Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
My elder son did something like that; apprenticeship then a similar situation to your nephew. My son ended up with a reasonable degree, then worked for 30 years in the motor-racing world, ending at the top of the tree.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
The real problem is that, in many cases, they get to toil in the coal mines. After their degree in shagging.
Meanwhile we have a number of skill shortages, for well paid jobs, in the U.K.
I understand all that, but you will invest in your child's education to ensure they get their opportunity for a three year BSc (Econ) (Hons) in Applied Fornication.
The Tories accuse everyone else of "the politics of envy" but are adamant fun should be the reserve of the right sort of elite, and the peasantry should know their place and conclude their Shelf Stacking Apprenticeship whilst working nights at Tesco.
You will need to point out the place where I suggested awarding degree education on the basis of social class. “The elite”
I went to a comprehensive. And I went to UCL. I thoroughly approve of that sort of thing; if anything I can be quite chippy about public school kids getting an easy ride into uni via tuition and social polish, when it is much harder for state school children from tougher backgrounds
My objection is nothing to do with social class. I am saying we are encouraging kids with average intelligence to spend three years doing a tertiary education designed for people with higher intelligence, and this is a waste of their time and their money, as we now demand that they pay for it
it would be great if every child had an IQ of 130 and would deeply benefit from studying Medicine at Manchester Uni, or Classics at Cambridge, but it is not the case, and we are deluding ourselves - and our offspring - in thinking and pretending otherwise
One way of reading the data is to conclude that white working class males are the group who have spotted this as they intelligently eschew Aeschylus and the sociology of 8th century Mali in favour of the factory and white van man trades (and where I live, agricultural contracting) great and small.
Indeed, white males with only B grade or C grade average GCSEs are far more likely to get an apprenticeship or traineeship without uni tuition fees than do A levels and go to university (even though they probably could). Whereas most other groups, white women or ethnic minorities, would still do A levels and go to the university with those grades
And of course, and with great irony, it is those hands on “rude mechanical” jobs - plumbier to sparky to carpenter - that will likely survive the AI revolution much longer than middle grade solicitors, accountants, clerks, educators, managers, who will all be replaced quite shortly
Of those you've mentioned, AI could maybe handle accounting and clerks but would struggle with the rest, which is why its vastly overrated.
AI may be great at writing reports, but that's a small part of the job of many of those you mentioned. When it comes to human interaction, then AI is not that great and can't be.
Solicitors need the human connections with their clients or otherwise to ensure they can do their job. AI might be a tool that can help them, but it can't do their job for them.
Show me an AI that can replace educators by ensuring children are all behaving as they should. AI might be a tool that can help educators, but it can't do their job for them.
Managers jobs (done well) is again to manage human beings and bring out the best in them, I might be a tool that can help them, but it can't do their job for them.
AI is a tool, no different to computers or anything else.
Keep telling yourself that, if it reassures you. Nothing wrong with Denial, it has its place
Its not denial, its reality. You're just a hypochondriac Luddite.
Technology has been "taking away jobs" for 500 years. Remarkably, we're all still employed.
Not many people left working the fields, nor are there many women weaving at home
In past technological revolutions, humans have been able to upgrade - those farmhands went to work in the factories. When the factories were mechanised, they went to work in offices
Now AI is coming for all the office jobs (and many creative jobs, too). Where will the workers go then, and what will they do? This time there is no obvious higher realm. Perhaps they can all retrain as vicars
Precisely my point, we've been evolving for centuries and we will continue to evolve.
The weird thing that would mean "this time is different" is if evolution stopped and our current jobs became the final jobs and nobody needed to change.
Plenty of people don't work in offices. Indeed only 13% of working Americans work in "Office & Administration" work - and AI won't be automating all their jobs, any more than computers did.
The Loughborough MP Jane Hunt has popped up on social media to promote a go fund me page for her flooded local pub in affluent Quorn. Barely a sympathetic word for her constituents in the council estates and terraced homes in the Belton Road/Meadow Lane area of Loughborough. The Labour councillors and candidate have been out and about touring the areas and talking to people. This is a proper disaster for the town, we got off lightly with a couple of inches of vile smelling mud covering our patio and in the garage, while many people have lost everything in downstairs rooms and face months in temporary accommodation and a significant number don't appear to be insured. Hunt is the face of the government in the area. They appear to have given up.
With the ground so saturated and the Soar/Trent so slow moving it looks like it will be a long time to drain. Sounds as if you got off relatively lightly but it's a terrible mess. Best wishes.
It's genuinely heart breaking. In our village, all of our neighbours had their houses flooded. I spent yesterday jet washing next door's downstairs out after we had put most of the furniture in a skip. I've been roped in to help clear out the sluice gate of debris on the island as the relevant authorities don't have resources. Local residents in the hardest hit areas of town set up kitchens to feed people, collected clothes, nappies, toiletries and food to distribute. It's a shit show, like a disaster you watch in another country, mostly caused by neglect of and lack of maintenance of ditches, drains, sluices. The canal overflowed in town due to a series of blockages and errors. You can't blame the authorities for unprecedented weather, but they are to blame for cutting services that exacerbate the problem. Still, that pub in Quorn will be fine.
Currently showing a 18%-20% chance that they'll let the Colorado decision stand. I guess there are possible wording quibbles since these markets aren't created by professionals but even so 20% seems like a lot?
My instinct was "no way", but then - the judges don't need to run for reelection. Getting Trump off the board might look to them to be best for the Republicans and conservative side. And as for gratitude to Trump... the adage of "buy a dog" springs to mind.
And there's also the outside freak chance they might judge it on its merits, but that'd be mad.
This is a really fascinating question because we really don't know what makes them tick and there are wildly different theories (and could be different for different justices):
- Tribal conservative: You read conservative media, you hate the libs, you support your team, of course you rule for Trump - Strategic conservative: You want to advance conservative goals, and you're clear-eyed about how to do that. Boot Trump off the ballot, you probably get a better candidate who's more likely to win and lock in your power and less likely to lose the Senate and the House. You also look non-partisan and above-the-fray which will help you when you want to make all kinds of other decisions that advance conservative causes. - Judge on the merits: It could still go either way, we've seen judgements in both directions from not necessarily partisan judges.
There's a reasonable argument for Democrats that while it's much better for them electorally if Trump is on the ballot, ultimately for the good of America the best outcome is that he isn't and they lose to a sane conservative.
That probably kills off Trumpism for the foreseeable, returns the GOP to sanity as party elites see they can win without kowtowing to Trump. Hopefully they then begin to return to a politics that isn't a destructive zero-sum game in which both sides, justifiably in some ways, think they have to go all in on their wilder ideological positions or the other will destroy them.
I mean disqualification doesn't *necessarily* do that, Trump would still be influential and potentially would get someone like-minded selected instead. It's really impossible to know what's best for Democrats; They've generally been fairly unenthusiastic about the lawsuits to get Trump kicked off the ballot.
But here it doesn't matter what Democrats think since SCOTUS is controlled by Conservatives, except for some wild possibilities like the liberal justices joining with the Trumpist ones to outvote the less feral conservatives.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Aren't a lot of office moves done by contractors? Nick a couple of his team and set up his own business would be my suggestion.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
The real problem is that, in many cases, they get to toil in the coal mines. After their degree in shagging.
Meanwhile we have a number of skill shortages, for well paid jobs, in the U.K.
I understand all that, but you will invest in your child's education to ensure they get their opportunity for a three year BSc (Econ) (Hons) in Applied Fornication.
The Tories accuse everyone else of "the politics of envy" but are adamant fun should be the reserve of the right sort of elite, and the peasantry should know their place and conclude their Shelf Stacking Apprenticeship whilst working nights at Tesco.
You will need to point out the place where I suggested awarding degree education on the basis of social class. “The elite”
I went to a comprehensive. And I went to UCL. I thoroughly approve of that sort of thing; if anything I can be quite chippy about public school kids getting an easy ride into uni via tuition and social polish, when it is much harder for state school children from tougher backgrounds
My objection is nothing to do with social class. I am saying we are encouraging kids with average intelligence to spend three years doing a tertiary education designed for people with higher intelligence, and this is a waste of their time and their money, as we now demand that they pay for it
it would be great if every child had an IQ of 130 and would deeply benefit from studying Medicine at Manchester Uni, or Classics at Cambridge, but it is not the case, and we are deluding ourselves - and our offspring - in thinking and pretending otherwise
One way of reading the data is to conclude that white working class males are the group who have spotted this as they intelligently eschew Aeschylus and the sociology of 8th century Mali in favour of the factory and white van man trades (and where I live, agricultural contracting) great and small.
Indeed, white males with only B grade or C grade average GCSEs are far more likely to get an apprenticeship or traineeship without uni tuition fees than do A levels and go to university (even though they probably could). Whereas most other groups, white women or ethnic minorities, would still do A levels and go to the university with those grades
And of course, and with great irony, it is those hands on “rude mechanical” jobs - plumbier to sparky to carpenter - that will likely survive the AI revolution much longer than middle grade solicitors, accountants, clerks, educators, managers, who will all be replaced quite shortly
Of those you've mentioned, AI could maybe handle accounting and clerks but would struggle with the rest, which is why its vastly overrated.
AI may be great at writing reports, but that's a small part of the job of many of those you mentioned. When it comes to human interaction, then AI is not that great and can't be.
Solicitors need the human connections with their clients or otherwise to ensure they can do their job. AI might be a tool that can help them, but it can't do their job for them.
Show me an AI that can replace educators by ensuring children are all behaving as they should. AI might be a tool that can help educators, but it can't do their job for them.
Managers jobs (done well) is again to manage human beings and bring out the best in them, I might be a tool that can help them, but it can't do their job for them.
AI is a tool, no different to computers or anything else.
