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[Education] - Where Silicon Valley Is What's The Matter With Kansas

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  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User regular
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    spool32 wrote: »
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    I think there is an argument for making college mandatory and increasing the number of colleges to satisfy that mandate. Also making it really hard to expel college students

    That sounds absolutely miserable for people who are practical rather than academic.

    Everyone is different.

    I'd want to somehow provide an equivalent amount of financial assistance to people that do not go to college but train elsewhere.

    Some people don't want to train at all. They want to launch into a job and learn while doing it. They want to drive a truck rather than spend 3 years at truck-driver's school.

    In addition to whatever starting salary, they should get a benefit commensurate with a college education value

    What? No. The idea of free college is that people need the education in order to secure employment, not just that we need to give everyone $X worth of stuff. If you don't need college to do the thing you want to do for a living, cool, we can spend that money on other stuff that benefits society.

    It's not like if someone needs a quarter million in cancer treatment under a single payer system, we need to cut everyone else a quarter million dollar check so everything balances out.

    If the problem is that people need the education, free college helps. That is not the problem though.

    The problem is that people need the sheepskin. Free college does not solve this problem.

    They need... condoms...?

    Do you even understand the STD pandemic we'll unleash if we give college away for free? To say nothing of the worldwide shortage of red solo cups we'll inflict on the nation. People refuse to think of the consequences!

  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    It'd be like the Olympic village, only moreso

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    edited November 2019
    spool32 wrote: »
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    I think there is an argument for making college mandatory and increasing the number of colleges to satisfy that mandate. Also making it really hard to expel college students

    That sounds absolutely miserable for people who are practical rather than academic.

    Everyone is different.

    I'd want to somehow provide an equivalent amount of financial assistance to people that do not go to college but train elsewhere.

    Some people don't want to train at all. They want to launch into a job and learn while doing it. They want to drive a truck rather than spend 3 years at truck-driver's school.

    In addition to whatever starting salary, they should get a benefit commensurate with a college education value

    What? No. The idea of free college is that people need the education in order to secure employment, not just that we need to give everyone $X worth of stuff. If you don't need college to do the thing you want to do for a living, cool, we can spend that money on other stuff that benefits society.

    It's not like if someone needs a quarter million in cancer treatment under a single payer system, we need to cut everyone else a quarter million dollar check so everything balances out.

    If the problem is that people need the education, free college helps. That is not the problem though.

    The problem is that people need the sheepskin. Free college does not solve this problem.

    Free college does not make this problem worse.

    Heffling on
  • MillMill Registered User regular
    I suspect the bullshit of needing degrees for shit that shouldn't need degrees would go away if college was more affordable. A ton of shitty employers are doing it so they can minimize the amount of work and the needed HR people. Though pretty sure that tactic is doing a shit job at this anyways, given the amount of whining about skill gabs. No doubt, a fair number of those jobs are struggling to get applicants because who wants to work a job that requires a 4 year degree, that doesn't make use of said degree, doesn't network one with people in a field that does and pays between minimum wage and 15 dollars an hour. Hell, my last employer had such a shitty scheme for one of it's departments, though they couldn't make the 4 year degree a mandatory thing. That department was a revolving door. You'd get people in for a few months that viewed the job as a stop gap because it paid less than it should have. Others that wanted a full time job on the side of their nightly and weekend college courses. Others that couldn't hack and got fired. There was like one or two perennial employees that stuck with it because they didn't really need the money, it was a time killer. Last I checked, one did finally leave and I do believe it came to the fact that the pay was shit for what the job wanted. It was the worst department to have high turnover in because it had constant time crunches, irregular work flows and simple mistakes could end up being million dollar mistakes for the company.

    Anyways, if it gets easier for people to get degrees. Then requiring a degree to answer phones or enter in simple data becomes useless, if that demand was solely to cut down on application numbers.

    Though some of the US's issue is that we don't have strong labor rights and don't really have a setup to come down hard on shitty employers that are using unfair hiring practices that aren't screwing over protected classes.

  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    edited November 2019
    The epidemic of jobs having insane degree requirements is 100% a boomer thing and is definitely a construct that can be countered with legislation.

