"Do Academic-Track Schools Make Students Smarter?"

ABSTRACT

Prior research has shown that quantity of schooling affects the development of intelligence in childhood and adolescence. However, it is still debated whether other aspects of schooling-such as ability tracking or, more generally, school quality-can also influence intelligence. In this study, the authors analyzed intelligence gains in academic- and vocational-track schools in Germany, testing for differential effects of school quality (academic vs. vocational track) on psychometric intelligence. Longitudinal data were obtained from a sample of N = 1,038 Grade 7 and 10 students in 49 schools. A nonverbal reasoning test was used as an indicator of general psychometric intelligence, and relevant psychological and social background variables were included in the analyses. Propensity score matching was used to control for selection bias. Results showed a positive effect of attending the academic track.

The Differential Effects of School Tracking on Psychometric Intelligence: Do Academic-Track Schools Make Students Smarter? Becker, Michael 1 2 3; Ludtke, Oliver 4; Trautwein, Ulrich 5; Koller, Olaf 6; Baumert, Jurgen 2
Journal of Educational Psychology | 104(3):682-699, August 2012

high school - college reading gap

at the Irvington Parents Forum

'you can't hide from math and statistics and be a good marketer'

In the growing field of data analytics, finding "qualified candidates has proven difficult" for employers.

Is data analytics the new 'plastics'?

Best Wishes in Your Search for Truth

Truth in American Education

Americans rightly have voiced these concerns that we address:

■Operating outside of the system of checks and balances that Americans rely on is dangerous to our freedoms. They are an affront to parents’ rights, the 10th Amendment and our tradition of local control over education.
■The mixing of public, corporate and foundation money without proper accountability is troublesome, as taxpayers contribute a significant portion of education funding.
■A one-size-fits-all set of national standards, curriculum and testing controlled by a few will affect us all.
■Impacts to public school, private school and home school education will be felt, as mandates increase and curriculum choices will diminish.
■Students are not widgets and require individualized learning. More top-down control is not in the best interests of educating individual students.

Truth in American Education provides information to parents, taxpayers, school board members, educators and legislators who are concerned about these issues. At the heart of it, the disposition of these issues will determine whether the federal government and elite, special interest groups have the right to form the hearts and minds of children and whether we will reject, or affirm, the concepts laid down by our founding principles.

A view from computer science college professors

I hear from a friend who teaches college computer science that many CS educators agree on the following:

1. There is too much emphasis on calculus, and more focus should be placed on discrete mathematics (graph theory, logic, automata theory, etc) and statistics.
2. K-12 education places too much emphasis on memorization at the expense of conceptual understanding.  This leaves college students ill-prepared for their computer science course work.

Interesting.

Cross posted at Education Quick Takes

24%

Recently released data from ACT shows that only 24 percent of high school seniors knew enough in four subjects — math, reading, science and English — to do college-level work.


No More A’s for Good Behavior
by Peg Tyre
Published: November 27, 2010
New York Times

momof4 on college planning

momof4 says...

I have always felt that the preparation for high school is too little and too late, both in terms of academics and of advance planning. Especially in a system where APs have prerequisites, kids and parents need to know that so they can plan coursework accordingly.

All of the schools my kids attended waited until 8th grade - usually spring -to address the HS plan. Parents need to know the critical nature of the usual sixth grade test, which determines who gets on the top math path, which will also determine eligibility for AP Physics BC (calculus is a co-requisite). There is just far too much mush and wasted time; kids without aware parents who are able to supplement are hosed before they hit 7th grade.

BTW, I've found it fairly common for a shared MS-HS campus, so taking some classes at the HS may be possible. Also community colleges, universitites etc - whatever is available.

college readiness Class of 2007

Percent of [ACT-Tested] Students Meeting College Benchmarks

Number of students tested: 1,300,599

English 69%

Mathematics 43%

Reading 53%

Science 28%

Meeting All Four 23%

Half are ready to do college-level reading ----



by Race/Ethnicity: Number Tested, % of Test-taking Population, Average Score

African American/Black - 152,412 / 12% / 17.0
American Indian/Alaska Native - 14,044 / 1% / 18.9
Caucasian American/White - 779,147 / 60% / 22.1
Hispanic - 93,137 / 7% / 18.7
Asian American/Pacific Islander - 42,257 / 3% / 22.6
Other/No Response 219,602 / 17% / 21.6

source:
ACT HIGH SCHOOL PROFILE: SECTION I, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PAGE 5 (pdf file)
HS Graduating Class of 2007
National Report National
Total Students in Report: 1,300,599


I love those 219,602 ACT test takers who are Other or No Response --- !

l squared on college prep

From the university perspective, it is not particularly helpful for them to know a little engineering at the expense of the math/physics/chemistry they might otherwise take. I feel quite certain that engineering schools are good at taking students with a solid foundation of math and basic physics and getting them to where they need to be in engineering. They are not set up to take students who think they know engineering and remediating the math, physics, etc. that they should have as prerequisites.