Keep telling yourself that, if it reassures you. Nothing wrong with Denial, it has its place
Its not denial, its reality. You're just a hypochondriac Luddite.
Technology has been "taking away jobs" for 500 years. Remarkably, we're all still employed.
Not many people left working the fields, nor are there many women weaving at home
In past technological revolutions, humans have been able to upgrade - those farmhands went to work in the factories. When the factories were mechanised, they went to work in offices
Now AI is coming for all the office jobs (and many creative jobs, too). Where will the workers go then, and what will they do? This time there is no obvious higher realm. Perhaps they can all retrain as vicars
Precisely my point, we've been evolving for centuries and we will continue to evolve.
The weird thing that would mean "this time is different" is if evolution stopped and our current jobs became the final jobs and nobody needed to change.
Plenty of people don't work in offices. Indeed only 13% of working Americans work in "Office & Administration" work - and AI won't be automating all their jobs, any more than computers did.
The easiest task to replace with AI is writing poorly researched clickbait. @Leon should stick to artifical stone sex toys.
Biden starts badly. The French were arguably more powerful than the British and they were on the American side.
Edit - to be fair though, the rest so far is very good.
Also worth noting how fluent it is, despite the claims of Trump.
This was a few years after we had pretty comprehensively defeated the French worldwide in the Severn years war, notably in Canada and India, so I think it fair to say that the British Empire was the most powerful in the world in 1777, the defeat at Saratoga not withstanding.
But facts aside, the winter at Valley Forge is part of the foundation myths of the USA. Its not about historical accuracy, it is about invoking the Founding Fathers of America..
The French decision to back (and fund to ruinous extent), the American rebels was an own goal on a par with the governor of Otrar deciding to torture Genghis Khan’s envoys to death for shit and giggles.
Or more recently, Regean and Thatcher funding the Taliban.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
I know many people who've gone to university either in midlife or otherwise simply after 18, after working, and all have improved their lives by doing so.
There is too much of a notion that university is just for eighteen year olds, that's not to say that people shouldn't go at 18, but it should be open to those who want to go afterwards too.
Unfortunately if you've got children and responsibilities then taking three years out of work, and getting into debt, in order to improve things years down the line can seem very daunting.
Or keep working, take 6 years and get a degree with the Open University.
The Loughborough MP Jane Hunt has popped up on social media to promote a go fund me page for her flooded local pub in affluent Quorn. Barely a sympathetic word for her constituents in the council estates and terraced homes in the Belton Road/Meadow Lane area of Loughborough. The Labour councillors and candidate have been out and about touring the areas and talking to people. This is a proper disaster for the town, we got off lightly with a couple of inches of vile smelling mud covering our patio and in the garage, while many people have lost everything in downstairs rooms and face months in temporary accommodation and a significant number don't appear to be insured. Hunt is the face of the government in the area. They appear to have given up.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
I know many people who've gone to university either in midlife or otherwise simply after 18, after working, and all have improved their lives by doing so.
There is too much of a notion that university is just for eighteen year olds, that's not to say that people shouldn't go at 18, but it should be open to those who want to go afterwards too.
Unfortunately if you've got children and responsibilities then taking three years out of work, and getting into debt, in order to improve things years down the line can seem very daunting.
Or keep working, take 6 years and get a degree with the Open University.
One of the strange, sad things that has happened over the last couple of decades is the decline in adult education- not just the OU, but the sort of evening classes that run in community halls across the country.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
I think you meant 'squired' ? But interesting typo.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
I know many people who've gone to university either in midlife or otherwise simply after 18, after working, and all have improved their lives by doing so.
There is too much of a notion that university is just for eighteen year olds, that's not to say that people shouldn't go at 18, but it should be open to those who want to go afterwards too.
Unfortunately if you've got children and responsibilities then taking three years out of work, and getting into debt, in order to improve things years down the line can seem very daunting.
For most 18-year-olds, university is an expensive finishing school. Three years of fun and networking. Boris spent his time on Classics but did not become a Latin teacher or museum guide, for instance. There are a few trade school subjects like medicine but even much-vaunted STEM subjects are not vocational for most graduates who do not become scientists or science teachers. There might be peripheral benefits, such as astronomers learning how to program computers to handle enormous quantities of data pouring down from the sky, and that can lead to more jobs than knowing whether Pluto is or is not a planet or that Neptune is the same colour as Uranus. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67892275
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Sounds like he should move to a decent employer.
The problem is that he cannot without paper qualifications in the field.
My own view is that 40-50% going to Tertiary education is about right for a developed economy. It is true of nearly all our economic competition. The thriving parts of our economy are in our university cities, and the Great Wen in particular.
There is a problem with people choosing courses poorly, and many of those courses being poor value in terms of educational content and supervision.
I would favour a system of grants rather than loans for students who have worked and paid NI for perhaps two years before commencing. I think students would be more mature, but also have seriously considered alternatives, and thought through what they want to get out of University.
The GI Bill comprised more than just education, but was a major factor in the long postwar American economic boom. The opportunities it gave the boomer generation in terms of education, careers and housing are not irrelevant today.
A plan for growth that targets academic and vocational educational and economic benefit for twenty-somethings is much more likely to succeed than one based on IHT cuts for the existing plutocrats.
Re the Met investigating the Post Office - oh the irony!:-
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
Ah Saturday. Where I get to switch off the day job and work in our shop. As its been quiet so far today that means I get to do a load of other work on business admin etc...
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
Nursing degrees are basically just the old 3-years of nurse training to state registration, but with added essays. For the police, degrees became necessary because the Establishment got annoyed that working class oiks who'd left school at 16 were earning high salaries at the top of police forces. (In the old days police forces were run by ex-army officers who'd been to the right schools so it did not matter.)
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
You don't need a degree to join the Police, and it isn't "nuts" to require a degree in nursing to become a nurse (& nursing degrees aren't conventional degrees - it's all quite practical I understand).
Re the Met investigating the Post Office - oh the irony!:-
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
The Met certainly gave the impression that they were investigating ‘now’ in their Press release.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Sounds like he should move to a decent employer.
The problem is that he cannot without paper qualifications in the field.
My own view is that 40-50% going to Tertiary education is about right for a developed economy. It is true of nearly all our economic competition. The thriving parts of our economy are in our university cities, and the Great Wen in particular.
There is a problem with people choosing courses poorly, and many of those courses being poor value in terms of educational content and supervision.
I would favour a system of grants rather than loans for students who have worked and paid NI for perhaps two years before commencing. I think students would be more mature, but also have seriously considered alternatives, and thought through what they want to get out of University.
The GI Bill comprised more than just education, but was a major factor in the long postwar American economic boom. The opportunities it gave the boomer generation in terms of education, careers and housing are not irrelevant today.
A plan for growth that targets academic and vocational educational and economic benefit for twenty-somethings is much more likely to succeed than one based on IHT cuts for the existing plutocrats.
The idea of 3 years concentrated learning from 18 to 21 and then not much more beyond that makes no sense to me. It may have tactical advantages for individuals but as a fairly quickly changing society and economy it would be far better to rebalance expectations and culture to a more continuous and less concentrated learning process.
Do we have to answer all the questions to enter for a prize?
Hey, if you've been a genuine lurker, you'll know post 1 on a Saturday morning means we've got to take this tack even before you say anything at all to deserve it......
Have a go at answering them all, I think, in it to win it and all that.
TSE isn't going to have any issues posting the Amazon tokens to you is he? Can you still spend them in your jurisdiction? Is this an individual effort or are the boys forming a syndicate? - surely between you you have opinions on most things, not just BA pilots.
Actually, the idea of the Russian troll farm putting in a collective competition entry is quite touching!
Also if personal allowances had kept up with inflation it would be £15,230 in April not £12,570 saving everyone £532 a year (you need to earn £40,000) for the NI saving to match that.
Re the Met investigating the Post Office - oh the irony!:-
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
The Met certainly gave the impression that they were investigating ‘now’ in their Press release.
The key words being "impression" and "press release".
What that will mean in practice is that they are getting to see the documents provided to the Inquiry and getting to hear the evidence and putting it all into a big file marked "Post Office" or Operation XXXX and then when the Inquiry is over on the basis of legal advice they will start doing some actual work.
Do we have to answer all the questions to enter for a prize?
Hey, if you've been a genuine lurker, you'll know post 1 on a Saturday morning means we've got to take this tack even before you say anything at all to deserve it......
Have a go at answering them all, I think, in it to win it and all that.
TSE isn't going to have any issues posting the Amazon tokens to you is he? Can you still spend them in your jurisdiction? Is this an individual effort or are the boys forming a syndicate? - surely between you you have opinions on most things, not just BA pilots.
Actually, the idea of the Russian troll farm putting in a collective competition entry is quite touching!
Or it could be Rishi Sunak's first post and he just wants to answer the "When is the next GE?" question.
PS If you are Rishi, get off your arse and do something about the subpostmasters, there's a good chap.
AI: I have lost some work (writing) to AI. I also know a voice actor who's had a lot of work dry up.
I know of one who did it part time, and it was starting to interfere with her job. Did a couple of recordings for an AI program, signed some legal agreements, and her voice is still doing the biz.
But you're right, it's now utterly trivial to automate, so unless you have something really distinctive (and easily identifiable) to offer, it's no longer a viable means of earning a living for most people.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Sounds like he should move to a decent employer.
Yup sounds like his company don't value him at all, time to go.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
You don't need a degree to join the Police, and it isn't "nuts" to require a degree in nursing to become a nurse (& nursing degrees aren't conventional degrees - it's all quite practical I understand).
If they aren't conventional degrees, why do they have to be called degrees?
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
AI: I have lost some work (writing) to AI. I also know a voice actor who's had a lot of work dry up.
I know of one who did it part time, and it was starting to interfere with her job. Did a couple of recordings for an AI program, signed some legal agreements, and her voice is still doing the biz.
