Tuesday, October 27, 2009

American Labor Takes Too Long to Incubate

A real quick, but very insightful post, then I have to go.

I read this on Mish's blog and it got me thinking, "Dude, you're practically middle age by the time you get your doctorate and are ready to go into the labor force."

And then it got me further thinking as to just how much time we waste when we education our children and college students and how we could considerably shorten the time it takes to bring a kid from kindergarten to an employable adult.

First off a sheer improvement in efficiency by eliminating bad students that do nothing but distract those students with potential would certainly allow a teacher to cover an insanely higher amount of ground and impart an insanely higher amount of education. Along the same line would be getting parents to be real parents and force their students to study, to do well, and to do their homework.

Since both are politically incorrect because we champion losers in this country as well as it is a sin to accuse bad parents of...well...being bad parents, we have to focus on things that don't hurt people's feelings, especially morons at the expense of our future labor force.

This changes the focus to what I believe to be the inordinate amount of worthless "pre-requisite" classes that we force students to take to (put it simply) employ people who would otherwise be unemployable.

Why do we have phy ed?
Why do we mandate students take high school psychology?
How many of you took years of foreign language and never used it to this day?

It is these classes that need to be eliminated at the K-12 education level. They serve no purpose in training children into future workers, but they do employ a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise have jobs in the real world.

Then there is lord knows how much spent on "extra-curricular" activities that serve no purpose in helping a kid's future.

Admittedly, I teach dance. But this is recreational and for adults who have since graduated and are presumably in the working world. They have no illusions about going out and competing professionally. It is a veritable recreation. But I don't know how many women I've ran into who I could tell had previous dance experience. And when I asked them,

"Have you danced before?"

They invariably say,

"Yes, tap, jazz and ballet when I was a child."

"So are you a professional ballet dancer now?"

"Oh, no! *giggle*"

Well how much time, labor, effort, money and taxpayer cash was used teaching kids a dance they will never use? Line dance? Jazz? Ballet?

Music is the same way. Along the same line of sports (as well as I presume ballet), what percentage of students that take music and are in high school band go on to make careers in music? Less than 1% I presume. And this speaks nothing to the psychotic parents that (like my own) force their children at the insanely young age of 3 to take piano or violin or tennis.

Now these are all topics or hobbies kids pursue as kids during their k-12 days. However, when they graduate onto college, the pointless "jumping through hoops" classes do not relent.

Freshman composition is the perfect example.

I don't care how bad people's writing is. If it doesn't cut it, it doesn't cut it. But no matter if you had straight A's through k-12 in English, you still need to take this class. Why? Because a bunch of English majors in COLLEGE need a job.

But forget English, the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota require you not only take 3 years of a foreign language, but that you PASS A TEST before you can get your degree. I pissed away 2 years of college German that could have been spent on economics and finance which would have made me an even BETTER economist (if you can imagine that). Regardless, this is not for the students' benefit, this is to employ a bunch of people who majored in a foreign language and can't find a job at the UN.

Business school is just as guilty as any other college.

Why, if you are majoring in accounting, do you need to take HR or marketing? Again, it is not to make you "well-rounded" it's to employ otherwise unemployable "doctorates" in marketing.

And though I did not attend engineering school, there is no doubt a plethora of worthless and pointless pre-requisites in the arts and humanities you must have suffered that only postponed your graduation by a full year.

Now you may be asking "Captain, why are you so hard on people? Why can't you just let people enjoy life a little bit? Life is not all about math and science and engineering and economics."

You're right, that's what you do on your free time. But when you go to school, let us not kid ourselves, it's not for entertainment. It's to train you for a real job in the real world. It's to give you the skills so that you may work up enough money in a successful career so that you may afford pursue your hobbies in the future. Arguing otherwise is putting the cart before the horse, and no doubt you wish to make a living out of your hobby which is almost a guaranteed way to become a rent-seeker.

But there is a larger consequence, or perhaps "opportunity cost" for being so lackadaisical in the education and training of our future labor, and that is foregone production.