    I have a masters degree in a life science field, but my current job? Literally anybody with a high-school diploma and some mechanical aptitude could do it, yet it now requires a minimum of a bachelor's degree; twenty years ago, a diploma was perfectly acceptable. The pay is quite good (because it's got shitty travel requirements) at over 80k a year, but there's absolutely zero reason for it to need a degree other than at some point in the last couple of decades, boomers took control and decided that since they had college degrees, anybody else doing the job also had to have degrees.

    We don't need more people getting degrees, we need to block employers from putting degree requirements on jobs that don't need degrees.

    Ninja Snarl P on
  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    My father worked at a pharmaceutical manufacturer as a production tester [where they would take random samples off the line and test them to make sure they were good}
    When they switched owners or something he got fired because they now required a degree to do that job

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Degree requirements on a lot of these jobs are more a function of having enough applicants that you can be choosey and good old institutional inertia. The connection to post-secondary education, even cheap or free post-secondary education, is pretty tenuous. If they couldn't find people with degrees to fill the spot, they'd lower the requirements till they did.

    Plus there's just the general habit of requirements on applications being bullshit in general.

  • Lord_AsmodeusLord_Asmodeus goeticSobriquet: Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered User regular
    It also means that if you get the job despite not meeting the requirements they can use that as a psychological hook to make you feel like you don't really deserve the job or are unqualified so you keep your head down and don't start asking for raises or promotions above your station since you "shouldn't really be there in the first place".

    Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    It also means that if you get the job despite not meeting the requirements they can use that as a psychological hook to make you feel like you don't really deserve the job or are unqualified so you keep your head down and don't start asking for raises or promotions above your station since you "shouldn't really be there in the first place".

    This is really common in fields that have introduced degree requirements for certification. I have a certification that I would not be qualified to test for again were I ever to let it lapse. It's kind of terrifying that I have to maintain this certification for the rest of my life or lose my job and never be able to get it again. The shift to a degree requirement is of course being shuffled into a general pitch of "it will increase demand and wages".

    It hasn't, most hospitals just changed the name of the technician/technologist position into something else so they can just hire people who are uncertified and assign them the exact same duties while keeping wages ridiculously low.

  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    There's a lot of social stigma in applying for a job without a college degree. People think a college degree implies maturity and discipline.

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    https://www.nber.org/papers/w26480

    Estimates of teacher “value-added” suggest teachers vary substantially in their ability to promote student learning. Prompted by this finding, many states and school districts have adopted value-added measures as indicators of teacher job performance. In this paper, we conduct a new test of the validity of value-added models. Using administrative student data from New York City, we apply commonly estimated value-added models to an outcome teachers cannot plausibly affect: student height. We find the standard deviation of teacher effects on height is nearly as large as that for math and reading achievement, raising obvious questions about validity. Subsequent analysis finds these “effects” are largely spurious variation (noise), rather than bias resulting from sorting on unobserved factors related to achievement. Given the difficulty of differentiating signal from noise in real-world teacher effect estimates, this paper serves as a cautionary tale for their use in practice


    Big Data believers: Ok, but the teachers must clearly be responsible for it!

  • HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Degree requirements on a lot of these jobs are more a function of having enough applicants that you can be choosey and good old institutional inertia. The connection to post-secondary education, even cheap or free post-secondary education, is pretty tenuous. If they couldn't find people with degrees to fill the spot, they'd lower the requirements till they did.

    Plus there's just the general habit of requirements on applications being bullshit in general.

    In my experience, if the company cannot find a worker that meets their requirements, they do without and let the remaining salary workers pick up the slack with unpaid overtime. If it goes on for more than 3 months, the position is closed in a company wide hiring freeze.

  • Stabbity StyleStabbity Style He/Him | Warning: Mothership Reporting Kennewick, WARegistered User regular
    The epidemic of jobs having insane degree requirements is 100% a boomer thing and is definitely a construct that can be countered with legislation.

    I have a masters degree in a life science field, but my current job? Literally anybody with a high-school diploma and some mechanical aptitude could do it, yet it now requires a minimum of a bachelor's degree; twenty years ago, a diploma was perfectly acceptable. The pay is quite good (because it's got shitty travel requirements) at over 80k a year, but there's absolutely zero reason for it to need a degree other than at some point in the last couple of decades, boomers took control and decided that since they had college degrees, anybody else doing the job also had to have degrees.

    We don't need more people getting degrees, we need to block employers from putting degree requirements on jobs that don't need degrees.

    Why not both?