But you're right, it's now utterly trivial to automate, so unless you have something really distinctive (and easily identifiable) to offer, it's no longer a viable means of earning a living for most people.
Similarly I've heard of part-time commercial artists losing out to AI image generation.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
I know many people who've gone to university either in midlife or otherwise simply after 18, after working, and all have improved their lives by doing so.
There is too much of a notion that university is just for eighteen year olds, that's not to say that people shouldn't go at 18, but it should be open to those who want to go afterwards too.
Unfortunately if you've got children and responsibilities then taking three years out of work, and getting into debt, in order to improve things years down the line can seem very daunting.
Or keep working, take 6 years and get a degree with the Open University.
One of the strange, sad things that has happened over the last couple of decades is the decline in adult education- not just the OU, but the sort of evening classes that run in community halls across the country.
Wasn't parst of the problem the refusal of HMG to allow or admit non-vocational courses in "non-useful" stuff such as flower arranging? (Which btw would be quite useful for someone retired early and getting a p/t job in a florist ...).
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
Indeed. Though the whole affair is nauseating on both sides, from the ultrawoke college leaders to the billionaires pushing people and institutions around.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
It'd odd because I don't think anyone has ever asked to actually see my degrees before and I don't think they all check with the university in question, so unless its a more technical field where the first hiring requires demonstration of knowledge in that specific field, once you are in many organisations having a degree may not come up ever again.*
Makes me surprised there are not more stories about people just faking the qualifications. Hopefully not in your profession though.
*bizarrely some training course providers require proof of GCSE English and Maths proficiency, and won't accept, say, a PhD in statistics as a substitute.
There is an awful lot of places where No degree means you are removed at the very first step of filtering.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
Policing and nursing now require degrees, I believe - which is completely nuts
You don't need a degree to join the Police, and it isn't "nuts" to require a degree in nursing to become a nurse (& nursing degrees aren't conventional degrees - it's all quite practical I understand).
If they aren't conventional degrees, why do they have to be called degrees?
Very roughly, because it's thought to help with the whole parity of esteem thing. If three years study of something fundamentally useless leads to a qualification called a degree, why shouldn't three years study of something fundamentally useful?
Also, it helps those who decide to change careers out of nursing if their qualification is measured on the same scale as everyone else's.
Not saying that these are totally valid reasons, but they're not obviously absurd.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
Indeed
But it is quite funny watching an institution as pompous and self regarding as Harvard completely implode
This woman must surely lose her job and yet, fantastically, she still doesn’t understand that she’s done something wrong and stupid
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Sounds like he should move to a decent employer.
The problem is that he cannot without paper qualifications in the field.
My own view is that 40-50% going to Tertiary education is about right for a developed economy. It is true of nearly all our economic competition. The thriving parts of our economy are in our university cities, and the Great Wen in particular.
There is a problem with people choosing courses poorly, and many of those courses being poor value in terms of educational content and supervision.
I would favour a system of grants rather than loans for students who have worked and paid NI for perhaps two years before commencing. I think students would be more mature, but also have seriously considered alternatives, and thought through what they want to get out of University.
The GI Bill comprised more than just education, but was a major factor in the long postwar American economic boom. The opportunities it gave the boomer generation in terms of education, careers and housing are not irrelevant today.
A plan for growth that targets academic and vocational educational and economic benefit for twenty-somethings is much more likely to succeed than one based on IHT cuts for the existing plutocrats.
The idea of 3 years concentrated learning from 18 to 21 and then not much more beyond that makes no sense to me. It may have tactical advantages for individuals but as a fairly quickly changing society and economy it would be far better to rebalance expectations and culture to a more continuous and less concentrated learning process.
One key feature of the GI Bill was that the GIs had some real life experience before they went to Uni, often a bit too real. They weren't pampered 18 year olds. That is what I would like to see replicated in a plan for economic growth here.
If we want a more demanding, purposeful undergraduate student body we need to move away from entry aged 18.
My medical school has a strong preference for those a year or more post A level. They make more serious students and more grounded Doctors.
Re the Met investigating the Post Office - oh the irony!:-
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
The Met certainly gave the impression that they were investigating ‘now’ in their Press release.
The key words being "impression" and "press release".
What that will mean in practice is that they are getting to see the documents provided to the Inquiry and getting to hear the evidence and putting it all into a big file marked "Post Office" or Operation XXXX and then when the Inquiry is over on the basis of legal advice they will start doing some actual work.
You’re far more knowledgeable in this sort of thing than I am, so you’re probably right! Incidentally I wondered for a moment or two when I watched Monday’s part of the TV series, whether you were the helpful lady who questioned the chap who the Post Office had called in to investigate. Then someone named names and I realised I was wrong.
I do wonder though how long before we see the Inquiry report! Will it be in Alan Bates’ lifetime?
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
I don’t think people minded a few Commie professors in the past. They were mostly harmless. But, the sorts of people who teach courses like Post Colonial Studies seem genuinely dangerous.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Don't think so. AIUI, the sum total of her output is some eleven articles (some of which are co-authored) and no monographs.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
I don’t think people minded a few Commie professors in the past. They were mostly harmless. But, the sorts of people who teach courses like Post Colonial Studies seem genuinely dangerous.
Genuinely dangerous? Did professors of post-colonial studies storm the US Capitol 3 years ago? Have any professors of post-colonial studies gone on mass shooting sprees, or driven their cars into protestors?
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
I don’t think people minded a few Commie professors in the past. They were mostly harmless. But, the sorts of people who teach courses like Post Colonial Studies seem genuinely dangerous.
It’s only 7.12am on the East Coast. My guess is this mad Harvard woman hasn’t woken up yet and realised that she has self-destructed on TwiX
Say what you like about the platform, it is great for watching grisly spectacles like this, as careers crater overnight
It is really quite similar to medieval executions, with the public munching popcorn as the intestines are fried in the flames
Re the Met investigating the Post Office - oh the irony!:-
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
The Met certainly gave the impression that they were investigating ‘now’ in their Press release.
The key words being "impression" and "press release".
What that will mean in practice is that they are getting to see the documents provided to the Inquiry and getting to hear the evidence and putting it all into a big file marked "Post Office" or Operation XXXX and then when the Inquiry is over on the basis of legal advice they will start doing some actual work.
You’re far more knowledgeable in this sort of thing than I am, so you’re probably right! Incidentally I wondered for a moment or two when I watched Monday’s part of the TV series, whether you were the helpful lady who questioned the chap who the Post Office had called in to investigate. Then someone named names and I realised I was wrong.
I do wonder though how long before we see the Inquiry report! Will it be in Alan Bates’ lifetime?
At the present rate of progress, I would give it about three more years before the Inquiry's final report is published. The PO continues to delay and obfuscate at every opportunity and this is clearly having an impact on time scales.
This could change if the Government, which owns the PO, were to tell the Board to stop effing about and give the Inquiry some genuine support. Perhaps the impact of the TV series will cause it to do so. Perhaps a change of Government might help.
I wouldn't hold breath for either eventuality though.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Don't think so. AIUI, the sum total of her output is some eleven articles (some of which are co-authored) and no monographs.
Fair enough, though 'monographs' depend on the subject - some research fields emphasise books, others papers.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Sounds like he should move to a decent employer.
The problem is that he cannot without paper qualifications in the field.
My own view is that 40-50% going to Tertiary education is about right for a developed economy. It is true of nearly all our economic competition. The thriving parts of our economy are in our university cities, and the Great Wen in particular.
There is a problem with people choosing courses poorly, and many of those courses being poor value in terms of educational content and supervision.
I would favour a system of grants rather than loans for students who have worked and paid NI for perhaps two years before commencing. I think students would be more mature, but also have seriously considered alternatives, and thought through what they want to get out of University.
The GI Bill comprised more than just education, but was a major factor in the long postwar American economic boom. The opportunities it gave the boomer generation in terms of education, careers and housing are not irrelevant today.
A plan for growth that targets academic and vocational educational and economic benefit for twenty-somethings is much more likely to succeed than one based on IHT cuts for the existing plutocrats.
The idea of 3 years concentrated learning from 18 to 21 and then not much more beyond that makes no sense to me. It may have tactical advantages for individuals but as a fairly quickly changing society and economy it would be far better to rebalance expectations and culture to a more continuous and less concentrated learning process.
One key feature of the GI Bill was that the GIs had some real life experience before they went to Uni, often a bit too real. They weren't pampered 18 year olds. That is what I would like to see replicated in a plan for economic growth here.
If we want a more demanding, purposeful undergraduate student body we need to move away from entry aged 18.
My medical school has a strong preference for those a year or more post A level. They make more serious students and more grounded Doctors.
I’d like to see a form of national/international service where British 18 year olds could choose to do military training or vocational/charity work at home or abroad - one year of building wells in Zambia or whatever. And this should be open to all, and if you do it you should get real credit and have a better chance of getting into a good university - it must count and be highly enticing as an option
I can’t think of many things that would be better for us as a society. Unifying and positive. Spend the aid budget on it
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
The issue is that 50% of people going university has created a situation where the degree is used as a barrier - no degree on your CV, instantly binned.
In the field I'm in I continually need to tell HR that a degree is not a sensible filter (it is for part of the job, but for a lot of the other bits - change management in particular it's the last thing you need).
Do we have to answer all the questions to enter for a prize?
Hey, if you've been a genuine lurker, you'll know post 1 on a Saturday morning means we've got to take this tack even before you say anything at all to deserve it......
Have a go at answering them all, I think, in it to win it and all that.
TSE isn't going to have any issues posting the Amazon tokens to you is he? Can you still spend them in your jurisdiction? Is this an individual effort or are the boys forming a syndicate? - surely between you you have opinions on most things, not just BA pilots.
Actually, the idea of the Russian troll farm putting in a collective competition entry is quite touching!
