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Mandatory attendance and homework in higher education (pg. 3)
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
from what I've seen from the US, no matter how large the fees are, they'll find some way to spend them, so you end up with all these glamorous buildings and equipment that noone really needs. |
It's firmly headed in the same direction here. I call it the academic-industrial complex. |
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| Silky Johnson |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
Well, I think in society in general we need to stop thinking that people with degrees are smart and people without degrees are dumb. So many people in university are incredibly dimwitted and should probably not be there, but society says that one can only get a good job with a degree, so everybody goes. And, of course, in the Anglo world everyone spends so much bloody money on things they don't need because everyone is so damn materialistic. [Rant about society here edited for length.]
And I think we need to be doing much more to support apprenticeships in trades and crafts, etc. I know I've read articles in the past about how some of the most highly paid city employees in some American cities are specialist construction workers, like mortar specialists; so few people know how to do the jobs, the few people who do know have to do insane overtime to do all the work.
So many people with unrealistic dreams, basically. |
Here, in high school, students are separated into different streams (academic, applied, locally developed) right from the start, depending on their goals upon graduation (working right away vs college vs university).
https://www.careercruising.com/indi...=4668&CSID=1020
It's changed from when I was in HS, but we did have a similar structure where you were either in the basic, general, or advanced-enriched level throughout.
Also re: more students should be failing in university - are there not minimum passing grades/minimum acceptable GPA at most universities? You can't even continue on in the next semester at most unis here if you don't meet the grade requirements. Some programs have higher expectations than others, of course. |
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| Woony |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
In Britain, interestingly, despite the higher fees in the past several years, there is a larger percentage of people from 'working class' backgrounds at university than ever before |
Well working class people being in university doesn't really mean anything, the question is do they meet the requirements to get an upper-middle/academic/white collar job. And those requirements are essentially arbitrary, when my dad was growing up there used to be a three-part school system and if you went to the 'elite' high school you were essentially garuanteed a petit-bourgeoise kinda job. Then, after the 68' academia opened up so now you had to get a diploma, which was much less stringent than the whole Bologna thing. Then, after Bologna, you had to have a bachelors and now you essentially have to have a masters to get a nice white collar job because they know that it's hard for lower class people to finance 6-7 years of studying along with all the bull rules. Eventually it'll be a PhD required, it's obviously already going in that direction for academia.
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
The Western world has such odd views on debt, this weird moral sense that having debt is a sin. The only sinful debt is debt that is not being paid :o
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The idea that debt and money-lending is sin is actually a idea at the very core of christianity. I like to joke that the catholic church is the greatest anti-capitalist institution in history but it's essentially true. Only after the reformation protestantism and calvinism emerged which cleansed money-lending of it's original sin. (There's obviously a huge chicken-egg question here, did protestanism adjust it's ideology because of emerging capitalism or was capitalism a result of that emerging ideology?) I'm not an expert on all the major religions but from what I know, If you look around, there are essentially similiar themes at play, sometimes more sometimes less. Which led, I think it was Deleuze&Guattari, to come up with the thesis that all socities essentially unconsciously tried to prevent capitalism from emerging. It's the kind of grand thesis that's obviously impossible to verify but I find it pretty fascinating :p
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
And I think we need to be doing much more to support apprenticeships in trades and crafts, etc. I know I've read articles in the past about how some of the most highly paid city employees in some American cities are specialist construction workers, like mortar specialists; so few people know how to do the jobs, the few people who do know have to do insane overtime to do all the work.
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That's the ongoing narrative 'let's send all the dumb people into trades again (after we devalued them 20 years ago...)!' but at least here in Germany it doesn't actually hold up if you look at the numbers, the amount of well-paying jobs left in trades that you can do without an engineering degree tends to be way exaggerated, there's some specialist kinda positions here and there but nothing for the majority of the not-exactly-bright masses slugging around in college currently. |
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| Lews |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
It's firmly headed in the same direction here. I call it the academic-industrial complex. |
Well, they need the flashy buildings to attract the wealthy foreign students who can afford the high fees that are necessary to build flashy buildings. Nothing complex-like about that :o
| quote: | Originally posted by Silky Johnson
Here, in high school, students are separated into different streams (academic, applied, locally developed) right from the start, depending on their goals upon graduation (working right away vs college vs university). |
Yeah, I think that is a good system. The US sort of had stuff like initially, eg Prep schools were for those who would go to university while high school was for those who would not, but it's all muddled now.