I don't teach engineering, but I do teach calculus, and I have a similar problem. I would rather have students who have never heard of a limit or derivative, but can do algebra and trigonometry. The 40% of the class that come in with the backward set of skills (a little calculus, but not enough algebra) really struggle.

This is extremely good to know. I believe it. I'm pretty sure rudbeckia hirta has said the same thing over the years.

oh gosh. Speaking of rudbeckia, I found this terrific post from 2006 while Googling her blog. I should probably print that one out and scotch tape it to my collection of as-yet unused calculus textbooks.

Arnold Kling on the mathefication of economics

An Important Emerging Economic Paradigm

By Arnold Kling
02/2005

"… three types of activity generate a process of continuing and cumulative change. Trading creates new opportunities for innovation and institutional change. Innovation creates new opportunities for institutional change and trading. Institutional change creates new opportunities for trading and innovation. ...the process does not converge on or 'discover' a known or predictable outcome."
-- Meir Kohn

The Dartmouth University economics professor Meir Kohn has identified some important characteristics of an emerging alternative paradigm in economics. This approach, which he calls "the exchange paradigm" and which I prefer to call Learning Economics, is an important new direction in the field. The focus shifts from how an economy allocates a given set of resources to how an economy functions as a learning mechanism, sorting through innovations to find those that provide genuine improvements in living standards.

For those like Kohn and myself, trained in late-20th-century academic economics, appreciating the learning economy has brought with it a skepticism about the value of mathematics as a tool for economic analysis. If Kohn is correct, then economists of the past two or three generations may have committed one of the greatest blunders in intellectual history.

The most distinctive trend in economic research over the past hundred years has been the increased use of mathematics. In the wake of Paul Samuelson's (Nobel 1970) Ph.D dissertation, published in 1948, calculus became a requirement for anyone wishing to obtain an economics degree. By 1980, every serious graduate student was expected to be able to understand the work of Kenneth Arrow (Nobel 1972) and Gerard Debreu (Nobel 1983), which required mathematics several semesters beyond first-year calculus.

Today, the "theory sequence" at most top-tier graduate schools in economics is controlled by math bigots. As a result, it is impossible to survive as an economics graduate student with a math background that is less than that of an undergraduate math major. In fact, I have heard that at this year's American Economic Association meetings, at a seminar on graduate education one professor quite proudly said that he ignored prospective students' grades in economics courses, because their math proficiency was the key predictor of their ability to pass the coursework required to obtain an advanced degree.

The raising of the mathematical bar in graduate schools over the past several decades has driven many intelligent men and women (perhaps women especially) to pursue other fields. The graduate training process filters out students who might contribute from a perspective of anthropology, biology, psychology, history, or even intense curiosity about economic issues. Instead, the top graduate schools behave as if their goal were to produce a sort of idiot-savant, capable of appreciating and adding to the mathematical contributions of other idiot-savants, but not necessarily possessed of any interest in or ability to comprehend the world to which an economist ought to pay attention.


Where Math Works

Kohn points out that mathematical economics describes a world with a given set of goods to trade. The mathematical models answer the question: when all opportunities for profitable trade have been exploited, what will be the end result? This approach is a perfect fit for international economics, where we often are interested in tracing through the implications of opening a previously-closed country to trade. Many of Samuelson's classics are in this area, as are the works of Eli Heckscher, Bertil Ohlin (Nobel 1977), and James Meade (Nobel 1977).

The theory of finance offers another opportunity for mathematical economics to shine. By looking at how various financial claims will pay off under different circumstances, economists can make useful predictions about the relationships among various security prices. The portfolio theory of Harry Markowitz (Nobel 1990) and William Sharpe (Nobel 1990), the corporate finance model of Franco Modigliani (Nobel 1985) and Merton Miller (Nobel 1990), and the option pricing model of Fischer Black, Robert Merton (Nobel 1997), and Myron Scholes (Nobel 1997) combine mathematical elegance with empirical validity and practical application.