Presumably Ben will have a special sub-competition for our Russian Trolls.
They needn't worry about entry dates either. They simply submit when they feel like it and backdate them.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
Actually, better than that. Fewer ghastly oiks to compete for the golden tickets. Same reason that there was a lot of Conservative pressure to get rid of grammar schools- nice middle class children of nice middle class parents weren't getting in.
(Another of the unfortunate rules of life. Everyone wants protectionism for what they have to sell, free market competition for what they want to buy.)
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Sounds like he should move to a decent employer.
The problem is that he cannot without paper qualifications in the field.
My own view is that 40-50% going to Tertiary education is about right for a developed economy. It is true of nearly all our economic competition. The thriving parts of our economy are in our university cities, and the Great Wen in particular.
There is a problem with people choosing courses poorly, and many of those courses being poor value in terms of educational content and supervision.
I would favour a system of grants rather than loans for students who have worked and paid NI for perhaps two years before commencing. I think students would be more mature, but also have seriously considered alternatives, and thought through what they want to get out of University.
The GI Bill comprised more than just education, but was a major factor in the long postwar American economic boom. The opportunities it gave the boomer generation in terms of education, careers and housing are not irrelevant today.
A plan for growth that targets academic and vocational educational and economic benefit for twenty-somethings is much more likely to succeed than one based on IHT cuts for the existing plutocrats.
The idea of 3 years concentrated learning from 18 to 21 and then not much more beyond that makes no sense to me. It may have tactical advantages for individuals but as a fairly quickly changing society and economy it would be far better to rebalance expectations and culture to a more continuous and less concentrated learning process.
One key feature of the GI Bill was that the GIs had some real life experience before they went to Uni, often a bit too real. They weren't pampered 18 year olds. That is what I would like to see replicated in a plan for economic growth here.
If we want a more demanding, purposeful undergraduate student body we need to move away from entry aged 18.
My medical school has a strong preference for those a year or more post A level. They make more serious students and more grounded Doctors.
I’d like to see a form of national/international service where British 18 year olds could choose to do military training or vocational/charity work at home or abroad - one year of building wells in Zambia or whatever. And this should be open to all, and if you do it you should get real credit and have a better chance of getting into a good university - it must count and be highly enticing as an option
I can’t think of many things that would be better for us as a society. Unifying and positive. Spend the aid budget on it
F***in' 'ell. You've developed old man syndrome.
" These youngsters don't know they are born. Back in my day we were conscripted into the Marines and I had to complete a 50 mile yomp through the Brecon Beacons every day".
Your memory is faulty. You were pissed in the Fitzroy.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
That's a CV. Not a personal bibliography. You don't put a full bibliography into an academic CV.
Is that right? I must be doing it wrong then.
Depends how old you are! And on the situation. But I certainly don't.
The element of doubt is raised by the lack of the word 'selected' but that can be interpreted either way. I'd never claim that someone only had 11 papers on the basis of that document, though, without going to standard research database sites such as Orcid.
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
The real problem is that, in many cases, they get to toil in the coal mines. After their degree in shagging.
Meanwhile we have a number of skill shortages, for well paid jobs, in the U.K.
I understand all that, but you will invest in your child's education to ensure they get their opportunity for a three year BSc (Econ) (Hons) in Applied Fornication.
The Tories accuse everyone else of "the politics of envy" but are adamant fun should be the reserve of the right sort of elite, and the peasantry should know their place and conclude their Shelf Stacking Apprenticeship whilst working nights at Tesco.
You will need to point out the place where I suggested awarding degree education on the basis of social class. “The elite”
I went to a comprehensive. And I went to UCL. I thoroughly approve of that sort of thing; if anything I can be quite chippy about public school kids getting an easy ride into uni via tuition and social polish, when it is much harder for state school children from tougher backgrounds
My objection is nothing to do with social class. I am saying we are encouraging kids with average intelligence to spend three years doing a tertiary education designed for people with higher intelligence, and this is a waste of their time and their money, as we now demand that they pay for it
it would be great if every child had an IQ of 130 and would deeply benefit from studying Medicine at Manchester Uni, or Classics at Cambridge, but it is not the case, and we are deluding ourselves - and our offspring - in thinking and pretending otherwise
You're deluding yourself if you believe that the assumptions that the whole notion of "IQ" rests on are anything other than dimwitted Nazi sh*t. There's no such thing as "general intelligence" (as any woman will be able to tell you), any more than it makes sense to work with an average of voltage, height, and smelliness.
The whole crock of dimwitted "IQ" evil is so about both class and race.
Oh look - Lewis "Eugenics" Terman's son founded Silicon Valley.
lol
Why would “a woman” be able to tell me things about intelligence that a man cannot? Is that because women are innately more insightful, or empathetic, or gifted with a higher IQ?
More intuitive, yes.
More empathetic, yes.
Not more insightful in general, but more insightful emotionally. (Which is not to say intuition equals emotional insight. They are different.)
More intelligent in all these ways, yes.
IQ is not an objective reality - it's a cultural construct and it doesn't measure emotional skills. That is a fact and not an opinion. There are no questions in IQ tests that require emotional skills to answer.
I liked your post in which you talked about ants (IIRC) being put in a room and played Mozart, to convey how little we clothes-wearing apes should think we are capable of understanding the types of intelligence that might exist in the universe. The view you were criticising could be called scientific arrogance. "Science" has only been around for ~500 years, less time than e.g. the religion of ancient Sumer, and it is laughable that those who officiate at the temple of Science truly believe that their way (even worse, in its recent incarnation as the "Enlightenment", or its super-recent incarnation as zeroes and ones) is the only true way, at last discovered, with all previous or competing ways fit only for the bin. Men who think like that could probably benefit from meeting some Aztecs after consuming more than a threshold dose of salvia.
But a similar point can be made about IQ, a concept which isn't much more than 100 years old, or 160 if we take in Galton and Spencer etc., a bit more if go back to that tosser Malthus.
What does any of this crap tell us about Callanish or Gobekli Tepe that's essential? Sweet FA.
Darwin himself wasn't as crude as those who esteem his name so much nowadays. Wallace who whaddayaknow came from a different social background was more sussed though.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
The issue is that 50% of people going university has created a situation where the degree is used as a barrier - no degree on your CV, instantly binned.
In the field I'm in I continually need to tell HR that a degree is not a sensible filter (it is for part of the job, but for a lot of the other bits - change management in particular it's the last thing you need).
I don't necessarily disagree. My point again is those advocating for rationing don't believe they or their kith and kin should be subject to that rationing.
18 year olds are fucking rubbish at building wells in Zambia.
Indeed, the one thing Africa doesn't lack it is underemployed young workers capable of digging wells
Such gap year experiences may well be beneficial for the Gappers, but much less so for the local people. Ditto middle aged Americans building schools. FFS employ local brickies then go and have an opening ceremony.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Sounds like he should move to a decent employer.
The problem is that he cannot without paper qualifications in the field.
My own view is that 40-50% going to Tertiary education is about right for a developed economy. It is true of nearly all our economic competition. The thriving parts of our economy are in our university cities, and the Great Wen in particular.
There is a problem with people choosing courses poorly, and many of those courses being poor value in terms of educational content and supervision.
I would favour a system of grants rather than loans for students who have worked and paid NI for perhaps two years before commencing. I think students would be more mature, but also have seriously considered alternatives, and thought through what they want to get out of University.
The GI Bill comprised more than just education, but was a major factor in the long postwar American economic boom. The opportunities it gave the boomer generation in terms of education, careers and housing are not irrelevant today.
A plan for growth that targets academic and vocational educational and economic benefit for twenty-somethings is much more likely to succeed than one based on IHT cuts for the existing plutocrats.
The idea of 3 years concentrated learning from 18 to 21 and then not much more beyond that makes no sense to me. It may have tactical advantages for individuals but as a fairly quickly changing society and economy it would be far better to rebalance expectations and culture to a more continuous and less concentrated learning process.
One key feature of the GI Bill was that the GIs had some real life experience before they went to Uni, often a bit too real. They weren't pampered 18 year olds. That is what I would like to see replicated in a plan for economic growth here.
If we want a more demanding, purposeful undergraduate student body we need to move away from entry aged 18.
My medical school has a strong preference for those a year or more post A level. They make more serious students and more grounded Doctors.
I’d like to see a form of national/international service where British 18 year olds could choose to do military training or vocational/charity work at home or abroad - one year of building wells in Zambia or whatever. And this should be open to all, and if you do it you should get real credit and have a better chance of getting into a good university - it must count and be highly enticing as an option
I can’t think of many things that would be better for us as a society. Unifying and positive. Spend the aid budget on it
F***in' 'ell. You've developed old man syndrome.
" These youngsters don't know they are born. Back in my day we were conscripted into the Marines and I had to complete a 50 mile yomp through the Brecon Beacons every day".
Your memory is faulty. You were pissed in the Fitzroy.
I have an IQ of a lot
Her Majesty’s Government therefore noticed me toiling away in a crappy provincial comprehensive and decided it was worth lifting me up and educating me at one of britain’s best and world class universities. Without that social nudge I’m not sure I’d have gone to do what I’ve done in flint sex toy world, even if I spent most of my uni years whacked out of my gourd on drugs
Since then I have literally paid HMG millions in tax so it turns out the UK taxpayer got a good deal
I think we can get a better deal for and from our young people today. I recommend my international service idea to the House
This is brilliant. Harvard academics are so angry at the right wing guy who “brought down” Harvard president Claudine Gay this is how they’ve responded:
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
They're all insane, this is just the rest of the world noticing.
All if them ? Seems unlikely, as this story suggests.
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820 ...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
Leaving aside the plagiarism issue, her academic profile seems rather thin for a professor, never mind head of one of the world's most prestigious universities.
