Hat tip Gayle
Via Confessions of a College Professor
One of the weird things about higher education is how the smart people are fleeing it. Now, that’s at the grad school level, and I noticed it seemed to start just about the time I was done with graduate school: my most talented friends were getting their Ph.D.s, seeing what higher education had to offer, and decided an academic career was a terrible idea. They headed to the “real world” never to do anything for education or research. It takes brilliance and character to conceive “the four years spent getting a Ph.D. was a waste, and I need to do something different,” and walk away from all that hard work. I acknowledge my error here.
That’s my anecdotal evidence regarding the really smart people (although I’m not alone in seeing it), but what of the rank and file college student? What’s been happening there? A helpful chart answers the question:
It may only seem like a few points every decade, but in terms of statistics, there’s much to be said about this chart.
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First, a minor digression.
In the olden days, companies would give “aptitude tests” to people they might possibly hire. This was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as the company would invest considerable resources into training an employee. Thus they were quite motivated to make sure the employee was “apt,” able to learn the skills the company needs.
There were complaints that these aptitude tests were RACIST, and so companies that used them opened themselves up to huge lawsuits from a government with infinitely deep pockets to pay for the lawyers to file such lawsuits. Companies not wanting to fight such an impossible battle got rid of the tests.
The government forced aptitude tests to disappear but companies still wanted some way to tell if a person would be able to learn the work they were going to train for. What to do? Well, the government generously allowed companies to restrict hiring to “college graduates,” i.e., hiring to only people who had a government-granted certification of aptness.
Say, does anyone else see a conflict of interest in government forcing people to not use anything but government to determine something? Let’s see how the Law of Unintended Consequences works out here.
I majored in Computer Science at college. I programmed every day. I went to graduate school for computer science. I programmed every day.
My first job: I was a computer programmer at HBO.
I was so bad that they had to send me to REMEDIAL school for two months to learn enough about computer programming to be as good as their WORST programmer.
Thus it came to pass that having a college degree became a “gateway” into the middle class, unlike in the past where simple talent and skills were enough. The funny thing is, a college degree as it is today doesn’t really help companies much. Even if you have a very specific skills degree like “Computer Programming,” if a company hires you, you’ll likely still have months of training in how to actually program in a way that the company will find useful. The collegiate version of programming focuses on computer languages and skills which went obsolete a decade or more ago (because it takes at least 10 years to set up a college degree program, and anyone who deals with computers knows a decade may as well be 1,000 years for computers…).
While I blame the student loan scam for the immense growth in the size of our campuses, the loans just pay for the degrees…the demand comes because many companies have no other way to restrict their hires beyond requiring a college degree, and the kids are told this nearly every day in school.
Now, let’s look at that chart more carefully, by first considering the variation from each decade, for the first four decades:
| 60s to 70s | -3.2 |
| 70s to 80s | -3.1 |
| 80s to 90s | -2.1 |
| 90s to 2000s | -1 |
You can dispute the validity of intelligence tests in general but you can’t dispute the trend in the above. Certainly you expect to see variation from decade to decade, but when the variation is always in one direction (down), you must suspect it’s not random.
It may look like there’s a bit of convergence, namely that the drop is going to zero, but this is just how probability works—the proportion of people with IQ between, say 109.1 and 112.2 is roughly the same as the proportion between 102.9 and 103.9 even if the latter is a smaller range of numbers.
More simply said, in terms of proportion, every decade we lose about same amount of intelligence in our college graduates. Ok, that still might not be simple enough, but the gist should be clear to the layman: a college degree means way less than it used to in terms of intelligence.
Now, let’s consider the most recent decade, where the drop in IQ is now 2.9. This is a relatively huge drop compared to the previous decade, about 4 times as much in terms of proportion.
In short, we’ve gone from a disturbing but relatively constant drop in the IQ of our college graduates to a very sharp drop.
Today, in terms of intelligence, a college graduate now is simply average. How useful is such a government certification? The price of the degree has gone up dramatically while the usefulness of that degree to employers has dropped even more so, to effectively zero. You could just get a random guy off the street and expect average intelligence, after all.
I’m saddened by the loss of our most intelligent people in graduate school: we’re losing our best and brightest because they’re smart enough to see quickly that higher education is a dying system that would merely exploit them…this does not bode well for humanity, as this will impact the advancement of human knowledge.
Alas, the issues are even bigger than what’s happened in graduate school:
To say we’re well into the territory of diminishing returns is to understate the problem–we’re past the point of negative returns. Most Americans in college today are not benefiting from being there. They’re foregoing work to accrue debt for degrees that, if they increase earning power at all, do so only marginally and they’re picking up an unhelpful sense of entitlement in the process.
