Most of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings’ speeches and editorials run along the same theme. The speech she delivered at the DePauw Discourse 2006 is no different. I find it interesting that she brings up India and China, the two countries President Bush feels we must compete with. Her speech focuses more on the economy and employment, and she notes that college graduates have an unemployment rate of 2% as compared to an overall unemployment rate of 4.6%.
This, I guess, is not tolerable. We need to compete and the key is education. Ironically, Spellings points out that for a variety of reasons, we do not know exactly how well or how poorly our higher education system is doing.
But over the years, we’ve basically invested tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money in higher education and just hoped for the best. As a result, we don’t have a very good picture of how the system works today and what can work better.
That is enough of a mandate to increase federal oversight, introduce tracking of every college student, mandate standardized testing and a variety of other measures which give greater power to the central government and less to the colleges and universities educating our young adults. That and our need to compete with India and China.
India’s world-class education system is highly centralized, and has the notorious honor of failing a UNESCO test in child education. With a literacy rate of 61%, India has the highest number of illiterates in the world. They also maintain a staggering 12% of the population of tertiary age in tertiary education. Clearly, the U.S., which only has 82% of its population of tertiary age in tertiary education, cannot compete.
China boasts similarly impressive numbers. Economic data, which is determined by a centralized state more interested in the appearance of having few problems, is difficult to ascertain. Official estimates place unemployment in China at about 4.3%. However, China has a radically different formula for calculating unemployment than the U.S., and more realistic analysts place China’s unemployment at closer to 10%, with regional unemployment as high as 40%. China’s literacy rate of 90.8% nears our own (97.7%), and it manages to educate 19% of its tertiary aged population in tertiary education.
The difficulty of competing with India and China is not in their education system. Both nations have made marked improvements, at least from a statistical point of view, in recent years. But the thousands of products in Wal-Mart labeled “Made in China” are not coming from a highly educated workforce poised to compete with the United States. They are coming from a workforce that is paid considerably less with a per capita income of approximately $742 per year.
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Karl Marx would love the popular moves among politicians in various state governments and the federal government to ban so-called "junk" food in schools, and to "put healthy food in" convenience stores and on the tables of those they define as poor. It's a very elitist and arrogant mindset that promotes this ideology, and it needs to be addressed.
Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us. This vote should serve as an important reminder to the American people of where their representatives really stand when it comes to policing the world, empire building, and war.
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forstand
Oct 30, 2006
I have been looking for work as a controls engineer in Boise, Idaho, for 3 months without success. I have 3 degrees, an AS, a BS and an MS. I am 58 years old. My cost of a BS and MS totals about $80k. They have had a very poor return on my investment.
Let me tell you that age discrimination is alive and well in Idaho (and likely the remainder of the country). The only degree that I am likely to use for employment is my AS in Electronics. The rest was just a waste of money and time and soon will be removed from my résumé.
Employers want cheap labor here. That means youngsters fresh from college. Unless you are young then consider other options rather than higher education. I have over 30 years of experience and I will not work for entry-level wages because the government conned a bunch of people into getting degrees that dilute the job market.
Remember that this government is owned and run by business for business, not the people.
In a week I will be returning to California and re-activating my contractor’s license. I prefer work as an engineer but I am fortunate to have kept this license.
Q
Oct 30, 2006
your best bet is to start your own business. virtually everything else is modern day slavery, because in the end, when you work 40 years for some company, all you get is a gold pen, for not taking any sick days, while the children of the people you work for, are born rich. think like them, become them. invest, take ownership it’s the only way to really get a piece that’s truly yours.
forstand
Oct 30, 2006
Q,
You are correct. That is why my BS has a minor in business and my MS as well. Also Ball State University has an excellent program in entrepreneurship and I took one of their classes via distance learning for my MS. I highly recommend Ball State’s entrepreneurship program and wish I had known of it earlier. I planned ahead.
I still enjoy working as an engineer.
Now I need to determine how to compete against the contractors who hire illegals from Mexico. Maybe I will advertise as “illegal free” or “Mexican not spoken here.” I may put on my truck the Mexican flag with a ‘NOT” circle and diagonal line with the text: “This is NOT the American flag.”
Dave
Nov 07, 2006
I found it interesting attending the Ohio State University and all the TAs were either Indian or Chinese except for my Drama class. It was tough just to understand their English. It was also a little embarrassing how Chinese and Indian students were much better prepared for math and science than us. If we really want to compete, we need to make middle schools and high schools better. After all, the Chinese, Japanese, and Indians who go to our universities are those who couldn’t make it into their own country’s top universities.