Consider this - it is in my estimation that a full 3 years could be cut out from the K-12 education by simply eliminating the worthless classes and activities as well as forcing our students to work harder. I also believe that if you get rid of all of fluff and forced-pre-requisite classes at the college level, you could scale an engineering degree down to 3 years and a liberal arts degree to 3 months (just kidding!). I also believe most masters degrees could be done in 4 years and doctorates (unless in a REALLY advanced field) could be done in 6. And in focusing our efforts on studying as well as eliminating the unnecessary classes, you could have online fully trained and qualified, labor ready to go to work.

Bringing this labor online 4-5 years ahead of schedule and you have some amazing benefits.

Most notably 4-5 years of additional production per graduating class. This alone would (assuming near full employment) more than pay for Obama's spending binge.

You worried about collecting social security when you're older? Well, if people were allowed to get to work earlier instead of rotting in a mandatory "Global-Warming and Why Bush is Hitler Sociology' class, the tax revenues might be there to actually shore up the SS fund.

And, of course, lest we forget, how about all the extra money those students make for themselves (assuming we don't tax them to death) with that extra 4-5 years income? Let alone less student loan debt they might have. Less debt and an extra 4-5 years of income, who knows, all those Gen-X'ers and Gen Y'ers could have actually AFFORDED the houses they tried to buy 3 years ago.

In short you would have a HUGE increase in generational production, GDP, tax revenues and wealth and the country would be immeasurably off.

But of course, there is one thing standing in the way of this;

Big Education.

For you see, such a streamlined educational system would mean a LOT less money for that industry, and no matter how noble and how prosperous a faster, more focused educational system would be for this nation, society must suffer a lower standard of living so we can employ some more theater professors and German teachers.

Enjoy Freshman Comp!

18 comments:

  1. I don't think you're entirely correct with a lot of what your saying. In regards to university you are dead on. As you progress higher up the education levels you should be learning more of less, rather than the less of more approach of elementary level.

    The thing is, while people do send their kids to do music, sport etc they are usually good for the child. You can choose to not have Physical Education in school but then you will wind up with a fat(ter) workforce. Having a fat workforce will drastically reduce a persons productivity, they will do tasks slower, consume more resources and drive up the costs of healthcare for everyone. The benefits of a healthy workforce are great and physical education has become one of the few ways to get kids off their arses.

    Study after study has shown that kids who do music in school, do better in school. Band geeks are nearly always simultaneously nerds. Why? Because they do music and by way of that skill have a more developed brain capable of more incredible things.

    It is ridiculous though what tertiary education has become. My own Prime Minister (Australia) has a BA (Asian studes) having majored in Chinese; nothing productive like commerce, business or economics but Chinese.

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  2. PeppermintPanda6:14 PM

    Bad students aren't the problem with the education system, bad parents and teachers are the problem ...

    While I accept that there are people who can't creatively work with a subject to achieve success at advance levels (primarily post graduate research), I reject the thought that there are people who are unable to learn well enough to get a High School education (or even a bachelor's degree); and I suspect that if students were properly motivated and pushed hard enough.

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  3. Here's an interesting question though for you CC.

    The US has lots of private universities. In fact, the top 24 universities in the world are private. Number 25, the number 1 ranked public school, is UC Berkeley.

    How come private schools with an incentive to produce quality still waste their time on majors like sociology, ethnic studies, etc. Sure, the leftists have captured the faculty senates and administration over the years. The endowments are huge. They can afford to be "liberal".

    I think the best college values are actually relatively small state schools and private colleges who must put up or shut up on education.

    What do you think?

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  4. Anonymous11:08 PM

    For my BSEE, I had to take some psych classes, so I tool cognitive science and physiological psychology, both relevant to neural network artificial intelligence that I did for my MS. I also had to take some other electives, so I took intellectual history of science, which I believe was of some value in understanding the "real world" of science.

    You know what almost no HS students take? Economics. Now there is a subject that should be mandatory!

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  5. AMEN SISTER! Yes, the caps were called for.