While there is truth in the above, I’m more concerned by the suddenly accelerating drop in IQ of our college graduates in the last decade. At this pace, it’s reasonable to conjecture that very soon a college graduate will have below average intelligence. It’ll be perfectly clear then that the smart people aren’t just leaving graduate school, they’re fleeing college in general.
It’s a big problem for humanity that our scholars will no longer represent the smartest people humanity has to offer. It’s a bigger problem for humans that having a college degree will soon mean that you’re of below average intelligence.
If the trend continues, and all evidence says it will, by next decade having a college degree will be telling your employer: “I was stupid enough to get a degree and you should not hire me.”
Once again, we see the Law of Unintended Consequences in action, as turning higher education into a government program to determine who is qualified to have a good job will instead determine who is unqualified.
That our kids are going in debt for a certification of incompetence is insult to the injury. End the student loan scam.
And yet I see many employers who require a four year degree for an entry level position. No degree, no chance.
There are back doors into some.
IF you know someone.
“The government forced aptitude tests to disappear”
When did that happen?
It may not have been a law, but Disparate Impact theory – especially under the Obama Department of Just-Us surely dissuaded companies from using aptitude tests.
It’s been going on progressively since the Vietnam war when draft deferments given college students started attracting large numbers of unqualified students to go to college for no real reason other than getting that deferment.
supreme court case: griggs vs. duke power 1971.
When the Scholastic Aptitude Test was no longer allowed to be called that, and instead just SAT. Also, the portions of that assessment that dealt with reasoning — not just rote learned achievement — were reduced.
and now, many colleges are not requiring the SAT when applying
The law of unintended consequences implies that this outcome was unintended. Every single action taken by the government, business and academia over the course of the past half century has been to achieve this end.
It was planned, deliberate and very intentional.
Why? What is their end game?
Ignorant people don’t ask too many questions or challenge authority. They either feed the system through their active support of it as employees/dependents/benefit recipients or by being tied up in some part of the institutional/prison/military complex. The sheer number of them and the fact that can be manipulated and controlled serves as an additional passive force against anyone who deviates from their system through social control. They don’t have an event horizon beyond Friday so they make great consumers rather than self sufficient long range planners, and they have little if any desire for any type of authentic liberty- which requires risk/grit/flexibility- so they don’t pose any kind of threat to the existing system. They are easier to fool into participating in fraudulent schemes like voting/mandatory medical and educational demands and readily comply with self-surveillance via social media.
I’ve written a couple pieces in the past on it, can’t recall the titles but they go into more detail. Having turned to farming later in my life I was struck with how similar it looks to livestock management. We’re cattle to them. They are breeding us and culling the troublesome ones in order to make their operation easier to manage. Seems obvious if you look at it from that perspective, otherwise none of it makes any sense at all. You simply could not be that incompetent even if you tried for an eternity.
Occam’s Razor in effect.
It’s weaponized education. Unfortunately the weapon is used on the educatee.
I can see that they are dumbing us down so that we are easier to control, like cattle. But what is the next step? Are we oxen or beef cattle or toys or something else? How does this manipulation fit in with all of their other manipulations of our civilization? Who are they and ultimately what do they want? They already have control of all life on earth, what more is there?
When a guy like Jamie Dimon openly refers to himself and his banker friends, without a sense of irony, as ‘Masters of the Universe” it should give you some clue.
HSF, you’re right on! George Carlin summed that up with his bit where he says they just want you smart enough to do the paperwork and operate the machinery, yet still stupid enough to accept the rulz.
HSF,
I believe Edward Bernays had much the same feelings toward the common folk. That they basically could and needed to be told what to do in order to have a “civilized” society. We will see how that works out in the long run. BTW -5 this morning on the south shore hows NH. Happy New Year to you and your family.
Bob.
If you study the evolution of public education after World War II, specifically the years after Sputnik launched the race into space and lets not go there today farmer, you will discover some underlying and ulterior motives for setting up the public school system (particularly elementary) the way it is arranged. With Bernays suggestions and the use of a great number of experiments on countless numbers of GIs in or out of service, I believe the creation of any government bureaucracy of stated intent to be for Public Good ends up destroying the public’s goodness.
I would write more but I have to go out and thaw my poor domesticated bunnies water dishes and put out a bowl for the two bunnies which escaped and live under the chicken house. It was three, but not all coyotes go away hungry. The dogs are ferocious, but they are inside a fence.
oh HS (and all other wordies!) the is a MUST READ
“…..To understand just what this education system is designed to do to our young and mature minds alike, we must be able to examine without bias its true structure, intent, and authority; dating back many centuries and subsisting through many empires. You see, the institution of education is what is called a syndicate…..”