| quote: | Originally posted by Silky Johnson
Also re: more students should be failing in university - are there not minimum passing grades/minimum acceptable GPA at most universities? You can't even continue on in the next semester at most unis here if you don't meet the grade requirements. Some programs have higher expectations than others, of course. |
Of course; I was more making a comment about grade inflation, which is a major problem in the US and, from my experiences, in the UK. |
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| Jon_Snow |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
It's firmly headed in the same direction here. I call it the academic-industrial complex. |
Eisenhower warned of this |
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| Silky Johnson |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
Of course; I was more making a comment about grade inflation, which is a major problem in the US and, from my experiences, in the UK. |
Ah yeah. Bull. |
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| Lews |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
Well working class people being in university doesn't really mean anything, the question is do they meet the requirements to get an upper-middle/academic/white collar job. And those requirements are essentially arbitrary, when my dad was growing up there used to be a three-part school system and if you went to the 'elite' high school you were essentially garuanteed a petit-bourgeoise kinda job. Then, after the 68' academia opened up so now you had to get a diploma, which was much less stringent than the whole Bologna thing. Then, after Bologna, you had to have a bachelors and now you essentially have to have a masters to get a nice white collar job because they know that it's hard for lower class people to finance 6-7 years of studying along with all the bull rules. Eventually it'll be a PhD required, it's obviously already going in that direction for academia. |
I disagree completely that it doesn't mean anything to have working class people in university; it's one of the biggest steps they can take in moving into the lower middle class.
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
The idea that debt and money-lending is sin is actually a idea at the very core of christianity. I like to joke that the catholic church is the greatest anti-capitalist institution in history but it's essentially true. Only after the reformation protestantism and calvinism emerged which cleansed money-lending of it's original sin. (There's obviously a huge chicken-egg question here, did protestanism adjust it's ideology because of emerging capitalism or was capitalism a result of that emerging ideology?) I'm not an expert on all the major religions but from what I know, If you look around, there are essentially similiar themes at play, sometimes more sometimes less. Which led, I think it was Deleuze&Guattari, to come up with the thesis that all socities essentially unconsciously tried to prevent capitalism from emerging. It's the kind of grand thesis that's obviously impossible to verify but I find it pretty fascinating :p |
Well, certainly many of the early church fathers were highly concerned about debt, as many early religions were, but I wouldn't really say it's a major theme in the Bible itself. And historically, money-lending was extremely common and prevalent in mediaeval Europe, and not something discussed that much. It wasn't really until the beginning of the 13th century that issues of money-lending became more prominent in Christianity, with the founding of the Dominican and Franciscan orders both being extremely vocal on the subject. And then the translation of Aristotle's Politics and Nichomachean Ethics around 1250 was a big intellectual boost to that crowd, but most the church understood that interest was still going to be charged - in fact, many churches had their own money-lending services, figuring people would borrow regardless and it was better if they lent it themselves, charging less interest than others would. I really feel that a lot of the contemporary anti-debt crowd, like David Graeber etc, really overplay historical Christian attitudes towards debt.
I still have a difficult time defining what capitalism is exactly to be able to talk about the complex relationship between it and Protestantism, but I am inclined to believe that both 'capitalism' and Protestantism came from a common source, rather than causing each other.
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
That's the ongoing narrative 'let's send all the dumb people into trades again (after we devalued them 20 years ago...)!' but at least here in Germany it doesn't actually hold up if you look at the numbers, the amount of well-paying jobs left in trades that you can do without an engineering degree tends to be way exaggerated, there's some specialist kinda positions here and there but nothing for the majority of the not-exactly-bright masses slugging around in college currently. |
Well, as I said, I think it was a big mistake to devalue trades/etc. This idea that only university-educated adults are valuable is utter nonsense.