    Stabbity_Style.png
  • TryCatcherTryCatcher Registered User regular
    There's an article about how experts believe that a debt forgiveness program and free public college would boost the economy:
    "In the short term, it would be very positive for the housing market," says Lawrence Yun, the National Association of Realtors chief economist. He says his group's surveys show that student debt has people delaying home ownership by 5 to 7 years.

    He's not endorsing any particular plan, but he estimates that broad loan forgiveness would push up the number of home sales quite a bit. "Home sales could be say 300,000 higher annually if people were not saddled with large student debt." Yun says that would be, "a boost to the housing sector as well as the economy.

    The effects would go beyond the housing market. William Foster is a vice president with Moody's, which just did a report on student debt forgiveness. "There've been some estimates that U.S. real GDP could be boosted on average by $86 billion to $108 billion per year," which is "quite a bit" he says. "That's if you had total total loan forgiveness." Foster says it wouldn't have to be total forgiveness to see significant results. And he says it could also help address rising income inequality.

    "Student loans are now contributing to what's perceived as lower economic prospects for younger Americans," Foster says. After all — millions of people are delaying home-ownership. And that's the most powerful way for most working and middle class people to build wealth.

    "A typical homeowner has net worth about $230,000, while a typical renter has only $5,000," Yun says.

  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    A total burnout can realize that forgiving all student loans would be a massive economic stimulus. Giving me an extra 1464.84 to just swing around every month will definitely result in that money getting spent. Between Dream and myself we'd get back damn near 2500 bucks a month if our loans were just flat out canceled. I barely even comprehend how to have that much money.

  • HamHamJHamHamJ Registered User regular
    Regulating degree requirements on job postings seems like the definition of stupid government over regulation. Fix the fundamental problems in the economy leading to underemployment, regulate salaried hours better, give power back to unions, etc and it will fix itself. Treat the actual problems not the symptoms.

    While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
  • ZiggymonZiggymon Registered User regular
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Regulating degree requirements on job postings seems like the definition of stupid government over regulation. Fix the fundamental problems in the economy leading to underemployment, regulate salaried hours better, give power back to unions, etc and it will fix itself. Treat the actual problems not the symptoms.

    It's more to do with the culture of lawsuits and bureaucratic demands that we have these qualification demands on jobs. In some aspects it's important to have for high skilled jobs. In others it's a way of protecting an employer from potential lawsuits if something goes wrong.

  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    Ziggymon wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Regulating degree requirements on job postings seems like the definition of stupid government over regulation. Fix the fundamental problems in the economy leading to underemployment, regulate salaried hours better, give power back to unions, etc and it will fix itself. Treat the actual problems not the symptoms.

    It's more to do with the culture of lawsuits and bureaucratic demands that we have these qualification demands on jobs. In some aspects it's important to have for high skilled jobs. In others it's a way of protecting an employer from potential lawsuits if something goes wrong.

    Having been on multiple search committees, there's more than a degree of "What does our dream candidate look like?" magical thinking, where everyone builds the fantasy resume of someone who ends up being more qualified than anyone in the room for an entry level position. That the job market is dire enough that many candidates end up meeting the requirements - or just puffing up their resumes to get close enough to get their application passed through from HR - just builds on the dysfunction.

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    Paladin wrote: »
    There's a lot of social stigma in applying for a job without a college degree. People think a college degree implies maturity and discipline.

    Or the other side of that argument being a Vet implies that as well
    {there was a slime ball of a manager I had who had barely that I found out from vague stories from others he got a general discharge for a nasty problem he caused so they basically marched him the front gate here but this was a story I heard at the VA when I was making fun of what a slime ball he was.
    but this was also the era at work that the store manager got the bright idea to get work release from the local jail
    Which is another problem of prisoners reentering the workforce. Many just want to get their lives back and stay out of trouble but there is a stigma

  • ZiggymonZiggymon Registered User regular
    Ziggymon wrote: »
    HamHamJ wrote: »
    Regulating degree requirements on job postings seems like the definition of stupid government over regulation. Fix the fundamental problems in the economy leading to underemployment, regulate salaried hours better, give power back to unions, etc and it will fix itself. Treat the actual problems not the symptoms.

    It's more to do with the culture of lawsuits and bureaucratic demands that we have these qualification demands on jobs. In some aspects it's important to have for high skilled jobs. In others it's a way of protecting an employer from potential lawsuits if something goes wrong.