I agree with HSF. Stupid people are less likely to drag out the guillotine. They want more of those.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zALXQi1jUcQ
Hell, you could see it 20+ years ago when the schools started coming up with new and innovative ideas in education, like dumping grades for pass-fail, unstructured majors, majoring in rock videos and video games, and using racial quotas to ensure otherwise unprepared and unqualified minorities would be represented.
These days, practically any mouthbreather can go to school driving down the value of what was previously a useful peiece of paper.
So, assuming the data in the table is correct, it could be explained in a different way. It does not tell me that the smartest people are not going to college, it tells me more of the average and below average people are graduating. Some of this is probally related to diversity and equal oppurtunity programs. The table needs to include the numbers or percentage of people graduating to really be useful.
Higher education also got GREEDY.
Professor X is not stupid, at least not when it comes to his own interests. He is able to attract N grad students a year; if normal progression occurs, then every four years he loses T-4’s year of grad students to graduation. Normal student services (such as health care through the university) are set up for 12 semesters (four years) of coverage.
But wait; if the grad student is retained somehow, then you can get a longer period of return from your investment in training, educating and polishing that grad student. Since the professor’s name goes on the grad student’s research papers, you can get more papers to your credit if the student stays longer than four years. Likewise, any retained students can be used to train the new students, grade papers for undergrad classes, if talented TEACH the undergrad classes (or at least TA, teaching assistant), do cleanup in the labs, help comply with the idiot paperwork from the university admin, and so on and so forth.
I entered Ph.D. program August 2006 and graduated December 2013, seven years. Probably because I’m just stupid, slow and tough-to-enlighten, but maybe because my adviser (and department chair) either saw me as a challenge, had grudging respect for my blind determination to succeed, or finally just gave up trying to get anything worthwhile from me. Or maybe because I was sufficiently talented, kept at it despite all obstacles or was an affirmative-action (elderly, for a grad student) number for the department.
Or maybe because I helped pay for his salary; towards the last, I was paying $1800 / semester for 3 hours of grad credit (“research and continuing studies towards degree”), namely showing up in labs and doing experiments as suggested without requiring too much supervision or attention.
Watching him suffer and grind away for seven years did convince me that I didn’t want to be a university professor; committee meetings, petty quarrels and disputes over resources and lab space, the developing tsunami of compliance directives and requirements and sheer stupidity would overwhelm a lesser spirit. He’s retired now (“emeritus”) but we don’t keep in touch, even though I’m still in the same town and could see him pretty much whenever.
Higher education is the source of many of its problems.
The schools got greedy, and they got fedgov backing the loans, they even started offering “continuing education” programs to retarded kids. You can send your retarded kid to college for however long and at the end he can get a Certificate of Attendance.
I suspect the IQ decline is in direct proportion to numbers of simians admitted to grad school.
During my first year at my mid-Atlantic school, blacks made up about 2-3% of the student body. Cinder-block classrooms and cinder-block dorms were simple, serviceable and clean. This year (a few decades later) the glossy alumni magazine actually bragged how 60% of the students were minorities. Another article included pictures of their proud new multi-million dollar student center with high ceilings, walls of glass and chrome and students lounging in plush chairs and sofas, one couldn’t help but notice not a single white face in the entire picture. This college isn’t unusual – these aren’t institutes of higher learning anymore; they are high-dollar resorts which lavish these unteachable kids in luxury while paying otherwise unemployable liberals to pretend to teach. The bill, of course, will ultimately be paid by the taxpayers.
That would advertise to me to NOT send my kid there.
Stoopid liddle pissants, every one of them.
Watched Idiocracy last night for the 1st time. Like 1984, it’s a roadmap to our future.
I’m certain the same results would be found in the Public Education System, the Military, Federal and Local Governments, Media, Entertainment, etc. Title IX (Sports Sex Equality) contributed to college sports expansion and dumbing down. Why reduce the brainpower of America’s potential leaders? To facilitate the expansion of Cultural Communism with minimal resistance; if you cannot see the skids of the Hand Basket to Hell being greased by colleges, the NYC MSM, Hollywood, DNC etc, then you have TPTB to thank for your effective Brainwashing.
So glad I bugged out after high school (1989), went in the military, and DID NOT invest 4+ years in college.
Companies may have suffered a bit when aptitude tests were first outlawed, but this was more than made up for with the rise of student loan-debt slaves… a ready supply of indentured servants with the Sword of Damocles dangling above them, lest they default on their loans.
“Now, let’s consider the most recent decade, where the drop in IQ is now 2.9. This is a relatively huge drop compared to the previous decade, about 4 times as much in terms of proportion.
In short, we’ve gone from a disturbing but relatively constant drop in the IQ of our college graduates to a very sharp drop.”
Effect: Dropping IQ rates for college graduates.
Cause: College populations – – increasing female percentage.
(Premise: Men are smart enough to spot a lousy investment.)