[snip]

Schumpeter and Hayek

Friedrich Hayek (Nobel 1974) captured some aspects of the learning economy paradigm. Appreciating the importance of moving from the unknown to the known, Hayek focused on the "discovery procedure" embedded in market processes.

In some respects, the evolutionary mechanism of the learning economy was anticipated in Joseph Schumpeter's phrase creative destruction. As University of Reading, England economics professor Mark Casson put it,

"In their mathematical models of economic activity and behavior, economists began to use the simplifying assumption that all people in an economy have perfect information...That leaves no role for the entrepreneur..."

According to Schumpeter, the entrepreneur is someone who carries out 'new combinations' by such things as introducing new products or processes, identifying new export markets or sources of supply, or creating new types of organization. Schumpeter presented an heroic vision of the entrepreneur as someone motivated by the 'dream and the will to found a private kingdom'; the 'will to conquer: the impulse to fight, to prove oneself superior to others'; and the 'joy of creating.'"

The creative destruction that took place in Schumpeter's day was a relatively gradual process. As this Wired story reports,

"'Schumpeter probably was right all along,' says [then FCC Chairman] Michael Powell, 'but it's only now, at Moore's law speed, that you can actually observe it.'"

The theories of Schumpeter and Hayek do not translate well into mathematics. One can write down an equation and call it a "Schumpeterian" model or a "Hayekian" model, but such sterile exercises lose the flavor of their theories. As a result, there is not much room for their theories in the conventional economics Ph.D program.


The Role of Government

Many (but not all) disciples of mathematical economic theory are quite paternalistic. Markets result in the best allocation of resources only under a narrow and implausible set of assumptions. Most real-world markets possess features that make them unlikely to produce such an optimum, even after all opportunities for profitable trades are exhausted. By taking a sufficiently optimistic view of government's ability to correct such "market failures," one can become quite expansive about the scope for government involvement in the economy.

On the other hand, many (but not all) of the proponents of the learning economy are quite adamant that government's role ought to be reduced. I am in that camp.

My view is that innovation by trial-and-error is the most valuable economic process, and government intervention tends to be inimical to such innovation. Even when the market is producing unsatisfactory outcomes, my view is that eventually innovators will come along with better ideas. In that way, the market's errors tend to be self-correcting. Government's errors tend to perpetuate and to deepen.

Bureaucracies tend to resist innovation. [ed.: you can say that again] In fact, in a corporate setting, that is their function. External companies have lots of goods and services to sell to corporate America. Their own middle managers have lots of ideas. How can a company sift through all of these possibilities? The answer is bureaucracy.

[snip]

However, simply being large and bureaucratic is not the chief problem with government. The main way that government impedes innovation is by siding with those who are threatened by innovation. The incumbents in an industry always look to government for protection. When their wishes are granted, economic progress is thwarted.

When you see a sector in the economy that lags in economic performance, either in relation to other sectors or to similar sectors in different countries, chances are that incumbent protection is at the root of the problem. In the United States, the biggest cost increases are in industries where government combines protection of incumbents against competition with subsidies in demand.

[snip]

In higher education, no well-known university or college has gone out of business in my memory. Over this same period, countless corporate giants have bitten the dust. To me, this says that the incumbent protection racket in higher education works really well. There is hardly any entry, and hardly any exit. No surprise, then, that dousing this sector with subsidies leads primarily to inflation.


Mathematical Hazing

One of the best incumbent-protection rackets going today is for mathematical theorists in economics departments. The top departments will not certify someone as being qualified to have an advanced degree without first subjecting the student to the most rigorous mathematical economic theory. The rationale for this is reminiscent of fraternity hazing. "We went through it, so should they."

Mathematical hazing persists even though there are signs that the prestige of math is on the decline within the profession. The important Clark Medal, awarded to the most accomplished American economist under the age of 40, has not gone to a mathematical theorist since 1989.

These hazing rituals can have real consequences. In medicine, the controversial tradition of long work hours for medical residents has come under scrutiny over the last few years. In economics, mathematical hazing is not causing immediate harm to medical patients. But it probably is working to the long-term detriment of the profession.

I believe that I've observed -- and lived through -- the same process in the humanities, the difference being that in the humanities the move is toward theory.

lgm on algebra in 8th grade

Comment left by lgm:

My college has shown statistics to interested alumni that say doing well in 8th grade algebra correlates with being successful in Calculus AB, which correlates to being most successful in earning an engineering degree in four years as opposed to dropping out or taking five/six years.

