<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"> Anyone anywhere on the planet can get an excellent technical education, at home.<u></u><u></u></p><br><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">spike</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">My point of view: do you remember (maybe I am too old) those report cards we got in grammar school, where the teacher made some remarks about our in-class behavior or study habits? I wonder if that still goes on. POint is: at every level we need reports of what a person can and cannot do, and that requires better and better psychological tests (which go far beyond the typical person's thinking about tests, which is to say that they assume that clinical things are being measured.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">What do we see coming out of college? Degrees a person has. That's it. No measure of competence in dealing with others. No measure of weaknesses and strengths in their field. No measure of character. Of course there are tests that industry uses to try to measure these things. (for Spike - a home-schooled student has no impartial judge to rate their kids on these things - do you think they maybe are biased?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Improvement in tests and other ratings at all levels would help every teacher and every student, not to mention those looking to hire the students. At present, these tests are minimally used or even absent, and none of them is perfect, but they do have some minimal validity or industry would fire their industrial psychologists.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Industry still uses personal interviews, which have repeatedly been shown to be lousy at predicting job success (Dunning-Kruger effect - bosses are sure they can tell all sorts of things about a job candidate which studies show that few can.)</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Want to improve education? Improve ratings and tests. Put a psychologist or counselor in every school whose job it is to develop ways of measuring the students.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">bill w</p></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 10:36 AM <<a href="mailto:spike@rainier66.com">spike@rainier66.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US"><div class="gmail-m_7457277236646403118WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org</a>> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Dave Sill<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] big rip in education<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">On Wed, Mar 6, 2019 at 7:13 PM Dan TheBookMan <<a href="mailto:danust2012@gmail.com" target="_blank">danust2012@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></p></div><div><blockquote style="border-top:none;border-right:none;border-bottom:none;border-left:1pt solid rgb(204,204,204);padding:0in 0in 0in 6pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in"><div><p class="MsoNormal">I’m wondering why no one here has discussion Bryan Caplan’s on education:<u></u><u></u></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11225.html" target="_blank">https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11225.html</a><u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">>>… — why the BA and BS degrees have become the new high school diploma.<u></u><u></u></p></div></div></blockquote><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">>…Yep. And higher education is big money…<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Huge. Like plenty of other big money endeavors, education is an impacted industry. It is reacting as impacted industries do.<u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">>… Education *should* be about more than just acquiring the skills needed to perform a job...such as the skills needed to perform living a good life…<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Society is in the process of defining what education is really all about. If people come out of school knowing all about {insert plenty of the subjects where degrees are still being offered} but not having mastered modern skills and technologies such as how to find reliable information online, how to minimize taxes legally, how to invest and so on, that person lacks life skills and is not ready for prime time.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">When I was in college, we sometimes encountered liberal arts students (most of the campus was that.) If (s)he and I compared our curricula, we might comment in unison for the first sentence “What you are getting here isn’t even higher education.” Her second sentence would be “What you are getting here is mere job training.” My second sentence would be similar, but would lack eloquence, since engineering students are not required to master language skills. We only make things. Such as… money.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">>…I think independent skills testing/certification is the future. -Dave<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Ja, more employers are recognizing this. They need people who can develop new products at minimum cost and maximum speed, with little or no need for the skills for which the universities are coaxing students into ruinous debt. Certification is faster, it is lower cost (much lower) and it goes around the traditional admissions process. It’s a big win for the usual losers in that process. It levels the playing field. Anyone anywhere on the planet can get an excellent technical education, at home.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">spike<u></u><u></u></p></div></div></div></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>
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