25 years old and deep in debt

[Phillip V]

284,000: Number of American college graduates working in minimum-wage jobs in 2012.

About 8% of all minimum-wage workers held at least a bachelor's degree in 2012. Americans with some college or an associate's degree made up nearly 35% of minimum-wage workers.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/03/30/number-of-the-week-college-grads-in-minimum-wage-jobs/

[MadImmortalMan]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/27/opinion/ted-prize-students-teach-themselves/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

What if students learn faster without teachers?
By Richard Galant, CNN
updated 10:00 AM EDT, Tue March 26, 2013

(CNN) -- What if everything you thought you knew about education was wrong?

What if students learn more quickly on their own, working in teams, than in a classroom with a teacher?

What if tests and discipline get in the way of the learning process rather than accelerate it?

Those are the questions Sugata Mitra has been asking since the late 1990s, and for which he was awarded the $1 million TED Prize in February at the TED2013 conference.

Mitra, professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, won the prize for his concept of "self organized learning environments," an alternative to traditional schooling that relies on empowering students to work together on computers with broadband access to solve their own problems, with adults intervening to provide encouragement and admiration, rather than top-down instruction.

Mitra's work with students in India has gained wide attention and was the focus of a 2010 TED Talk on his "hole in the wall" experiment, showing the potential of computers to jump-start learning without any adult intervention.

Coming to education trained as a physicist, Mitra said he was encouraged by his boss to start teaching people how to write computer programs. When he bought his first personal computer, he was surprised to find that his 6-year-old son was able to tell him how to fix problems he had operating the machine. He thought his son was a genius, but then heard his friends saying the same thing about their children.

Thinking about children living in slums in New Delhi, he said, "It can't be possible that our sons are geniuses and they are not." Mitra set up a publicly accessible computer along the lines of a bank ATM, behind a glass barrier, and told children they could use it, with no further guidance.

They soon learned to browse the Web in English, even though they lacked facility in the language. To prove the experiment would work in an isolated environment, he set up another "hole in the wall" computer in a village 300 miles away. After a while, "one of the kids was saying we need a faster processor and a better mouse."

When the head of the World Bank came to see the experiment, Mitra said he encouraged him to go to the New Delhi slum and see for himself. After spending time with the children, bank President James Wolfensohn "came back and put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'How much?' " Mitra said he received $1.5 million, which allowed him to press on with experiments in India, Cambodia and Africa, finding self-organized learning worked to improve English-language pronunciation, reading comprehension and even the basics of DNA replication.

Mitra said the traditional system of education is largely based on the necessities created by Britain's colonial empire in which a vast amount of territory had to be governed by people writing things on paper and sending them around the world on ships. Schools turned out clerks who functioned as interchangeable parts in a vast bureaucracy where the skills of reading, writing and arithmetic were key.

He argues that today's world needs a new system in which the role of computers in aiding learning is paramount.

To help speed learning, Mitra has recruited hundreds of "grannies," volunteers from the United Kingdom, many of them retired teachers, who function more in the role of "grandparents" than teachers, skypeing into learning environments around the world, encouraging students to do their best and praising their achievements.

With the TED Prize money, Mitra intends to build a laboratory, most likely in India, where he can test his theories through experiments that supplement schoolwork. He likens it to a "safe cybercafe for children" where they can strengthen their English skills, which can be a route to economic advancement.

Mitra said he doesn't think teachers are obsolete but suggests their roles may be changing as students increasingly have access to self-learning through computers. And he argues that his self-organized teams may be an alternative to regular schools in places where teachers may not be available.

Traditional education stresses tests and punishments, two things that Mitra said causes the brain to shut down its rational processes and surrender to fear. Adopting a method closer to that of grandparents, who shower children with admiration, is "the opposite of the parent method," which relies on threats, Mitra said.

I find a lot of these TED talks fascinating. Note "trained as a physicist". Educators themselves never seem to have any creative ideas about what to do.

[Razgovory]

If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, we'd all be ass deep in nuts.

[Scipio]

284,000: Number of American college graduates working in minimum-wage jobs in 2012.

About 8% of all minimum-wage workers held at least a bachelor's degree in 2012. Americans with some college or an associate's degree made up nearly 35% of minimum-wage workers.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/03/30/number-of-the-week-college-grads-in-minimum-wage-jobs/

Yes, but they were shitty degrees.  Like Classical Languages.  Believe me, I know.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

284,000: Number of American college graduates working in minimum-wage jobs in 2012.

About 8% of all minimum-wage workers held at least a bachelor's degree in 2012. Americans with some college or an associate's degree made up nearly 35% of minimum-wage workers.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/03/30/number-of-the-week-college-grads-in-minimum-wage-jobs/

Yes, but they were shitty degrees.  Like Classical Languages.  Believe me, I know.

I would like to see that chart broken down by major, and not the overly-broad BLS categorizations.

[crazy canuck]

284,000: Number of American college graduates working in minimum-wage jobs in 2012.

About 8% of all minimum-wage workers held at least a bachelor's degree in 2012. Americans with some college or an associate's degree made up nearly 35% of minimum-wage workers.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/03/30/number-of-the-week-college-grads-in-minimum-wage-jobs/

If the commercials playing during March Madness are any indication of reality then college athletes who obtain a degree can look forward to a rewarding career in the rental car sector.

[citizen k]

If the commercials playing during March Madness are any indication of reality then college athletes who obtain a degree can look forward to a rewarding career in the rental car sector.

Indeed, and according to another commercial vets leaving the military can look forward to a bright future at Walmart.

[Phillip V]

Chinese Deluge U.S. Master's Programs



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324883604578398831847621160.html

[Ideologue]

"Chinese marks buoy failing higher education system."

[Camerus]

I find a lot of these TED talks fascinating. Note "trained as a physicist". Educators themselves never seem to have any creative ideas about what to do.

Except current educational theory (as developed by educators) in Canada regarding the role of teachers has been of the view suggested by the article for over a decade.

[CountDeMoney]

Great, 20 years after my sister would let me crash for the parties, now all the almond-eyed ass shows up at Case.

[Ed Anger]

SMU? Wonder what they think of the pony express?

[garbon]

Where are the real universities in that list?

[Ideologue]

Where are the real universities in that list?

LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME I WENT TO STANFORD I WENT TO STANFORD LOOK LOOK LOOOOOOOOK

Is it even possible for you to knock this shit off for, like, ten minutes?

[alfred russel]

Yes, but they were shitty degrees.  Like Classical Languages.  Believe me, I know.

Something that really grates at me is talking to people that majored in a foreign language, but never developed a real ability to speak it. How can you spend four years studying a language and not develop proficiency, or on the other side, how can a college give a degrees to those people?

It really isn't a language thing, it is more a failure of the university system. I'm not deluding myself into thinking that the history or biology major learned more than the spanish major that can't speak spanish.

FWIW, I think universities used to require some degree of proficiency with Greek and/or Latin for admission.