The "brain rule" that the brain needs 10 years to consolidate a memory comes as earth shattering news to me. Of course, I'd known about the 10-year rule for some time:

Some evidence that a great deal of practice, and not just talent, is a prerequisite for expertise is the "ten year rule," which states that individuals must practice intensively for at least 10 years before they are ready to make a substantive contribution to their field. What about prodigies like Mozart, who began composing at the age of six? Prodigies are very advanced for their age, but their contributions to their respective fields as children are widely considered to be ordinary. It is not until they are older (and have practiced more) that they achieve the works for which they are known.

Practice Makes Perfect -- But Only If You Practice Beyond the Point of Perfection
by Daniel Willingham
American Educator, Spring 2004

But it hadn't occurred to me that memory per se -- memory for ordinary, everyday skills and knowledge, as opposed to the memory involved in expert performance -- might also require 10 years to gel.

I am completely blown away by this.

Assuming John Medina is citing a field of research separate from the research on expertise (I'll find out when my copy of his book arrives), I'd say we have converging lines of evidence both for the 10-year rule and for assuming a causal rather than merely correlational relationship between algebra in the 8th grade, success in AP Calculus AB, and obtaining an engineering degree in four years as opposed to 5 or 6.

The fact that constructivist curricula are slower than the semi-traditional curricula they replaced is horrifying.

dual enrollment

benefits of dual enrollment

Michelle Hernandez on admissions & SATs

The most obvious result of recentering is the fact that what used to be considered an unusually high score on the SAT I is now just an average score. To be exact, for years a combined score of 1,400 was considered the dividing line between normal scores and extremely high scores for highly selective colleges. This si no longer the case. The average combined score for the admitted class of 2000 at Dartmouth was over 1,410. In fact, for the class of 2000, the average scores of all 11, 400 applicants who applied to Dartmouth (this includes all the weakest applicants in the pol) was 662V, 677M, almost 1,340 combined. For the class of 2001, the average was even higher: 664V, 683M.

While it used to be extremely rare to see students with verbal scores over 700 (remember, only 1 percent of all students taking the unrecentered test scored over a 700, and those students could not have missed more than three or four questions on the whole test to achieve that score), now it is much more common. In fact, half of the members of the class of 2000 scored over 710 on the verbal section, about the same number who scored over 710 on the math section.

Here is an SAT I breakdown of the acceptance rates at Dartmouth for the class of 20000:

Verbal SAT Math SAT
399 or less 0%
400-499 1.6%
450-499 4.1%
500-549 5.4%
550-599 7.5%
600-649 10.1%
650-699 14.8%
700-749 28.2%
750-800 52.2%

Math SAT
399 or less 0%
400-499 2.4%
450-499 6.3%
500-549 5.4%
550-599 7.1%
600-649 9.5%
650-699 15.1%
700-749 24.4%
750-800 44.0%

All these statistics taken together mean that parents, students, and counselors need to readjust their standard for excellence dramatically in terms of scores. When a college counselor or a parent calls an admissions officer to ask whether or not a student has a chance of being admitted, he usually starts out by announcing that the student has very high SAT I scores. The problem is, when the officer asks what he means by "very high," he usually says, "Over fourteen hundred," which, as we have just seen, is not only not "very high"; it is actually below the class average.

[snip]

It is still, as it has always been, more impressive to see high verbal scores than high math scores, since most students at the highly selective colleges will be doing much more writing and reading than math. Verbal ability is still a good indicator of how strong a reader the student is. The ability to read well will ultimately have a bigger impact on most college students than the ability to do SA I math very well, especially since the level of SAT math is not particularly high. There are many students who do terribly on the SAT I math and yet who manage to get the highest score of 5 on the AP calculus exam. If any math is useful at the college level, it is calculus, not the basic math covered on the SAT I. Therefore, SAT I scores of 750 V, 630M would be much more impressive for most highly selective colleges than a 640V, 780M, even though the latter score has a higher combined total by forty points.

The final point I want to make about interpreting SAT I recentered scores is that because most admissions officers are not gifted in math, there is still the tendency to use the 700 cut-off as the magic number between good and excellent scores, even though, as we have seen, the averag score is over 1,420 combined....Remember probably 99 percent of all current admissions officers took the old SAT I, the nonrecentered test. In their own personal histories, 1,400 has always been a high score. It is extremely difficult to consider applicants under a totally different system from the one you had in high school. [Hernandez' book was published in 1997, so this is 10 years ago.]