    Having been on multiple search committees, there's more than a degree of "What does our dream candidate look like?" magical thinking, where everyone builds the fantasy resume of someone who ends up being more qualified than anyone in the room for an entry level position. That the job market is dire enough that many candidates end up meeting the requirements - or just puffing up their resumes to get close enough to get their application passed through from HR - just builds on the dysfunction.

    There is to some extent. But from my experience it becomes a case of bureaucratic need for qualifications to do such basic jobs. Use a two step ladder? Lift a box? Answer a phone? each one needs training from some agency these days and the threat of legal pursuit if employees don't have these qualifications. With some you can totally understand the health and safety benefits of having qualifications to handle dangerous cleaning chemicals. For others it's an overreaching nightmare. One job listed needed a qualification that was literally a qualification on how to use a kitchen tap/faucet.

  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    Sleep wrote: »
    A total burnout can realize that forgiving all student loans would be a massive economic stimulus. Giving me an extra 1464.84 to just swing around every month will definitely result in that money getting spent. Between Dream and myself we'd get back damn near 2500 bucks a month if our loans were just flat out canceled. I barely even comprehend how to have that much money.

    Weed and sheepskins

  • FANTOMASFANTOMAS Flan ArgentavisRegistered User regular
    I hate to agree with HamHam, but he is kinda right, a larger change would be required in order to implement free, public higher education. If the concern of the detractors is that it will affect "jobs", the solution is not to limit education, but to strenghten the participation of workers and the state in how work is apreciated, particularly in this case, work that requires education on a specific field.
    Im talking about unions! Capitalism is evil and you need a structure to fight it.

    Also, why do people hate treating symptoms? When I get sick I treat both the disease AND the symptoms, becaue I dont like my life being super shitty while I heal.

    Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    FANTOMAS wrote: »
    Also, why do people hate treating symptoms? When I get sick I treat both the disease AND the symptoms, becaue I dont like my life being super shitty while I heal.

    The fear is that the powers that be will give you morphine for your broken leg and send you home: "What are you complaining about? It's not hurting anymore, right??"

  • tinwhiskerstinwhiskers Registered User regular
    And because some people are horrible and teachers are people, we have a story of a DFW area teacher tweeting that undocumented students should be "rounded up":
    Georgia Clark, a veteran high school English teacher in Fort Worth, had an urgent request for President Trump: She needed help pulling undocumented immigrants from her school.

    “Mr. President, Fort Worth Independent School District is loaded with illegal students from Mexico,” Clark wrote May 17 on her now-deleted Twitter account, @Rebecca1939. “Anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth would be greatly appreciated,” she wrote in another tweet.

    Clark was careful in her approach, she believed, and told the president she needed guarantees her identity would be protected when action was taken. “Texas will not protect whistle blowers. The Mexicans refuse to honor our flag,” she wrote.

    Clark says she didn’t mean for everyone to see her thoughts and requests on immigration. She says she believed the tweets were private between her and the president.

    This, naturally, resulted in the expected outcome:



    Diane A. Smith is a local education reporter in the DFW metro area.


    We'll see if it holds up on appeal. Cause apparently this was like her thing, and she managed to keep her job after even more egregious shit several times already.

    same article.
    Clark, an English teacher at Carter-Riverside High School, has worked with the district since 1998, the review said, and has a history of violations — including insulting her students’ ethnicity. Even before the tweets came to light, the district was already investigating separate allegations of derogatory remarks by Clark in the classroom.

    Last month, when one student asked to go to the bathroom, Clark told the student to “show me your papers that are saying you are legal,” a student told investigators in an account corroborated by another student.

    She denied to investigators that she made the comment, which the report claims occurred May 17 — the same day Clark tweeted at Trump multiple times about what she perceived as illegal immigration in Fort Worth and in the school district.

    ...

    In 2007, Clark kicked a student, the review said, though an investigation determined it was “without malice.” In 2013, she was disciplined for referring to a group of students as “little Mexico” and called another student “white bread.” Those allegations proved to be true, according to the review.

    This time though, she stepped in it publicly. Publicly tweeting that ICE should be sent into the schools has left her with a lot less willingness to just look away.