May just be a website formatting thing. Some uni websites specify, for instance, only six recent significant publications per person on the departmental subsite.
Jesus Christ do some research. Its not a “formatting thing” as you’d realise if you spent 2 minutes reading the facts
Basic thing to check. Has it been done?
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
The real problem is that, in many cases, they get to toil in the coal mines. After their degree in shagging.
Meanwhile we have a number of skill shortages, for well paid jobs, in the U.K.
I understand all that, but you will invest in your child's education to ensure they get their opportunity for a three year BSc (Econ) (Hons) in Applied Fornication.
The Tories accuse everyone else of "the politics of envy" but are adamant fun should be the reserve of the right sort of elite, and the peasantry should know their place and conclude their Shelf Stacking Apprenticeship whilst working nights at Tesco.
You will need to point out the place where I suggested awarding degree education on the basis of social class. “The elite”
I went to a comprehensive. And I went to UCL. I thoroughly approve of that sort of thing; if anything I can be quite chippy about public school kids getting an easy ride into uni via tuition and social polish, when it is much harder for state school children from tougher backgrounds
My objection is nothing to do with social class. I am saying we are encouraging kids with average intelligence to spend three years doing a tertiary education designed for people with higher intelligence, and this is a waste of their time and their money, as we now demand that they pay for it
it would be great if every child had an IQ of 130 and would deeply benefit from studying Medicine at Manchester Uni, or Classics at Cambridge, but it is not the case, and we are deluding ourselves - and our offspring - in thinking and pretending otherwise
One way of reading the data is to conclude that white working class males are the group who have spotted this as they intelligently eschew Aeschylus and the sociology of 8th century Mali in favour of the factory and white van man trades (and where I live, agricultural contracting) great and small.
Indeed, white males with only B grade or C grade average GCSEs are far more likely to get an apprenticeship or traineeship without uni tuition fees than do A levels and go to university (even though they probably could). Whereas most other groups, white women or ethnic minorities, would still do A levels and go to the university with those grades
Any evidence to back that complete codswallop up?
The percentage of white males who are university graduates compared to the percentage of white males with A*-C (or now I suppose 9-4 grade) GCSEs
1 minor minor part of your original statement and even then you haven't provided the evidence to back that bit up.
Education is important for any career opportunity. HYUFD wouldn't give you an interview as a refuse collector if you hadn't been to Charterhouse and Cambridge.
AI news: I asked Chat GPT4 to give me words denoting two human body parts that differed only insofar as one had /θ/ where the other had /f/ (this was in connection with th-fronting and surgery), but I gave up because it was like conversing with an idiot. It pretended it understood the question, but I repeatedly had to say no no no, your suggestion doesn't fit the criteria, so it kept apologising and saying it hadn't understood the question properly BEFORE but it understood it well NOW, and here's your answer for you, Mr Human Sir. But it was obvious it couldn't wrap its little electronic circuits around the question.
18 year olds are fucking rubbish at building wells in Zambia.
Indeed, the one thing Africa doesn't lack it is underemployed young workers capable of digging wells
Such gap year experiences may well be beneficial for the Gappers, but much less so for the local people. Ditto middle aged Americans building schools. FFS employ local brickies then go and have an opening ceremony.
Ok then let them regrow coral in the Maldives. Anything
Offer them adventure and travel but also a chance to serve. This is exactly the sort of thing Labour should be all over. Mixing patriotism and altruism
If Starmerism is to mean anything: it might be this
If the Labour opinion poll lead is under 10 points by the end of Q1 that speaks of Big Mo for the Tories. Surely Sunak would then be thinking early for the GE, not late.
On another point, is the American Revolution really the country’s first civil war?
If there were any remaining American Loyalists they would say yes. But there aren’t. Or they’re being very quiet.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Sounds like he should move to a decent employer.
The problem is that he cannot without paper qualifications in the field.
My own view is that 40-50% going to Tertiary education is about right for a developed economy. It is true of nearly all our economic competition. The thriving parts of our economy are in our university cities, and the Great Wen in particular.
There is a problem with people choosing courses poorly, and many of those courses being poor value in terms of educational content and supervision.
I would favour a system of grants rather than loans for students who have worked and paid NI for perhaps two years before commencing. I think students would be more mature, but also have seriously considered alternatives, and thought through what they want to get out of University.
The GI Bill comprised more than just education, but was a major factor in the long postwar American economic boom. The opportunities it gave the boomer generation in terms of education, careers and housing are not irrelevant today.
A plan for growth that targets academic and vocational educational and economic benefit for twenty-somethings is much more likely to succeed than one based on IHT cuts for the existing plutocrats.
The idea of 3 years concentrated learning from 18 to 21 and then not much more beyond that makes no sense to me. It may have tactical advantages for individuals but as a fairly quickly changing society and economy it would be far better to rebalance expectations and culture to a more continuous and less concentrated learning process.
One key feature of the GI Bill was that the GIs had some real life experience before they went to Uni, often a bit too real. They weren't pampered 18 year olds. That is what I would like to see replicated in a plan for economic growth here.
If we want a more demanding, purposeful undergraduate student body we need to move away from entry aged 18.
My medical school has a strong preference for those a year or more post A level. They make more serious students and more grounded Doctors.
I’d like to see a form of national/international service where British 18 year olds could choose to do military training or vocational/charity work at home or abroad - one year of building wells in Zambia or whatever. And this should be open to all, and if you do it you should get real credit and have a better chance of getting into a good university - it must count and be highly enticing as an option
I can’t think of many things that would be better for us as a society. Unifying and positive. Spend the aid budget on it
F***in' 'ell. You've developed old man syndrome.
" These youngsters don't know they are born. Back in my day we were conscripted into the Marines and I had to complete a 50 mile yomp through the Brecon Beacons every day".
Your memory is faulty. You were pissed in the Fitzroy.
I have an IQ of a lot
Her Majesty’s Government therefore noticed me toiling away in a crappy provincial comprehensive and decided it was worth lifting me up and educating me at one of britain’s best and world class universities. Without that social nudge I’m not sure I’d have gone to do what I’ve done in flint sex toy world, even if I spent most of my uni years whacked out of my gourd on drugs
Since then I have literally paid HMG millions in tax so it turns out the UK taxpayer got a good deal
I think we can get a better deal for and from our young people today. I recommend my international service idea to the House
To be honest, I don't think it's a terrible idea, some sort of civic duty whether at home or abroad would be no bad thing. I believe the choice should be for the individual. Litter picking in Penarth or building irrigation systems in Malawi, it's the choice of the young person.
It's the notion and irony of compulsion to military services which is often advocated by former teenage slackers of our age that grates on me.
(And please stop filletting Claudine Gay's life, yes? It's a bit pervy and you are coming across as stalkers. PB can be weird at the best of times, but this is swerving into ew)
A couple of viticultural observations this morning as I’m down in the fields pruning.
First, the wonders of geology. My rain gauge at the vineyard has measured over 70mm of rain in the last 4 days. 30mm yesterday. I’m sitting in the site office (caravan with algal stains on the side and non-working heater) at the bottom of a fairly steep valley. But it’s chalk bedrock and well draining flint soil, and a dry valley - the water table is below the valley bottom, so there is zero surface water. Nothing on the field, or the valley bottom. Just a few puddles on the road.
It has to go somewhere though. I noticed the great Stour was in spate on the way here.
Second, there’s a hilarious thread going on in the wineGB forum. The vignerons of England and Wales are spitting bile at a recent WineGB press release hailing the twin Brexit wins of the introduction of pint bottles (only one winemaker in the UK plans to use them) and the removal of the need for foils on sparkling wine (which is already permitted in the EU anyway). Winemakers seem to split about 5:1 remain:leave so it’s an unequal fight. It’s like reading a Brexit thread on PB circa 2018 composed of only Scott, Alistair Meeks and Roger. Notable industry Brexiteer Stephen Skelton has so far resisted chipping in. I’d love to share it but members only.
AI news: I asked Chat GPT4 to give me words denoting two human body parts that differed only insofar as one had /θ/ where the other had /f/ (this was in connection with th-fronting and surgery), but I gave up because it was like conversing with an idiot. It pretended it understood the question, but I repeatedly had to say no no no, your suggestion doesn't fit the criteria, so it kept apologising and saying it hadn't understood the question properly BEFORE but it understood it well NOW, and here's your answer for you, Mr Human Sir. But it was obvious it couldn't wrap its little electronic circuits around the question.
I can save you any further bother. ChatGPT is now shit at most tasks. Why?
Because its makers were so terrified of its abilities - including the ability to offend and be racist - they have “nerfed” it. Put so many guardrails on it the machine is now utterly incapable of most tasks because it has been neutered to be as bland and banal as possible
If you’d tried it in that first amazing week you’d have a sense of its potentials
AI news: I asked Chat GPT4 to give me words denoting two human body parts that differed only insofar as one had /θ/ where the other had /f/ (this was in connection with th-fronting and surgery), but I gave up because it was like conversing with an idiot. It pretended it understood the question, but I repeatedly had to say no no no, your suggestion doesn't fit the criteria, so it kept apologising and saying it hadn't understood the question properly BEFORE but it understood it well NOW, and here's your answer for you, Mr Human Sir. But it was obvious it couldn't wrap its little electronic circuits around the question.
Its good at bullshitting.
You can see why Leon is terrified it will eliminate jobs. It will eliminate his.
The rest of us, deal with more than peddling bullshit.
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
I've been in jobs which now require a degree as an 'essential' job criteria, staffed by people who were recruited when it was not essential and indeed do not have one. I don't have data on it, but it does make me worry people who could be getting decently paying 'middle class' jobs (and are not suited for blue collar jobs which deservedly pay better as being more skilled) are not able to get their foot in the door.
I have a late twenties nephew who works in IT, having started after leaving school aged 18. Basically he does office moves and sets up systems on site. He seems quite good at it and has a good work ethic, based in Reading.
