60% of Americans did not go to college.

You mentioned growing up around folks who weren't necessarily the most sophisticated but would give you the shirt off their back and do anything for you. Compare that to the rich kids who go to the Ivy Leagues or elite East Coast liberal art schools and learn about financial derivatives and then go to Wall St. Is the world lacking for those types? Do we necessarily need more of them? (Of course it's not a simple either/or binary choice there but just making a point.)
I don’t know. What I do know is a college education can make you better as an individual but it doesn’t make fundamentally better than others.

All I know is I was damned fortunate to get one. Only about 15% of the kids I graduated with went to college and I was consistently told I wasn’t going to be one of them. None of my science teachers said that. They strongly encouraged me to as did one of my literature teachers. Most of the others discouraged me. I suspect that was due to my social status.

I had an English comp teacher ask me to drop his class cause it was for college prep students and that I wasn’t really college material. That was after I had submitted only one essay. That may have been a small part my fault as I was in my long hair hippy phase and he was as extremely conservative. So I went to the assistant principal and complained. That dick head then tried to tell me I should enroll in the remedial special Ed classes. About this time I wanted to kill my father for moving us to this hick rural community. So I went home and told my father what happened and he wigged out. He called up the school principal and requested a meeting with him, I and the English teacher, the assistant principal and the principal.

At the meeting Dad asked them if what they had said to me was true and they admitted they had and gave their reasons. When they finished my Father picked up a copy of Guyton’s physiology and handed the book to the English teacher and said open this up to any section. When he did he told him to hand the book to me which he did. Dad then said ok read it out loud to us. So I did. Read it straight up with out mispronouncing a single word. Then Dad said now explain what you read meant. Which I did without looking at the book. He then told them that two years earlier I had completed a standardized reading comprehension test and was evaluated as being able to read somewhere between a sophomore in college and a graduate school reading comprehension level and that I had my IQ tested at 136. He then wanted to know if they thought I couldn’t write or should take the retard classes. Well I thought that was an end of that shit.

The next semester, I was a senior, I went to talk to the guidance counselor about going to College. The guidance counselor took one look at me in my “Free Abbie Hoffman” t-shirt and flat out told me I wasn’t even college material and had no business thinking about a science major. I lost my cool and told him that with his attitude he had no business being a guidance counselor. Boy shit hit the fan then. You could hear us screaming at each other halfway across the school. I got suspended for three days on that stunt. When I told my parents what happened and what I said my father howled laughing.

So back to the school we went and marched straight to the counselors office where my father said to the Counselor “Hi I’m Dr. Hoople. What’s this shit I heard that you told my son he isn’t college material?”. I thought the guy was going to die!

So you can see why I don’t care to much for people who are snobs about their education. Probably explains why I hated High School with a passion.
 
Like with most things in America we pay too much for generally not very good quality....or worse....with Universities it is way worse....they are now a force for Evil.
 
More along the lines of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Especially in ‘16, Bernie was taking on the Democratic establishment and we saw the results of that as far as turn out for Hillary being slightly down among the left. It’s why you see certain Trump backers supporting Tulsi Gabbard. She’s taking on the DNC. It’s why certain Democrats liked McCain when he was seen as challenging Republican orthodoxy.
I supported Bernie until Trump won the nomination..i have since learned there is a difference in income disparity due to the job or your skills. get a different job or more skills,and you can erase income disparity
Instead of "income inequality" -implying a permanent underclass.

Tulsi is an anti-interventionist, as is Trump
 
Like with most things in America we pay too much for generally not very good quality....or worse....with Universities it is way worse....they are now a force for Evil.

Oh Jesus fucking Christ. Do you have any idea what an illiterate fool you are making of yourself. Two thirds of the top 500 universities in the world are in the US. We have the top State funded and Private University system in the world. Only the UK is comparable.

You've probably never made the effort and done the work required to attend college and your probably basing your comments in political ideology without realizing that a conservative education is about as worthless as tits on a boar hog. There is a reason why all the best Universities in the world are liberal arts schools and that's because an education by authority has little intrinsic value because it doesn't teach you to THINK.

I'm no fucking snob when it comes to education but by fucking God I busted my ass off to earn one. Until you have you should probably STFU cause you're making an ass of yourself.
 
Oh Jesus fucking Christ. Do you have any idea what an illiterate fool you are making of yourself. Two thirds of the top 500 universities in the world are in the US. We have the top State funded and Private University system in the world. Only the UK is comparable.

You've probably never made the effort and done the work required to attend college and your probably basing your comments in political ideology without realizing that a conservative education is about as worthless as tits on a boar hog. There is a reason why all the best Universities in the world are liberal arts schools and that's because an education by authority has little intrinsic value because it doesn't teach you to THINK.

I'm no fucking snob when it comes to education but by fucking God I busted my ass off to earn one. Until you have you should probably STFU cause you're making an ass of yourself.