    Ahem #CalledIt

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/us/teacher-trump-tweets-reinstated.amp.html

    A high school English teacher in Texas who was fired after she sent tweets to President Trump asking him to rid her school of undocumented immigrants should be reinstated or be paid a year’s salary, a state agency ruled this week.

    ...

    In firing Ms. Clark, the district cited the May 17 episode in class, the tweets and an episode during the 2013-14 school year, when some students accused Ms. Clark of referring to a group of Hispanic students as “Little Mexico” and a white student as “white bread.”

    But the report from the independent examiner rejected the district’s rationale. It said students complaining of Ms. Clark’s conduct in class on May 17 — the accounts of which she disputed — were not credible or were motivated by a bias against her.

    The report said that there was not enough evidence to substantiate the 2013-14 episode and that Ms. Clark’s tweets were “free speech.”

    “Clark’s tweets are statements of a citizen on a matter of public concern protected by the United States Constitution and do not contravene or impair policies or proper performance of the district’s functions,” the report said.

    The report said that annual appraisals showed that “she has been evaluated as an excellent teacher consistently throughout her employment” with the district.


    6ylyzxlir2dz.png
  • kimekime Queen of Blades Registered User regular
    That makes me sad

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  • ShadowfireShadowfire Vermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered User regular
    kime wrote: »
    That makes me sad
    The report said that annual appraisals showed that “she has been evaluated as an excellent teacher consistently throughout her employment” with the district.

    They haven't been doing disciplinary paperwork, I guess?

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  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    edited December 2019
    A lawsuit in California argues that are unconstitutional and cannot be used in UC admissions:
    A lawsuit expected to be filed Tuesday is challenging the University of California system's use of the SAT or ACT as a requirement for admission. A draft of the document obtained by NPR argues that the tests — long used to measure aptitude for college — are deeply biased and provide no meaningful information about a student's ability to succeed, and therefore their requirement is unconstitutional.

    "The evidence that we're basing the lawsuit on is not in dispute," says attorney Mark Rosenbaum of the pro bono firm Public Counsel. "What the SAT and ACT are doing are exacerbating inequities in the public school system and keeping out deserving students every admissions cycle."

    Public Counsel is filing the suit in California Superior Court on behalf of students and a collection of advocacy groups.

    AngelHedgie on
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  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    edited December 2019
    ACT/SAT prep is such a huge industry and tutoring specifically designed to get the highest score is expensive. I'm totally down with this.

    I've long wondered how I'd have done in college given all the friends I had who were never driven to succeed in high school suddenly got really passionate about learning when they could pick the subject post high school.

    People who were B and C students that didn't get scholarships but had the money to not need them. I really am curious how C and D students that were motivated to learn about a subject and were given an environment where it was possible would do.

    Grades are ridiculous in general.*

    *As a tool to determine aptitude or educational worthiness.

    dispatch.o on
  • PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    I'm really not sure where you go from there though. I'm on board with it - the existence of an industry that is literally just for gaming the system should be pretty indicative that something's gone wrong there. I can't imagine colleges abandoning academics as a criteria. They want to filter people out easily (same reason we have BS degree requirements because of HR), so I dunno what they'd use. HS transcripts probably, but that's subject to tons of variance between schools and such.

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  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    IIRC, high school GPA, regardless of what kind of school it is, ends up being a way better predictor of success in college than anything else.

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    They mostly use grades up here. The better programs will also have maybe a test or the like. But it's mostly just grades.

    It ends up working ok. I would say the problem is mostly towards the top, where the variance between what grades you get because of what school you went to can mean you do or don't get big scholarships or the like.

    In general my experience is that a lot of people had grades that were inflated by going to a school that either taught less or gave grades easier.

    Also you can just get the school admin fudging grades to help it's students out. Not unknown afaik especially in the private high schools.

  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    I can recall quite vividly a girl in high school crying in Biology 2 and calling her dad because she got a B and it would hurt her chances for Stanford. The teacher got stuck on the phone getting threatened for the first 15 minutes of the following class period. Apparently her dad owned a hotel chain (local chain) and was willing to get a lawyer for his baby girl.

    Putting teachers in that position is dumb.

  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    dispatch.o wrote: »
    I can recall quite vividly a girl in high school crying in Biology 2 and calling her dad because she got a B and it would hurt her chances for Stanford. The teacher got stuck on the phone getting threatened for the first 15 minutes of the following class period. Apparently her dad owned a hotel chain (local chain) and was willing to get a lawyer for his baby girl.