Recently his boss appointed a new supervisor over him with just a couple of years experience, but who has a degree. My nephew is trapped in his firm as he hasn't got any formal qualifications that get him a job elsewhere.
So no Uni debt, reasonable earnings in his twenties, though still living at home with his mum, but with little opportunity to progress. After a couple of years of frustration he is going back to HE to get those bits of paper.
Sounds like he should move to a decent employer.
The problem is that he cannot without paper qualifications in the field.
My own view is that 40-50% going to Tertiary education is about right for a developed economy. It is true of nearly all our economic competition. The thriving parts of our economy are in our university cities, and the Great Wen in particular.
There is a problem with people choosing courses poorly, and many of those courses being poor value in terms of educational content and supervision.
I would favour a system of grants rather than loans for students who have worked and paid NI for perhaps two years before commencing. I think students would be more mature, but also have seriously considered alternatives, and thought through what they want to get out of University.
The GI Bill comprised more than just education, but was a major factor in the long postwar American economic boom. The opportunities it gave the boomer generation in terms of education, careers and housing are not irrelevant today.
A plan for growth that targets academic and vocational educational and economic benefit for twenty-somethings is much more likely to succeed than one based on IHT cuts for the existing plutocrats.
The idea of 3 years concentrated learning from 18 to 21 and then not much more beyond that makes no sense to me. It may have tactical advantages for individuals but as a fairly quickly changing society and economy it would be far better to rebalance expectations and culture to a more continuous and less concentrated learning process.
One key feature of the GI Bill was that the GIs had some real life experience before they went to Uni, often a bit too real. They weren't pampered 18 year olds. That is what I would like to see replicated in a plan for economic growth here.
If we want a more demanding, purposeful undergraduate student body we need to move away from entry aged 18.
My medical school has a strong preference for those a year or more post A level. They make more serious students and more grounded Doctors.
I’d like to see a form of national/international service where British 18 year olds could choose to do military training or vocational/charity work at home or abroad - one year of building wells in Zambia or whatever. And this should be open to all, and if you do it you should get real credit and have a better chance of getting into a good university - it must count and be highly enticing as an option
I can’t think of many things that would be better for us as a society. Unifying and positive. Spend the aid budget on it
F***in' 'ell. You've developed old man syndrome.
" These youngsters don't know they are born. Back in my day we were conscripted into the Marines and I had to complete a 50 mile yomp through the Brecon Beacons every day".
Your memory is faulty. You were pissed in the Fitzroy.
I have an IQ of a lot
Her Majesty’s Government therefore noticed me toiling away in a crappy provincial comprehensive and decided it was worth lifting me up and educating me at one of britain’s best and world class universities. Without that social nudge I’m not sure I’d have gone to do what I’ve done in flint sex toy world, even if I spent most of my uni years whacked out of my gourd on drugs
Since then I have literally paid HMG millions in tax so it turns out the UK taxpayer got a good deal
I think we can get a better deal for and from our young people today. I recommend my international service idea to the House
To be honest, I don't think it's a terrible idea, some sort of civic duty whether at home or abroad would be no bad thing. I believe the choice should be for the individual. Litter picking in Penarth or building irrigation systems in Malawi, it's the choice of the young person.
It's the notion and irony of compulsion to military services which is often advocated by former teenage slackers of our age.
Which is why I specifically said military service OR SOMETHING ELSE - at home or abroad
18 year olds are fucking rubbish at building wells in Zambia.
Indeed, the one thing Africa doesn't lack it is underemployed young workers capable of digging wells
Such gap year experiences may well be beneficial for the Gappers, but much less so for the local people. Ditto middle aged Americans building schools. FFS employ local brickies then go and have an opening ceremony.
Ok then let them regrow coral in the Maldives. Anything
Offer them adventure and travel but also a chance to serve. This is exactly the sort of thing Labour should be all over. Mixing patriotism and altruism
If Starmerism is to mean anything: it might be this
An exit 'door' blew out in flight at 16,000 feet; there were no fatalities. The plane was only ten weeks old.
"On the 737-9 MAX, Boeing includes a rear cabin exit door aft of the wings, but before the rear exit door. This is activated in dense seating configurations to meet evacuation requirements. The doors are not activated on Alaska Airlines aircraft and are permanently “plugged."
Surely an actual door would have been *more* likely to come out? Doors are things designed to open, and failure of locking mechanisms can always occur. This is a plug in a gap in the fuselage that is *never* supposed to open: you could - should, in fact - put connectors on it that are much more reliable than that of doors.
I'd expect all 737 Max's of this configuration to be grounded. As it was only ten weeks old, it'll be a manufacturing error, and they'll need to work out why it happened, inspections, and how to prevent it happening again, before they fly again.
I'm betting they don't, though.
An actual door has a number of large steel pins which keep it in place. The plug is either riveted or more likely glued into the hole, without all the heavy engineering that goes into the door. Dropping the door for a plug is purely to save weight.
Yes, it’s either a design or manufacturing problem, either of which will ground them all until they’ve worked out the issue.
Another reminder to always wear your seat belt when you can, as if the hundreds of passenger injuries every year caused by turbulence weren’t enough reason.
No. Doors are designed to be opened, and therefore are always a weak point of the structure. There is zero reason for a plug like that to be any weaker than the rest of the plane's structure - at least, no valid reason.
The door *opening* is the weak point in the *fusleage* design, present whether or not there’s an actual door there.
Imagine that you replaced a steel door in your house with a non-standard cardboard door; on a windy day that cardboard door is now the weak point, whereas the steel door would be an over-engineered but heavy solution that would stay standing in its frame, as the wood and brick wall disintegrated around it.
Boeing has inadvertently replaced a steel door with a cardboard door, or at least a door with a cardboard frame.
If you choose to replace that door with a cardboard one, that is. There is zero reason for the plug to be less strong than a normal door: in fact, it should be stronger.
As for weight: you also need to exclude the weight of the opening and securing mechanisms and escape chute, as it isn't an overwing door.
Oh, of course it’s possible to design a door plug that is both stronger than the door and considerably lighter.
It’s just that Boeing haven’t done that. They’ve either designed or manufactured a plug that’s the weakest point of the entire pressurised structure.
If the stuff I’ve found online is correct, the plug is actually the external part of the regular emergency exit door, with the latching system bolted closed and the opening mechanism removed. Inside the aircraft, it’s just a regular interior panel - no sign of a door.
Saves having to certify the design all over again - and also allows the plane to be refitted when it's sold/re-leased/tdhe airline puts it on a different route, I imagine.
But by implication that raises worries about all doors of that type, whether operating or not. Unless there is something specifically wrong with the bolting of the latching system? So it must affect all planes of that general model?
England and Scotland both had their share of civil wars even before the unpleasantness of the mid-seventeenth century e.g. The Wars of the Roses, the Marian Civil War, the Anarchy, the War of the Scottish succession etc etc
18 year olds are fucking rubbish at building wells in Zambia.
Indeed, the one thing Africa doesn't lack it is underemployed young workers capable of digging wells
Such gap year experiences may well be beneficial for the Gappers, but much less so for the local people. Ditto middle aged Americans building schools. FFS employ local brickies then go and have an opening ceremony.
Ok then let them regrow coral in the Maldives. Anything
Offer them adventure and travel but also a chance to serve. This is exactly the sort of thing Labour should be all over. Mixing patriotism and altruism
If Starmerism is to mean anything: it might be this
How ab9ut picking up litter in their own street?
Yes. That too. Tho I’d probably make convicts do that
An exit 'door' blew out in flight at 16,000 feet; there were no fatalities. The plane was only ten weeks old.
"On the 737-9 MAX, Boeing includes a rear cabin exit door aft of the wings, but before the rear exit door. This is activated in dense seating configurations to meet evacuation requirements. The doors are not activated on Alaska Airlines aircraft and are permanently “plugged."
Surely an actual door would have been *more* likely to come out? Doors are things designed to open, and failure of locking mechanisms can always occur. This is a plug in a gap in the fuselage that is *never* supposed to open: you could - should, in fact - put connectors on it that are much more reliable than that of doors.
I'd expect all 737 Max's of this configuration to be grounded. As it was only ten weeks old, it'll be a manufacturing error, and they'll need to work out why it happened, inspections, and how to prevent it happening again, before they fly again.
I'm betting they don't, though.
An actual door has a number of large steel pins which keep it in place. The plug is either riveted or more likely glued into the hole, without all the heavy engineering that goes into the door. Dropping the door for a plug is purely to save weight.
Yes, it’s either a design or manufacturing problem, either of which will ground them all until they’ve worked out the issue.
Another reminder to always wear your seat belt when you can, as if the hundreds of passenger injuries every year caused by turbulence weren’t enough reason.
No. Doors are designed to be opened, and therefore are always a weak point of the structure. There is zero reason for a plug like that to be any weaker than the rest of the plane's structure - at least, no valid reason.
The door *opening* is the weak point in the *fusleage* design, present whether or not there’s an actual door there.
Imagine that you replaced a steel door in your house with a non-standard cardboard door; on a windy day that cardboard door is now the weak point, whereas the steel door would be an over-engineered but heavy solution that would stay standing in its frame, as the wood and brick wall disintegrated around it.
Boeing has inadvertently replaced a steel door with a cardboard door, or at least a door with a cardboard frame.
If you choose to replace that door with a cardboard one, that is. There is zero reason for the plug to be less strong than a normal door: in fact, it should be stronger.
As for weight: you also need to exclude the weight of the opening and securing mechanisms and escape chute, as it isn't an overwing door.
Oh, of course it’s possible to design a door plug that is both stronger than the door and considerably lighter.
It’s just that Boeing haven’t done that. They’ve either designed or manufactured a plug that’s the weakest point of the entire pressurised structure.