[snip]

Oddly enough, and I saw this during my last two years in admissions, officers still respond to any scores over 700 by saying that they are strong, whereas if the scores are in the mid to high 600s, they tend to refer to them as average. This is simply not accurate. In Ivy applicant pools, a 700V, 700M is now an average, even below-average, score, although some officers will not be able to draw the correct conclusion when analyzing student scores.

Despite this inability on the officers' part to be 100 percent accurate in interpreting your scores 100 percent of the time, they will undoubtedly improve as the years go on and they see years' worth of recentered scores. In the meantime, all applicants should be aware of the reality of SAT I, which is that if you want to stand out in the Ivy applicant pool, you should aim for a combined score of about 1,490 or higher, or at least a verbal score over 730 or so, which would allow you to have a modest 650 math score and still look strong in the applicant pool

source:
A Is for Admissions: The Insider's Guide to Getting into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges
by Michele A. Hernandez
pp. 46-49

Is she right about SAT-level math?

That strikes me as wrong -- at least based in the fact that I constantly see algebra called the "gatekeeper to advanced courses in math," etc.

Hernandez was an assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth. She's a high end college counselor now. Mathew says she's fantastic, and her books are terrific.

Proposal to get New York colleges involved in remediation of high school students

Governor To Bet Billions on SUNY reports The New York Sun.

Envisioning a dramatically greater role for universities and colleges in the remedial education of secondary students, the Spitzer administration is planning to pump billions of additional dollars into the State University of New York and the rest of New York's higher education system, sources said.

[snip]

The aim is to shift remediation to an earlier point — starting with children as young as 12 — so that more students are prepared for college by the time they graduate high school.

[snip]

In doing so, the commission is hoping to combat a persistent problem: More than half of students entering community colleges require math and reading remediation.

Apparently, the already planned $7 billion increase in K-12 funding over the next four years will not be enough to remedy the remediation problem. While the increased funding to colleges for this new proposal has not been specified, the newspaper reports that spending on higher education in New York is expected to increase by $1.6 billion over the next five years.

Mo money, mo money, mo money.

Here’s the silver lining, if there is one.

Commission members say they foresee assigning colleges and universities a greater role in helping to develop the curricula of public high schools and middle schools.

That in itself might be worth a few billion dollars. Oh wait, do they mean the education departments or the subject areas? I have a sinking suspicion it’s the former.

more stats from 2007 SAT

No idea whether this is real or noise:

Among the surprises in the results: The test takers reported as being among the wealthiest were one of the groups that saw the biggest declines. Students with family incomes of more than $100,000 saw declines in all three sections combined of 19 points from the previous year's scores. By contrast, the only income group that actually saw increases were those with reported incomes between $10,000 and $20,000. In that group, there were increases in all three sections totaling 21 points.

College Board officials say the data aren't very reliable because students report their perceptions of what their parents make. And over one-third of students didn't answer the question.

Class of 2007 Logs Slide In SAT Scores

another reason to teach to mastery
why SATs predict college success
more stats from 2007 SAT

Elizabeth Wissner-Gross

Great minds think alike.

At least I think they do.

I'm thinking that, a year or so ago, Steve H told us about Elizabeth Wissner-Gross' book and website, What Colleges Don't Tell You (And Other Parents Don't Want You to Know).

I don't see her website now.... but here is her blog.

Then today Susan S sent an email telling me about a great book called What High Schools Don't Tell You. She says it's great.

I'm ordering it.

Then I'm going to try to find my copy of the college book, which is around here somewhere....

..........................

I am semi returned to email.

Semi.

(Premack principle rocks!)

college success & math & same-subject preparation

new study to appear in Science:

Researchers at Harvard University and the University of Virginia have found that high school coursework in one of the sciences generally does not predict better college performance in other scientific disciplines. But there's one notable exception: Students with the most rigorous high school preparation in mathematics perform significantly better in college courses in biology, chemistry, and physics.

[snip]

Authors Philip M. Sadler of Harvard and Robert H. Tai of Virginia say the findings run counter to the claims of an educational movement called "Physics First," which argues that physics underlies biology and chemistry, and therefore the traditional order of high school science education -- biology, chemistry, physics -- should be reversed.

[snip]

"Many arguments have been made for chemistry and physics preparation to benefit the learning of biology," says Tai, an assistant professor in Virginia's Curry School of Education. "On the scale of single cells, many processes are physical, such as neurons 'firing' electrically. Also, the complex molecules at the root of life obey chemical laws that are manifested in macroscopic processes. Yet our analysis provides no support for the argument that physics and chemistry principles are inherently beneficial to the study of biology at the introductory level."