In the future, I imagine more and more of the not-exactly-bright lot will simply stay in their state-paid apartments and play video games. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
To be honest, I'm still not sure how I feel about university fees and student debts in general, despite having been in academia for, , eight years now. Libraries, fancy lecture halls, top instructors, etc. all cost a lot of money. Why should the state pay for all of that, not students? And debt isn't necessarily a bad thing; it can be a great motivator. The Western world has such odd views on debt, this weird moral sense that having debt is a sin. The only sinful debt is debt that is not being paid |
I don't have any real moral opposition to debt, although there's certainly an argument that accruing a massive amount of debt and then knowingly sacking off your studies to get wrecked for three years is less than upstanding behaviour. For me it's more practical. Debt is essentially a convoluted form of payment, and if you're paying such a high price for something, it's pretty stupid behaviour to squander what you've paid for.
More generally, I've never had a single penny of debt in my life. That will change when I get a mortgage, but I have an ingrained aversion to spending money I don't have. |
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| Woony |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
I disagree completely that it doesn't mean anything to have working class people in university; it's one of the biggest steps they can take in moving into the lower middle class. |
But being in university is only valuable in relation to what you get out of it, ie. what is expected of you to get a good job and that bar is getting increasingly higher. I remember reading this blog from a smart psychoanalyst and he made the clever point that every time woman break through in a major way in some field, that field becomes less valuable almost as a reaction to that. Same with university, a degree by itself used to be valuable, then the working class started getting them and suddenly it was like, well a degree by itself is useless, you need to do five unpaid internships etc. Chasing that bar is just a losing game as you've said yourself when you were talking about trades being devalued.
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
lf. And historically, money-lending was extremely common and prevalent in mediaeval Europe, and not something discussed that much. |
I wasn't trying to say that money-lending just didn't happen, obviously it did but I think the key is that there was a very different cultural attitude to it, it was more like borrowing a hundred bucks from a friend to go to a festival or something, you feel kind of icky doing it and it's only for something directly in the moment, you're not thinking about investing it. Lending money was only an end to accomplish other things and not to reproduce that lended capital as an end in itself. The aristocratic class as the highest social class prided itself on not working and always saw the rich tradesmen with contempt, only dealing with them because they were forced to, which also shows in the way jews were forced into the banking business because it wasn't socially reputable. And I think a key part of that is definitely reflected in core christian (catholic) dogma - the whole poorness doctrine, altough it definitely only went over the top with the beggar orders, I think it is already present in the bible. Then there's this whole idea of heaven being a single moment, a kind of static infinite, which negates the whole idea of work - 'work' occured only in hell (of course, the whole idea of hell developed pretty late), so the ideal christian that lived close to god didn't work.
And then protestantism (or rather calvinism) turned that whole order around - working and the continous reproduction of capital as socially reputable and the prime way to heaven, which changed the whole ideological value of lending, from that icky feeling of borrowing some bucks to the way modern society fetishizes 'enterpreneurship' and gambling with lent capital as a way up in society. If you'd ask me, that's how I'd define the difference between non-capitalism and capitalism, capital as a means to other things, with any reproduction occuring as an afterthought or side effect, versus the reproduction as the primary end in itself. |
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| Lews |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I don't have any real moral opposition to debt, although there's certainly an argument that accruing a massive amount of debt and then knowingly sacking off your studies to get wrecked for three years is less than upstanding behaviour. For me it's more practical. Debt is essentially a convoluted form of payment, and if you're paying such a high price for something, it's pretty stupid behaviour to squander what you've paid for. |
I'm very much in agreement. Being stupid with borrowed money is just being stupid with your own future money, although people have a hard time seeing that.
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
But being in university is only valuable in relation to what you get out of it, ie. what is expected of you to get a good job and that bar is getting increasingly higher. I remember reading this blog from a smart psychoanalyst and he made the clever point that every time woman break through in a major way in some field, that field becomes less valuable almost as a reaction to that. Same with university, a degree by itself used to be valuable, then the working class started getting them and suddenly it was like, well a degree by itself is useless, you need to do five unpaid internships etc. Chasing that bar is just a losing game as you've said yourself when you were talking about trades being devalued. |
Of course the bar will always be moved; that's life. But for a smart, hard-working person from a background of limited means, going to university is a crucial step in advancement in life, so it is excellent that more and more students are from that background. Just because the bar is slowly moved doesn't mean we should completely write off that advancement in social mobility.