We have many of the best colleges, indeed.

But, what about the best students & best scientists & engineers?

An awful lot appear to be foreigners for some time.
 
We have many of the best colleges, indeed.

But, what about the best students & best scientists & engineers?

An awful lot appear to be foreigners for some time.

Indeed we do but the reason we have so many is that Foreign Nationals have to pay significantly more to attend US Universities than US citizens do and thus are a profit center for the Universities and they are willing to do so due to the superior quality of education available at US Universities vs their home countries.
 
Indeed we do but the reason we have so many is that Foreign Nationals have to pay significantly more to attend US Universities than US citizens do and thus are a profit center for the Universities and they are willing to do so due to the superior quality of education available at US Universities vs their home countries.

I wonder what percentage of Ivy League students come from South of the Mason Dixon line!?

Probably not too many.
 
I don’t know. What I do know is a college education can make you better as an individual but it doesn’t make fundamentally better than others.

All I know is I was damned fortunate to get one. Only about 15% of the kids I graduated with went to college and I was consistently told I wasn’t going to be one of them. None of my science teachers said that. They strongly encouraged me to as did one of my literature teachers. Most of the others discouraged me. I suspect that was due to my social status.

I had an English comp teacher ask me to drop his class cause it was for college prep students and that I wasn’t really college material. That was after I had submitted only one essay. That may have been a small part my fault as I was in my long hair hippy phase and he was as extremely conservative. So I went to the assistant principal and complained. That dick head then tried to tell me I should enroll in the remedial special Ed classes. About this time I wanted to kill my father for moving us to this hick rural community. So I went home and told my father what happened and he wigged out. He called up the school principal and requested a meeting with him, I and the English teacher, the assistant principal and the principal.

At the meeting Dad asked them if what they had said to me was true and they admitted they had and gave their reasons. When they finished my Father picked up a copy of Guyton’s physiology and handed the book to the English teacher and said open this up to any section. When he did he told him to hand the book to me which he did. Dad then said ok read it out loud to us. So I did. Read it straight up with out mispronouncing a single word. Then Dad said now explain what you read meant. Which I did without looking at the book. He then told them that two years earlier I had completed a standardized reading comprehension test and was evaluated as being able to read somewhere between a sophomore in college and a graduate school reading comprehension level and that I had my IQ tested at 136. He then wanted to know if they thought I couldn’t write or should take the retard classes. Well I thought that was an end of that shit.

The next semester, I was a senior, I went to talk to the guidance counselor about going to College. The guidance counselor took one look at me in my “Free Abbie Hoffman” t-shirt and flat out told me I wasn’t even college material and had no business thinking about a science major. I lost my cool and told him that with his attitude he had no business being a guidance counselor. Boy shit hit the fan then. You could hear us screaming at each other halfway across the school. I got suspended for three days on that stunt. When I told my parents what happened and what I said my father howled laughing.

So back to the school we went and marched straight to the counselors office where my father said to the Counselor “Hi I’m Dr. Hoople. What’s this shit I heard that you told my son he isn’t college material?”. I thought the guy was going to die!

So you can see why I don’t care to much for people who are snobs about their education. Probably explains why I hated High School with a passion.

Your last sentence really resonates with me. If I'm being honest there are a few times I've been that way ("you only went to that school?") It is a very snobbish attitude. But for me that's the exception. My overall belief is everyone travels their own path (you're a sports fan, some kids are 5* who excel all the way through. Other kids develop late, maybe go the JC route or play overseas for awhile until they find themselves etc.) thus if college isn't for you when you are 18 it doesn't make you a bad person or mean you won't be happy or successful in life.

Not that this board is real life but you see it here, people sh*tting on others because they didn't go to college.

Edit: If we were having a beer on Lane Ave I'd ask you this. I'm teaching my four year old the names of all the Ivy League schools. My thought process is I want her to have high expectations from an early age. Ultimately she's going to do what she wants and I'll support her (unless she chooses UCLA and then all bets are off) but it's about the mindset. So the question is, good parenting or academic snob?
 
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I wonder what percentage of Ivy League students come from South of the Mason Dixon line!?

Probably not too many.

I have no idea but I suspect they are fairly represented but to expand upon your question of are many of our best scientist and engineers are foreign then the answer is no going purely by numbers.

80% of the graduate degrees awarded in the US go to Life Science and Health Care professionals which are dominated by US students. In engineering the numbers are somewhat skewed.

In theoretical engineering it is true that many of the best are foreign. However in applied engineering it is dominated by US Engineers as many top US engineers by pass graduate school to become Registered Professional Engineers. Becoming a Registered P.E. is as difficult as earning a Doctorate or PhD. It takes 3-4 years apprenticeship and to be licensed you need to pass a two day comprehensive examination that requires mastery of most fields of engineering from mechanical, civil, electrical, environmental, engineering economics, etc,. It's every bit as difficult as passing the Bar exam or the National Medical Boards Diplomat. It also pays, in general, substantially more than being a research engineer or academic engineer.