    I agree with virtually every word you said. Our education system is a disgrace, the only thing we teach semi-competently anymore are STEM majors (and that's largely due to having more money, there's still a lot of general education dead weight).

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  6. Anonymous6:49 AM

    Ok.

    I'm curious how many hours a night of reading or homework does a highschool student do?

    I'm thinking if that number is under 3hrs per day and at least another 1/2 day (6hours) on weekends - they ain't working even middling hard.

    I'm kinda suspecting that most high school students aren't even approaching that.

    You want to them to learn more? -More home work- Actual curricula that expect you know stuff is nice too.

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  7. Hi Nick,

    Well I think a previous commenter explained it best;

    "Why would a college or university spend millions on expensive engineering and lab equipment when they can hire a deadbeat loser group of lawyers, some cheap desks and some cheap office space, call it a law school and charge 3x's as much as they do the chemical engineering majors?"

    There's no fixed cost in offering "peace studies" as a major and most dumb kids today will major in that worthless stuff WHILE forking over $50,000 of their (well their parents') money.

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  8. I got my economics degree and I think 2/3 of the classes I took from year 1-4 were non-essential fluff. Computers 101? Like how to use the internet and Microsoft Office. What a waste of time.

    I went and took a bunch of sociology because I could boost my GPA and barely show up for the classes. I would have loved to graduate years earlier.

    Although I will say that one of my most useful classes was a Behavioural Economics class that was like a mix of Soci and Econ. Went a long way to explain why the econ models (which work well provided people behave rationally) don't tell us the whole story. When most of the world is full of idiots, you need to adjust your thinking.

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  9. Nick, to answer your question, those are rich peoples' schools, thus, their students can afford to major in queer studies and the history of hating your rich parents, because they have family money and connections to fall back on. Not to mention the connections they will make in school, meeting all sorts of future political and business leaders.

    qfa, you disturb me with how you assume that a government program is necessary for people to be healthy, or you association/causation fallacy regarding band.

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  10. Hey Cappy,

    I have been reading your blog for quite some time now and I am very impressed with what I see (especially the charts, oh the charts) and I agree with you on pretty much everything.

    However, I am not understanding some of your disputes with certain majors in college that lead to "worthless" occupations. While I agree that freshman composition, music composition, dancing, social Darwinism in the 21st century, post-modernism thoughts, and the like are akin to educational garbage I am not convinced that more noble ancient subjects, such as history, that we learned from our Greek and Roman ancestors, are under the contemptible majors you normally refute in your discussions.

    I was a history major in undergraduate school (graduated last year) and I am now in law school preparing to be a corporate business attorney for tax, intellectual property, and mergers and acquisitions cases. My history degree was not only principal in making me succeed (I am at the top of my class presently), but it has helped me read faster, write better, and analyze quicker than many of my colleagues with English or Philosophy degrees.

    I hope you understand where I am coming from and I look forward to your response.

    Regards.

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  11. Hey Cappy,

    I have been reading your blog for quite some time now and I am very impressed with what I see (especially the charts, oh the charts) and I agree with you on pretty much everything.

    However, I am not understanding some of your disputes with certain majors in college that lead to "worthless" occupations. While I agree that freshman composition, music composition, dancing, social Darwinism in the 21st century, post-modernism thoughts, and the like are akin to educational garbage I am not convinced that more noble ancient subjects, such as history, that we learned from our Greek and Roman ancestors, are under the contemptible majors you normally refute in your discussions.

    I was a history major in undergraduate school (graduated last year) and I am now in law school preparing to be a corporate business attorney for tax, intellectual property, and mergers and acquisitions cases. My history degree was not only principal in making me succeed (I am at the top of my class presently), but it has helped me read faster, write better, and analyze quicker than many of my colleagues with English or Philosophy degrees.

    I hope you understand where I am coming from and I look forward to your response.

    Regards.