    Putting teachers in that position is dumb.

    I have this girl in my first hour!

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • Martini_PhilosopherMartini_Philosopher Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    They mostly use grades up here. The better programs will also have maybe a test or the like. But it's mostly just grades.

    It ends up working ok. I would say the problem is mostly towards the top, where the variance between what grades you get because of what school you went to can mean you do or don't get big scholarships or the like.

    In general my experience is that a lot of people had grades that were inflated by going to a school that either taught less or gave grades easier.

    Also you can just get the school admin fudging grades to help it's students out. Not unknown afaik especially in the private high schools.

    See, I'm not sure that's the best idea either. With each state and each school district within each state having different rules on grading, there's no real consensus over what constitutes good grades or not. That doesn't even get into districts that have weighted grades vs those that don't. It's almost as if an independent testing body is needed to smooth the curves to get a good measure. Too bad we live in a gilded age of assholery.

    All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
  • NSDFRandNSDFRand FloridaRegistered User regular
    dispatch.o wrote: »
    ACT/SAT prep is such a huge industry and tutoring specifically designed to get the highest score is expensive. I'm totally down with this.

    I've long wondered how I'd have done in college given all the friends I had who were never driven to succeed in high school suddenly got really passionate about learning when they could pick the subject post high school.

    People who were B and C students that didn't get scholarships but had the money to not need them. I really am curious how C and D students that were motivated to learn about a subject and were given an environment where it was possible would do.

    Grades are ridiculous in general.*

    *As a tool to determine aptitude or educational worthiness.

    My anecdotal experience: I was a C or D student in the entirety of my public school experience, maintaining 2.0 eligibility in high school simply so I could wrestle varsity. Before then going to Job Corps was a serious thought because I absolutely hated school. I am now the first person in my family to have an undergraduate and a graduate degree with roughly a 3.7 gpa. I tested into GAT in elementary but only moved up in grade until jr. high because of administrative placement, then was held back once in 8th grade and once in 9th grade.

    College was an entirely different experience than public school.

  • ShortyShorty touching the meat Intergalactic Cool CourtRegistered User regular
    edited December 2019
    that's pretty close to my experience too

    school made me hate learning, and I had to rediscover that learning is great on my own

    when I did, it made the decision to go back to school really easy, and then it also turned out that college is a flatly superior experience to k-12

    Shorty on
  • kimekime Queen of Blades Registered User regular
    I actually did really well on SAT/ACTs. I was just good at those kind of tests. Because yeah, it's so far removed from a measurement of an ability to succeed that they should have been removed a while ago.

    I have no idea what is a good replacement. I wouldn't have thought GPA was honest/standard enough, but apparently according to y'all it works well? That's good then.

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  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    kime wrote: »
    I actually did really well on SAT/ACTs. I was just good at those kind of tests. Because yeah, it's so far removed from a measurement of an ability to succeed that they should have been removed a while ago.

    I have no idea what is a good replacement. I wouldn't have thought GPA was honest/standard enough, but apparently according to y'all it works well? That's good then.

    I tested into orgo at Michigan without taking chemistry in high school. Standardized tests measure your ability to take a test and literally nothing else.

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
  • tinwhiskerstinwhiskers Registered User regular
    kime wrote: »
    I actually did really well on SAT/ACTs. I was just good at those kind of tests. Because yeah, it's so far removed from a measurement of an ability to succeed that they should have been removed a while ago.

    I have no idea what is a good replacement. I wouldn't have thought GPA was honest/standard enough, but apparently according to y'all it works well? That's good then.

    The whole thing is sorta a side show to the fundamental issue that something that shouldn't be competitive is made competitive because states have been strangling public colleges for decades.

    Like if Suzzy takes an AP class and gets a B instead of an A, or gets a mediocre ACT score and thus goes to Directional Michigan instead of U of M that being something that potentially drastically alters the trajectory of their life, is a pretty fucking stupid system to set up. All though how much of this is real(outside of the ivy's) vs just good marketing by the biggest schools is probably debatable.

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  • HamHamJHamHamJ Registered User regular
    I imagine if this is successful it will create an even more biased system as grades from "bad" schools will just be treated as less than those from "good" schools, and it will be even more about having an in with someone.

    While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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