I remember when I was a research associate at the Ohio State University graduate graduate school of materials science and engineering (which is a weird story as I am not an engineer and my graduate education is in human biology) the department was dominated by Asian foreign students and a I disabused them of the notion that they were better than American engineering students when I explained that while they were in grad school earning their PhD most of their US counterparts were working on obtaining their P.E. License and that those folks would earn substantially more with a P.E. license than they would with a PhD. That was an eye opener to many of them.
 
I have no idea but I suspect they are fairly represented but to expand upon your question of are many of our best scientist and engineers are foreign then the answer is no going purely by numbers.

80% of the graduate degrees awarded in the US go to Life Science and Health Care professionals which are dominated by US students. In engineering the numbers are somewhat skewed.

In theoretical engineering it is true that many of the best are foreign. However in applied engineering it is dominated by US Engineers as many top US engineers by pass graduate school to become Registered Professional Engineers. Becoming a Registered P.E. is as difficult as earning a Doctorate or PhD. It takes 3-4 years apprenticeship and to be licensed you need to pass a two day comprehensive examination that requires mastery of most fields of engineering from mechanical, civil, electrical, environmental, engineering economics, etc,. It's every bit as difficult as passing the Bar exam or the National Medical Boards Diplomat. It also pays, in general, substantially more than being a research engineer or academic engineer.

I remember when I was a research associate at the Ohio State University graduate graduate school of materials science and engineering (which is a weird story as I am not an engineer and my graduate education is in human biology) the department was dominated by Asian foreign students and a I disabused them of the notion that they were better than American engineering students when I explained that while they were in grad school earning their PhD most of their US counterparts were working on obtaining their P.E. License and that those folks would earn substantially more with a P.E. license than they would with a PhD. That was an eye opener to many of them.

I share an office suite with a die hard Ohio State U atty. He has an Ohio State giant logo chair I have to see every day. You guys just lost a big game, right?
College Football.
 
I wonder what percentage of Ivy League students come from South of the Mason Dixon line!?

Probably not too many.

Probably about the same percentage as come from the west coast.

Most 18 year olds do not want to go to school two thousand miles from home.

A lot of high school kids aspire to go to elite private universities in their geographic region, aka Stanford, Rice, Duke, etc.
 
Your last sentence really resonates with me. If I'm being honest there are a few times I've been that way ("you only went to that school?") It is a very snobbish attitude. But for me that's the exception. My overall belief is everyone travels their own path (you're a sports fan, some kids are 5* who excel all the way through. Other kids develop late, maybe go the JC route or play overseas for awhile until they find themselves etc.) thus if college isn't for you when you are 18 it doesn't make you a bad person or mean you won't be happy or successful in life.

Not that this board is real life but you see it here, people sh*tting on others because they didn't go to college.

Edit: If we were having a beer on Lane Ave I'd ask you this. I'm teaching my four year old the names of all the Ivy League schools. My thought process is I want her to have high expectations from an early age. Ultimately she's going to do what she wants and I'll support her (unless she chooses UCLA and then all bets are off) but it's about the mindset. So the question is, good parenting or academic snob?

Yes you do see people on here shitting on others over that and I only tend to do that when some knuckle head tries to throw some BS that they have some sort of social superiority from ignorance (i.e didn't go to college).

I'd say that there's no problem with teaching your child to aspire to the best schools but keep in mind what it is she wants to do in her life. Say for example she develops a burning desire to be a CGI animator. Then I'd suggest she consider going to Ohio State as it has the highest rated program in that field. Or say she's interested in being a Materials Scientist, then I'd suggest she attend SUNY Alfred or University of Illinois as they are the two top rated programs in the nation. Or say she has an interest in alternative Health Care and wants to be a Chiropractor then I'd suggest going to Palmer College as they are the highest rated Chiropractic program in the nation....if you see what I"m getting at.
 
Yes you do see people on here shitting on others over that and I only tend to do that when some knuckle head tries to throw some BS that they have some sort of social superiority from ignorance (i.e didn't go to college).

I'd say that there's no problem with teaching your child to aspire to the best schools but keep in mind what it is she wants to do in her life. Say for example she develops a burning desire to be a CGI animator. Then I'd suggest she consider going to Ohio State as it has the highest rated program in that field. Or say she's interested in being a Materials Scientist, then I'd suggest she attend SUNY Alfred or University of Illinois as they are the two top rated programs in the nation. Or say she has an interest in alternative Health Care and wants to be a Chiropractor then I'd suggest going to Palmer College as they are the highest rated Chiropractic program in the nation....if you see what I"m getting at.

I 100% agree with you here. Going to an Ivy, or MIT or Stanford is obviously very sexy and carries a certain cache but like you said certain schools have particular fields of study where they may be the best.
 
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