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  12. RandomCollegeGuy8:15 PM

    I also have been reading your blog for quite some time Captain and I couldn't agree more with what you've had to say. The college I currently go to stresses the liberal arts heavily until the point of nausea. I can honestly say that as a junior, I have only taken about 4 or 5 econ classes (my major) and 1 finance class (my other major) in all 5 semesters here. It is an absolute waste of my time and money towards what I truly should be studying and I'm glad you've made this point because it is something that I complain about on a daily basis to my friends, family, teachers, etc.

    I wish I could speak more about the inefficiencies that you've highlighted and frankly how dead on you are in this post, but I must do some more marketing, organizational behavior, and varieties of non-violence homework in order to keep up my GPA.

    Honestly, the only way to actually learn more is to do it yourself. I wish employers would learn this soon...a degree from a liberal arts college is worthless in anything that requires a quantitative skill set. God help me.

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  13. Being a civil engineer I believe a big problem with college actually begins in high school. When I could work 30 hours a week and still make passing grades who really cares about GPA in high school. Working and getting paid were much more important at the time than spending my time on fluff that the high school thought was useful. It wasn't until I got to college that I got down to the meat and bones of what education should be. I do think there is a lot of waste in college and I believe it is due to the fact that I learned nothing in high school to prepare me for real classes and homework. Thus slowing me and everyone else down by needing to take pre-requisites because we didn't already know this stuff. Improve high schools and you can get rid of most of the other begginning garbage in college which should make it faster to get a real degree. Besides we know all those people with fake fluffy warm fuzzy degrees will end up at McDonald's anyway trying to pay off their stupid student loan mistakes.

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  14. Hi General,

    No, you're right SOME of the liberal arts are needed. History, economics (which is technically a liberal art), etc., but not "Indochinese History" or "Mayan History" A general Western or World history would do (and most schools do a poor job at that).

    Beyond that though, I don't want to take "Mandatory Theater for Everybody" or "College Pscyhology 101." Never used it, never will.

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  15. Hi Random College Guy,

    What is the name of your college. Might be able to at least bring them some bad press and highlight their waste.

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  16. I agree, I personally have wasted $17,000 on college classes I will never use, I had online arguments with my teachers and fellow classemates over how usless the assignments and classes where that we had to take in order to get a buisness managment degree. Do I use that degree, nope. It is all very frustrating and discouraging how much money we have to waste to try and get an education and then never use the junk we learned.

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  17. Anonymous2:39 PM

    Another problem with college degree fixation is that it denigrates jobs that pay well in the real world and won't be outsourced to India: electrician, plumber, auto mechanic....

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  18. Anonymous9:35 PM

    In order to have college students who are smart enough to fight the creeping BS, you need to fix high school.

    In order to fix high school, you need to fix elementary school.

    Before adulthood there are really only two levels of education that matter in terms of the general population: the bare minimum - what we'd like to expect of someone entering a menial job; and the preferred adult norm - what we'd prefer to see in anyone who votes, has kids, sits on a jury, et cetera - and also would like to assume as a starting point for a college education.

    So what would really make sense is to establish a clean separation between elementary and high school. Establish exit requirements for elementary school, and require an elementary certificate for high school admission.

    Then what they need to start doing with high schools is to reorient and simply aim to produce graduates who are independent adults. More vocational-type courses, encourage employment and offer part-time class schedules, and adopt a system that keeps the red tape to a minimum when giving credit for material learned outside the classroom.

    One concept that needs to go is the idea of "preparing" for high school or college. Utter garbage. At a given stage of education, you learn what you came there to learn until you're finished, and when you're done you're ready to move on.Don't make "preparing" for the next stage into its own "experience". The concept of middle school is utter hogwash. As far as I can tell all it accomplishes is that it rolls the 6th grade into a higher cost-per-student section of the school district budget requiring bigger buildings with wood shops and computer labs that are grossly underutilized. A large part of middle school is either a rehash of elementary subjects or a preview of high school subjects that will be repeated, which to me indicates that the whole thing is a waste of money.

    To me, independence is being able to tell your boss: "I have a large savings account and other skills".

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