America spends far more on education than countries like Germany, Japan, Australia, Ireland, and Italy, both as a percentage of its economy, and in absolute terms. Yet despite this lavish government support for education, college tuition in the U.S. is skyrocketing, reaching levels of $50,000 or more a year at some colleges, and colleges are effectively rewarded for increasing tuition by mushrooming federal financial-aid spending. Americans can’t read or do math as well as the Japanese, even though America spends way more (half again more) on education than Japan does, as a percentage of income, according to the CIA World Fact Book.

In light of this, it is easy to see why some education experts like Neal McCluskey are floating the idea of “draconian education cuts“ to shake up a rotten educational establishment.

Read more: Time for Big Cuts in Education Spending?



All this spending has produced little if any discernable good! In higher ed, it has mainly encouraged more and more people to pursue degrees that they either don’t need, can’t handle, or that don’t signify much learning, all while enabling colleges to raise their prices to capture the aid increases! In other words, all the magical thinking about education spending notwithstanding, the evidence strongly suggests that more spending ultimately does little educational good while bleeding taxpayers dry and expanding our utterly unsustainable debt.-Hurrah for ‘Draconian’ Education Cuts!

Education, creativity and ADHD?

From CDC - State-based Prevalence Data of ADHD Diagnosis



The ADHD Map of the US - darker colors higher numbers.

Links: Worthless Higher Education

So, what I want to know is, why are you wasting money on glossy fundraising brochures full of meaningless synonyms for the word "Excellence"? And, why are you sending them to ME? Yes, I know that I got a master's degree at your fine institution, but that master's degree hasn't done jack shit for me since I got it! I have been unemployed for the past TWO YEARS and I am now a professional resume-submitter, sending out dozens of resumes a month to employers, and the degree I received in your hallowed halls is at the TOP OF IT and it doesn't do a fucking thing.

Dear University Alumni Office

For 400 years, higher education in the US has been on a roll. From Harvard asking Galileo to be a guest professor in the 1600s to millions tuning in to watch a team of unpaid athletes play another team of unpaid athletes in some college sporting event, the amount of time and money and prestige in the college world has been climbing.

I'm afraid that's about to crash and burn.

The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer)

Commonly Misunderstood Terms: Education

via Blotting Out Reality