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
I wasn't trying to say that money-lending just didn't happen, obviously it did but I think the key is that there was a very different cultural attitude to it, it was more like borrowing a hundred bucks from a friend to go to a festival or something, you feel kind of icky doing it and it's only for something directly in the moment, you're not thinking about investing it. Lending money was only an end to accomplish other things and not to reproduce that lended capital as an end in itself. |
Well that's just not historically accurate. People have borrowed money to invest it for centuries. Records go back basically as far back as we have records. In the Middle Ages, the rich, both nobles and merchants, would frequently invest money with other merchants, who might then lend that money on to a third party or use it for financing personal trade; hence the term merchant-banker. Credit networks were highly complex.
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
The aristocratic class as the highest social class prided itself on not working and always saw the rich tradesmen with contempt, only dealing with them because they were forced to, which also shows in the way jews were forced into the banking business because it wasn't socially reputable. |
Are we still talking about the Middle Ages, here? What do you mean by aristocrats? Nobles? Certainly landed nobles did not work, as their role in society was to fight, but once cities really began kicking off there were all sorts of patricians, city aristocrats, who were extremely active in trade. And many of them originated in minor landed noble families.
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
And I think a key part of that is definitely reflected in core christian (catholic) dogma - the whole poorness doctrine, altough it definitely only went over the top with the beggar orders, I think it is already present in the bible. Then there's this whole idea of heaven being a single moment, a kind of static infinite, which negates the whole idea of work - 'work' occured only in hell (of course, the whole idea of hell developed pretty late), so the ideal christian that lived close to god didn't work. |
What? The Bible certainly doesn't propose that not working is a good thing, indeed in the Parable of the Talents it was not working that caused the third servant to be cast into hell! The central message isn't that being poor is good or that one should not work, only that one should be kind to the poor and not treat them like , that one should treat them with love and respect and help them.
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
And then protestantism (or rather calvinism) turned that whole order around - working and the continous reproduction of capital as socially reputable and the prime way to heaven, which changed the whole ideological value of lending, from that icky feeling of borrowing some bucks to the way modern society fetishizes 'enterpreneurship' and gambling with lent capital as a way up in society. If you'd ask me, that's how I'd define the difference between non-capitalism and capitalism, capital as a means to other things, with any reproduction occuring as an afterthought or side effect, versus the reproduction as the primary end in itself. |
I have to say, Woony, I'm highly concerned about the far left-wing education you appear to be getting. Besides my own moral feelings towards it, much of this broad history you have is simply wrong. Calvinism 100% did not state that working and reproducing capital is the prime way to heaven - one of the prime tenets of Calvinism is predestination, which states that God has already ordained who is going to heaven and who is not! And, as I mentioned above but I want to reiterate, it is by no means a contemporary or modern thing for people to 'gamble' with lent capital, people have been doing that since before Christ. And people have been reproducing capital, trying to have more and more money, since there has been money! That doesn't seem like a very helpful way to delineate Capitalism. |
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| Lira |
This thread became a bit larger than I had imagined it would, so I'll address the points, rather than posters individually:- More people should be failing/grade inflation: Actually, it's both a problem if too many people pass with flying colours (because you're probably not pushing them hard enough) and if too many people fail (there's a gap between the level students must reach and where they're "stuck"). If anything, the latter has led to a crisis in the major I teach because the dropout rate has always hovered above 66% since the first class graduated some 20 years ago. 85% of my classmates jumped ship before graduation, actually, and I was the only one who graduated in 9 semesters, as planned. No one who first enrolled with me was there my graduation day. That's way below average compared to other courses even in Brazil, where 49% of students drop out before graduation.
So, in a sense, too many people are already failing, and that's taxpayers' money going down the drain (public education is completely subsidised by the state here in Brazil). Find the sweet spot between grade inflation and low morale seems to be a bit difficult because while some of us want to lower the bar so more people can advance, there are many alumni who find the diploma worthless without the accompanying skills, and this would just make the situation worse.
- Universities and the social ladder: From what I've read, roughly 1 in 8 Brazilians completed higher education, both in public institutions or otherwise. I'm afraid we're not just failing the poor, we're squandering talent all over the place :(
- Stopping students from talking outside the classroom: I know this is Latin America, IGK, but even here dictatorship is frowned upon :p
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| Jon_Snow |
| But you do realize the classroom is a dictatorship? So is not taking attendance the last vestige of free will you're holding on to? |
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