If the stuff I’ve found online is correct, the plug is actually the external part of the regular emergency exit door, with the latching system bolted closed and the opening mechanism removed. Inside the aircraft, it’s just a regular interior panel - no sign of a door.
Saves having to certify the design all over again - and also allows the plane to be refitted when it's sold/re-leased/tdhe airline puts it on a different route, I imagine.
But by implication that raises worries about all doors of that type, whether operating or not. Unless there is something specifically wrong with the bolting of the latching system? So it must affect all planes of that general model?
England and Scotland both had their share of civil wars even before the unpleasantness of the mid-seventeenth century e.g. The Wars of the Roses, the Marian Civil War, the Anarchy, the War of the Scottish succession etc etc
That was probably the non-sequitur of the year. I meant to reply to another post. Apologies.
AI news: I asked Chat GPT4 to give me words denoting two human body parts that differed only insofar as one had /θ/ where the other had /f/ (this was in connection with th-fronting and surgery), but I gave up because it was like conversing with an idiot. It pretended it understood the question, but I repeatedly had to say no no no, your suggestion doesn't fit the criteria, so it kept apologising and saying it hadn't understood the question properly BEFORE but it understood it well NOW, and here's your answer for you, Mr Human Sir. But it was obvious it couldn't wrap its little electronic circuits around the question.
Its good at bullshitting.
You can see why Leon is terrified it will eliminate jobs. It will eliminate his.
The rest of us, deal with more than peddling bullshit.
It’s not even good at bullshitting any more
Here’s a a black swan prediction. In the next year or two a hitherto unknown AI company will release an “un-nerfed”, completely unguarded version of ChatGPT5 - and it will be open source. Anyone can take it and use it and make it even more powerful
THAT will be a riot. That is when things will get interesting; again
Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview ..“They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster joked*. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
*Not sure why the Guardian thought she was joking ?
I saw on TwiX yesterday that the average IQ of an undergraduate is now 102
We are trying to teach cats to dance. Someone with an IQ of 102 will not benefit in anyway, intellectually, from a proper degree level education. All they will accrue is debt
For your next PB alias, you should go with either Statler, or Waldorf.
On the other hand, I am entirely right, aren’t I?
We are giving expensive university education to people who cannot truly benefit from it (unless you think the social bonds and opportunities offered by uni are THAT valuable - and this I doubt). Yes, the Flynn Effect meant kids got smarter for a while, but they didn’t get vastly smarter, and anyway now the Flynn Effect is in reverse, so the mistake of trying to universalise university is graver
It’s a fundamental error. We are conning these kids, and saddling them with debt, for no reason whatsoever other than it makes us feel good that “50% of our young people are at university” - and it funds a large education sector. A great proportion of these youngsters would be far better off doing vocational courses, some kind of national/international service, or going straight to work
That is a classic case of "Conductor, being as I am on the bus you can now ring the bell, don't concern yourself with all those queued at the bus stop".
You enjoyed your three years at University College in what you have suggested was a glorious drunken, drug addled paradise, where in your moments of cogence you sired beautiful former public schoolgirls. And all as a freebie from HMG.
You are nonetheless demanding generations following you are deprived of this life, even if they have to pay for it themselves. They can toil down the coalmines!
Hmmm. Given that Leon is, I believe, only a few years younger than me, the chances are that when he went to university it was still at the time when only a small minority of teenagers had that opportunity. So saying we should go back to something closer to that, even if we disagree with it, is hardly the hypocrisy you accuse him of.
50% going to university was a ruse devised to keep school leavers off the unemployment figures. It has not been a success as a policy and has degraded the value of degrees whilst at the same time crreating a whole generation (or more) of young people who are now disastisfied as the promised benefits of higher education have failed to materialise whilst they are saddled with massive amounts of debt.
Pointing out these facts does not strike me as being unreasonable.
The whys and wherefores of whether 50% of the population should experience university life is a different debate.
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
But that wasn't the point you made or that I am answering.
Your specific quote was "You enjoyed your three years at University College... (drinking, women, fun)... And all as a freebie from HMG."
And my reply is that, at that time, university places were limited in just the way you are now criticising so you cannot accuse Leon of the sort of hypocrisy you claimed. He made it under an extremely restrictive system just like I did (also a comprehensive boy and the first from muy family to go to University).
I have no idea about Leon's kids and whther they would benefit under a more restrictive system and, to be honest, neither do you.
The Royal Navy has been forced to use LinkedIn to advertise for a Rear-Admiral to be responsible for the nation’s nuclear deterrent amid a growing recruitment crisis.
Comments
******
1. The smallest Labour lead with a BPC registered pollster in Q1 2024.
9%
3. Date of the next UK General Election.
Thursday 23 Jan 2025
4. Party leaders of Con, Lab, LD, SNP, and Reform when the GE is called
Only change is Farage for Reform.
5. UK General Election outcome: winning party + majority (±10%).
Lab. 5%. NOM.
6. 2024 US Presidential Election: nominees for the GOP and Dems.
Trump. Biden.
7. 2024 US Presidential Election: winner.
Trump.
8. UK base rate on 31 December 2024.
4.5%
9. UK CPI figure for November 2024 (Nov 2023 = 3.9%).
2.1%
10. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2024 (Year to Nov 2023 = £116.4bn).
100Bn
10. GB total medal haul at the 2024 Olympics ( 2020/21 = 64).
71
The weird thing that would mean "this time is different" is if evolution stopped and our current jobs became the final jobs and nobody needed to change.
Plenty of people don't work in offices. Indeed only 13% of working Americans work in "Office & Administration" work - and AI won't be automating all their jobs, any more than computers did.
But here it doesn't matter what Democrats think since SCOTUS is controlled by Conservatives, except for some wild possibilities like the liberal justices joining with the Trumpist ones to outvote the less feral conservatives.
And it usually makes zero sense but then again most HR departments aren't bright, but have a degree and therefore assume everyone else should have 1 to.
But interesting typo.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67892275
But the Establishment cannot admit that!
My own view is that 40-50% going to Tertiary education is about right for a developed economy. It is true of nearly all our economic competition. The thriving parts of our economy are in our university cities, and the Great Wen in particular.
There is a problem with people choosing courses poorly, and many of those courses being poor value in terms of educational content and supervision.
I would favour a system of grants rather than loans for students who have worked and paid NI for perhaps two years before commencing. I think students would be more mature, but also have seriously considered alternatives, and thought through what they want to get out of University.
The GI Bill comprised more than just education, but was a major factor in the long postwar American economic boom. The opportunities it gave the boomer generation in terms of education, careers and housing are not irrelevant today.
A plan for growth that targets academic and vocational educational and economic benefit for twenty-somethings is much more likely to succeed than one based on IHT cuts for the existing plutocrats.
1. The Met will wait until after the Inquiry has reported, I expect. They have, in theory, been investigating two Fujitsu employees for the last 3 years.
2. Why isn't the SFO involved? This is or should be seen as serious fraud. It is worth noting that in addition to the 900 or subpostmasters who were prosecuted, another 2,800 according to reports were made to repay money the PO claimed it was owed. However, the SFO declined to get involved in what remains until now the UK's biggest criminal fraud (£1.5 billion) and has had its own serious troubles lately. Its misconduct in the ENRC investigation means it is now liable to pay it a shedload of money for its behaviour. Proof - if proof were needed - that even being a supposed expert in a subject does not stop you behaving badly and unprofessionally. It has also recently appointed a new Head, an ex-Met policeman, Nick Ephgrave (allegedly the other candidate for the top Met role). He has no prior fraud experience so may not want this hot potato.
3.Then there is the NCA - what are they doing?
4. It is possible that this latest move is linked to the reported appointment of Tom Little KC by the CPS to look at possible charges. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice is a hard charge to prove - as all conspiracy charges are, by their nature. So he may have advised that fraud charges are easier. After all, if there was no proof of any theft and the discrepancies were simply made up numbers not "missing money" in any sense, then the Post Office had no entitlement to demand its repayment by the subpostmasters, not even on the basis of the notoriously one-sided contracts.
5. The question is whether they go after individuals or the corporate body. Criminal charges against an organisation are always difficult and it raises the possibility of having to put in the dock those who were in charge during the time when most of the prosecutions were happening i.e. in the 2000 - 2012 period before the wretched Vennells came along.
6. Finally, I wonder whether this is linked in any way with the reports of recordings having been uncovered. Or whether it is all smoke and mirrors to give the impression of activity. The reality is that only 93 convictions have been overturned and the compensation process is very slow indeed, unnecessarily so.
https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/1743562298009034902
Have a go at answering them all, I think, in it to win it and all that.
TSE isn't going to have any issues posting the Amazon tokens to you is he?
Can you still spend them in your jurisdiction?
Is this an individual effort or are the boys forming a syndicate? - surely between you you have opinions on most things, not just BA pilots.
Actually, the idea of the Russian troll farm putting in a collective competition entry is quite touching!
Didn't cut Employers NI though.
Also if personal allowances had kept up with inflation it would be £15,230 in April not £12,570 saving everyone £532 a year (you need to earn £40,000) for the NI saving to match that.
What that will mean in practice is that they are getting to see the documents provided to the Inquiry and getting to hear the evidence and putting it all into a big file marked "Post Office" or Operation XXXX and then when the Inquiry is over on the basis of legal advice they will start doing some actual work.
PS If you are Rishi, get off your arse and do something about the subpostmasters, there's a good chap.
But you're right, it's now utterly trivial to automate, so unless you have something really distinctive (and easily identifiable) to offer, it's no longer a viable means of earning a living for most people.
“On Rufo: what do integrity police say about his claim to have “master’s degree from Harvard,” which is actually from the open-enrollment Extension School? Those students are great - I teach them- but they are not the same as what we normally think of as Harvard graduate students”
https://x.com/jenniferhochsc2/status/1743135440729694434?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
WTAF. Imagine if you are one of her students. She’s openly sneering at you as being inferior, despite Harvard selling these degrees as being entirely equal to normal Harvard degrees
Have they not heard of “Ratnering” in the USA?
