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Student Loans and the SAVE plan
- Thread starter Sanrith Descartes
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Sanrith Descartes
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Speaking from the position of having actual live experience of being in front of actual college students, I can say this is just stupid.
Do we have dumb college students? Yes we do. Especially in athletic programs.
Is the "average" college student dumb? No.
Have things like texting, social media speak, never reading a book outside of academic requirements eroded some of what us old people would call basic skills? Yes.
The "average" student at a 4-year university has been through College Algebra and Stats. Not everyone takes Stats and this is especially true for liberal arts majors. Dumb people cant pass college algebra and stats.
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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That's the question, what do you suggest? I am more interested in the results than my bias being proven correctly.
Anecdotally, it is very difficult to parse all elements of an education for people before modern standardized testing (as ineffective as it may be). Some of these backstories that start with stuff like "became midshipman at 11, left the ship and went to school at 14, became so-and-so's apprentice at 16, started as a professional architect at 18 and built this aqueduct at 23" it's very difficult to parse how much did what.
There's also an interesting question of, how do you (or should you) separate formal education of certain types of schools from 'self-tutelage'. I learn most topics these days watching recorded videos, not in a physical classroom. Probably not that different from someone who had access to a mentor, or access to rare books or a specific university in older days.
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Since there is no way to go back in time to have the 1900's kids take the tests differently, find me a test that was administered to a relatively average high school class (and to ALL of them, not just the ones going to college or the ones in prep school) and the answers they gave, then we can give the same test to a group of "average" high school kids (not prep school kids and not nogs) today and see how they do.
I think today's average kids would embarrass the average kids of 1900 and it wouldn't be even close. The median kid in 1900 probably couldn't read and was milking cows and picking okra and corn by hand. The median kid in 2023 graduated from high school, can use a computer, read/write, and has meaningful career prospects.
Where I think you're missing it is you're thinking the 1900's (like 1900-1910) were full of distinguished gentlemen or the type of people portrayed in historical dramas. In 1900 only 36% of the people in the US lived in cities, 64% were rural. And rural in 1900 means farmers.
Palum
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Do they learn anything though, or just progress? It seems like the rate of remedial education is pretty wild. No idea if this source is good or not.
16 Upsetting Stats About College Remediation Rates [2023]
What should you know about the college remediation rates in the US? Read our comprehensive statistics to find out.
whattobecome.com
I don't consider someone who learned about basic trig or quadratic equations remedially in college to be 'smart' in math objectively. You could argue to me they were just completely ignorant, but I feel like that isn't the case given their alleged education? Wouldn't your argument therefore be that all high school education = so bad people are wildly retarded, but average college remedial classes = so good if makes most people smart?
Seems like you need to find some evidence of such a quality difference when these curriculums are generally kept roughly aligned by accreditation. Ostensibly this claim is that high school = so bad its nonfunctional (Edward James Olmos hasn't shown up yet) but the local community college = post Olmos.
Sanrith Descartes
Veteran of a thousand threadban wars
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I think the big hurdle hitting this discussion is trying to pin it to one variable (kids today are dumb). There isn't one variable at play. If we did a linear regression on it, we would have lots of statistically valid variables in play.Do they learn anything though, or just progress? It seems like the rate of remedial education is pretty wild. No idea if this source is good or not.
16 Upsetting Stats About College Remediation Rates [2023]
What should you know about the college remediation rates in the US? Read our comprehensive statistics to find out.
I don't consider someone who learned about basic trig or quadratic equations remedially in college to be 'smart' in math objectively. You could argue to me they were just completely ignorant, but I feel like that isn't the case given their alleged education? Wouldn't your argument therefore be that all high school education = so bad people are wildly retarded, but average college remedial classes = so good if makes most people smart?
Seems like you need to find some evidence of such a quality difference when these curriculums are generally kept roughly aligned by accreditation. Ostensibly this claim is that high school = so bad its nonfunctional (Edward James Olmos hasn't shown up yet) but the local community college = post Olmos.
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Seananigans
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Not sure I can agree with this in modern Academia. There's tons of evidence that many, many, colleges are rubber-stamping more and more "students of color" because they believe they should, or need to. You might be right that a dumb white student can't pass those classes, but I don't think that's true of non-whites.
Passing in this context is "given a passing grade and credit for the course, regardless of actual work done or prowess displayed."
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Palum
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I guess I would argue the null hypothesis is that human intelligence hasn't changed measurably in the last century, provided you control for extreme conditions (e.g. severe caloric defensive deficiency).
The follow on to that, is then a question as to are people smarter, that is, are they better able to express their intelligence in measurable ways?
Sanrith Descartes
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I don't consider that subset of students to be in the category of " average college student ".
Sanrith Descartes
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There might have been some good research on this except a couple decades ago, research into IQ was deemed "racist".
Seananigans
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You have a weird definition of average that excludes arbitrary groups of the population? Ok I guess, but your averages won’t mean anything.
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Mist
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The average college student needs to know a lot of other shit not on that test, not just to succeed in school, but also to exist in modern society.
They did not need to spend a bunch of time learning how to drive a car, operate a computer, etc. They also didn't need to learn about the past century's vast scientific advancements. People in 1900 still thought flies spawned from leftover meat.
People dramatically underestimate the cognitive overhead of modern life, or how much new knowledge has been created every year over the past century, and how much it continues to accelerate. Also underestimated is the amount of noise we're bombarded with daily. That the average college student is probably a bit worse at doing advanced trigonometry by hand is a small cost.
Tmac
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Retention is the issue with modern learning. Nobody remembers anything bc their brain is in their pocket. And that’s v dangerous.
Mist
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Tmac
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I would say birds of a feather flock together, but I’m sure you identify as something entirely alien.
... but I also get the sum total of human knowledge and computation at my fingertips with instant global communication. I'm pretty sure that's a positive tradeoff vs saving 30 seconds looking it up on the off chance I ever need a mathematical proof of something.
Sanrith Descartes
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Tmac
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