Also, it helps those who decide to change careers out of nursing if their qualification is measured on the same scale as everyone else's.
Not saying that these are totally valid reasons, but they're not obviously absurd.
But it is quite funny watching an institution as pompous and self regarding as Harvard completely implode
This woman must surely lose her job and yet, fantastically, she still doesn’t understand that she’s done something wrong and stupid
The Right Is Dancing on Claudine Gay’s Grave. But It Was the Center-Left That Did Her In.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/05/claudine-gay-resignation-battle-column-00133820
...Rather than a monolith to be attacked by MAGA die-hards, elite higher ed is a world with significant existing tensions between the moderate and not-so-moderate left. Conservatives may have fanned the flames, but the divides that defined Gay’s tenure — over DEI, over Israel/Gaza, over speech and even over how seriously to take her plagiarism — were among folks well outside the far-right universe. As such, it’s a lesson for all sorts of other blue-state organizations, from think tanks to businesses to the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Rufo, the far-right critical race theory foe who DeSantis appointed to a state university board. Rufo, who helped publicize the plagiarism charges that ultimately doomed Gay, spent time this week taking credit for the media strategy that forced her out. But he actually laid out the strategy weeks ago:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” Rufo wrote on December 19 on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
That’s more or less what happened.
Revelations about Gay’s dubious citations began in far-right outlets — part of an ugly campaign that followed her disastrous appearance before Congress. It’s safe to say the campaign wasn’t motivated by any particular interest in Gay’s scholarly output. The hectoring from people like Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman appalled even critics of Gay’s leadership following the October 7 attacks. Harvard’s board also expressed support for Gay on academic-freedom grounds.
But it turned out that the plagiarism story had legs, and involved the sorts of missteps that could get an undergrad in deep trouble. By Christmas, calls for her resignation were coming from pillars of establishment liberalism like the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. After an even more damning plagiarism complaint was reported on New Year’s Day, she stepped down...
If we want a more demanding, purposeful undergraduate student body we need to move away from entry aged 18.
My medical school has a strong preference for those a year or more post A level. They make more serious students and more grounded Doctors.
I do wonder though how long before we see the Inquiry report! Will it be in Alan Bates’ lifetime?
Say what you like about the platform, it is great for watching grisly spectacles like this, as careers crater overnight
It is really quite similar to medieval executions, with the public munching popcorn as the intestines are fried in the flames
This could change if the Government, which owns the PO, were to tell the Board to stop effing about and give the Inquiry some genuine support. Perhaps the impact of the TV series will cause it to do so. Perhaps a change of Government might help.
I wouldn't hold breath for either eventuality though.
Remember the trans operations on children - turned out to be a website formatting thing too.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/cgay/files/claudinegay_10-2022_0.pdf
Those who advocate for University being available only to the top 10% may have a point (I don't agree) and their argument that "there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, we need plumbers" is also valid. My point was, when opportunities are rationed, often those people advocating for less graduates and more chippies assume their children will remain on the university list and mine can go down the tech to complete an NVQ2 in manicuring . They won't lose out, it's business as usual.
I can’t think of many things that would be better for us as a society. Unifying and positive. Spend the aid budget on it
In the field I'm in I continually need to tell HR that a degree is not a sensible filter (it is for part of the job, but for a lot of the other bits - change management in particular it's the last thing you need).
They needn't worry about entry dates either. They simply submit when they feel like it and backdate them.
Why not? They lie about everything else.
(Another of the unfortunate rules of life. Everyone wants protectionism for what they have to sell, free market competition for what they want to buy.)
“Since writing her dissertation, Gay has published 11 peer-reviewed academic articles, two of which she has also requested corrections on.”
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/3/claudine-gay-rise-and-fall/
I for one am on tenterhooks.
" These youngsters don't know they are born. Back in my day we were conscripted into the Marines and I had to complete a 50 mile yomp through the Brecon Beacons every day".
Your memory is faulty. You were pissed in the Fitzroy.
The element of doubt is raised by the lack of the word 'selected' but that can be interpreted either way. I'd never claim that someone only had 11 papers on the basis of that document, though, without going to standard research database sites such as Orcid.
And what about Zambian well builders?
(Actually, maybe we should get 18 year old Zambians to fix our infrastructure. Enough of it's falling apart...)
More empathetic, yes.
Not more insightful in general, but more insightful emotionally. (Which is not to say intuition equals emotional insight. They are different.)
More intelligent in all these ways, yes.
IQ is not an objective reality - it's a cultural construct and it doesn't measure emotional skills. That is a fact and not an opinion. There are no questions in IQ tests that require emotional skills to answer.
I liked your post in which you talked about ants (IIRC) being put in a room and played Mozart, to convey how little we clothes-wearing apes should think we are capable of understanding the types of intelligence that might exist in the universe. The view you were criticising could be called scientific arrogance. "Science" has only been around for ~500 years, less time than e.g. the religion of ancient Sumer, and it is laughable that those who officiate at the temple of Science truly believe that their way (even worse, in its recent incarnation as the "Enlightenment", or its super-recent incarnation as zeroes and ones) is the only true way, at last discovered, with all previous or competing ways fit only for the bin. Men who think like that could probably benefit from meeting some Aztecs after consuming more than a threshold dose of salvia.
But a similar point can be made about IQ, a concept which isn't much more than 100 years old, or 160 if we take in Galton and Spencer etc., a bit more if go back to that tosser Malthus.
What does any of this crap tell us about Callanish or Gobekli Tepe that's essential? Sweet FA.
Darwin himself wasn't as crude as those who esteem his name so much nowadays. Wallace who whaddayaknow came from a different social background was more sussed though.
Grant Shapps proposes retiring HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark to free 200 sailors amid personnel crisis for the Royal Navy
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/royal-marines-end-feared-grant-shapps-assault-vessels-2s2r3mbfs (£££)
Four decades of Tory defence cuts. These are not the same two ships being scrapped yesterday, btw.
Such gap year experiences may well be beneficial for the Gappers, but much less so for the local people. Ditto middle aged Americans building schools. FFS employ local brickies then go and have an opening ceremony.
Her Majesty’s Government therefore noticed me toiling away in a crappy provincial comprehensive and decided it was worth lifting me up and educating me at one of britain’s best and world class universities. Without that social nudge I’m not sure I’d have gone to do what I’ve done in flint sex toy world, even if I spent most of my uni years whacked out of my gourd on drugs
Since then I have literally paid HMG millions in tax so it turns out the UK taxpayer got a good deal
I think we can get a better deal for and from our young people today. I recommend my international service idea to the House
No serving sailors are suitable to replace Rear-Admiral Simon Asquith, the current Director of Submarines, and the Navy has turned to the professional networking site to find his successor.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/navy-advertises-on-linkedin-to-hire-nuclear-rear-admiral/ar-AA1mwI4U
You couldn't make it up.
Offer them adventure and travel but also a chance to serve. This is exactly the sort of thing Labour should be all over. Mixing patriotism and altruism
If Starmerism is to mean anything: it might be this
It's the notion and irony of compulsion to military services which is often advocated by former teenage slackers of our age that grates on me.
• Wiley Publication History: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/authored-by/surname/forenames
• ORC-ID: https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-9999-9999-9999
• ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/name-of-person
So go there and search
(And please stop filletting Claudine Gay's life, yes? It's a bit pervy and you are coming across as stalkers. PB can be weird at the best of times, but this is swerving into ew)
Hope I'm wrong!
First, the wonders of geology. My rain gauge at the vineyard has measured over 70mm of rain in the last 4 days. 30mm yesterday. I’m sitting in the site office (caravan with algal stains on the side and non-working heater) at the bottom of a fairly steep valley. But it’s chalk bedrock and well draining flint soil, and a dry valley - the water table is below the valley bottom, so there is zero surface water. Nothing on the field, or the valley bottom. Just a few puddles on the road.
It has to go somewhere though. I noticed the great Stour was in spate on the way here.
Second, there’s a hilarious thread going on in the wineGB forum. The vignerons of England and Wales are spitting bile at a recent WineGB press release hailing the twin Brexit wins of the introduction of pint bottles (only one winemaker in the UK plans to use them) and the removal of the need for foils on sparkling wine (which is already permitted in the EU anyway). Winemakers seem to split about 5:1 remain:leave so it’s an unequal fight. It’s like reading a Brexit thread on PB circa 2018 composed of only Scott, Alistair Meeks and Roger. Notable industry Brexiteer Stephen Skelton has so far resisted chipping in. I’d love to share it but members only.
Because its makers were so terrified of its abilities - including the ability to offend and be racist - they have “nerfed” it. Put so many guardrails on it the machine is now utterly incapable of most tasks because it has been neutered to be as bland and banal as possible
If you’d tried it in that first amazing week you’d have a sense of its potentials
You can see why Leon is terrified it will eliminate jobs. It will eliminate his.
The rest of us, deal with more than peddling bullshit.
Here’s a a black swan prediction. In the next year or two a hitherto unknown AI company will release an “un-nerfed”, completely unguarded version of ChatGPT5 - and it will be open source. Anyone can take it and use it and make it even more powerful
THAT will be a riot. That is when things will get interesting; again
Your specific quote was "You enjoyed your three years at University College... (drinking, women, fun)... And all as a freebie from HMG."
And my reply is that, at that time, university places were limited in just the way you are now criticising so you cannot accuse Leon of the sort of hypocrisy you claimed. He made it under an extremely restrictive system just like I did (also a comprehensive boy and the first from muy family to go to University).
I have no idea about Leon's kids and whther they would benefit under a more restrictive system and, to be honest, neither do you.