[snip]

[T]he controlled data indicated that high school preparation in any of the scientific disciplines -- biology, chemistry, or physics -- boosted college performance in the same subject. Also, students with the most coursework in high school mathematics performed strikingly better in their introductory biology and chemistry courses in college; introductory college-level physics performance also benefited. Conversely, little correlation was seen between the amount of high school coursework in biology, chemistry, or physics and college performance in any of the other disciplines in this trio.

"The link between math and biology is not exactly an intuitive one, but biology has become an increasingly quantitative discipline," Sadler says. "Many high school students are now performing statistical analysis of genetic outcomes in addition to dissecting frogs and studying cells under a microscope."

The current order of high school science education was established in the 1890s, in an attempt to standardize what was then a system of wildly disparate science education in high schools across the U.S. Biology was given primacy in that ordering in part because the late 19th century experienced a flowering of interest in the natural world, and also because it was perceived to be less daunting intellectually than either chemistry or physics.

This has been my operating assumption throughout the past 3 years off reteaching & preteaching math to C.

Math is key.

I assume this new publication is drawn from the same Sandler/Tai survey finding that only solid math achievement in high school, not AP science courses, predicts success in college science:

Mathematical fluency is the single best predictor of college performance in biology, chemistry, and physics, giving a strong advantage to students whose high school science courses integrate mathematics. "Draining the math out of high school coursework does students a disservice," Sadler says. "Much of college biology, chemistry, and physics are taught using the language of math, so students without fluency quickly become lost."

Last but not least, here's what the famous Toolbox study has to say about math and college completion rates:

The highest level of mathematics reached in high school continues to be a key marker in precollegiate momentum, with the tipping point of momentum toward a bachelor's degree now firmly above Algebra 2. But in order for that momentum to pay off, earning credits in truly college-level mathematics on the postsecondary side is de rigeur. The world has gone quantitative: business, geography, criminal justice, history, allied health fields—a full range of disciplines and job tasks tells students why math requirements are not just some abstract school exercise. By the end of the second calendar year of enrollment, the gap in credit generation in college-level mathematics between those who eventually earned bachelor's degrees and those who didn't is 71 to 38 percent (table 21). In a previous study, the author found the same magnitude of disparity among community college students in relation to earning a terminal associate degree (Adelman 2005a).

My goal: C. needs to be able to take college courses in math after he graduates high school.

The math department doesn't seem to share this goal, judging by the chair's reaction the one and only time I raised it with her.

Me: "Christopher needs to be able to take math in college. That's our family goal."

Math chair: "He needs to take math to graduate high school."

End of discussion.

paying for arithmetic twice

I'm supposed to be working (aack! aack!) but instead I'm posting this factoid:

Families spend $283 million to pay for their children’s remedial courses in community colleges alone!

helicopter parents & the $40,000 tuition bill

from Steve H:

Parents are paying customers, not helicopters. The college should teach and the parents should parent. For the astronomical amounts that colleges charge, they should not expect parents to pay the bill and go away.

Little (big) Johnnie or Suzie might drop out after $40,000+ is spent with absolutely nothing to show for it. The presumption that the onus falls completely on the student is a cop-out. Johnnie or Suzie might deserve to flunk out, or it could be that the school takes their money and tosses them into the deep end of the pool.

Many parents would be more than happy to let their kids figure it out on their own after they hit 18, but not when it's costing them $40,000+ a year. And colleges should worry more about their flunk-out rate after a highly competitive application process. [ed.: exactly]

Most colleges aren't lowering their standards to recruit students. They get to pick the best for their school. Then they demand extraordinary amounts of money to teach the kids in a sink or swim environment. Then they want the parents to pay the bills and go away.

It won't happen. The problem isn't about growing up, it's about getting something for your money.

We know a family whose child may not make it through college; I believe the parent is in debt for at least $40,000.^* Middle class income. When we look at colleges I'm going to want to know a school's college completion rate and success rate at placement in graduate programs. I don't want to pay $40,000 (make that borrow $40,000) for gatekeeping.

Paying $22,000/yr for gatekeeping in my middle & high school will be quite enough.

We've also been told that Cornell's entry-level science courses are particularly brutal. You send your science kid to Cornell, and by second semester freshman year he's majoring in sociology.

At least, that's what we've heard. Assuming it's true, C. won't be applying to Cornell.

Ed says NYU has a fantastic record getting its undergraduates into graduate programs, fyi. That's good to hear. Our big perk in life is that C. can attend NYU for free if he's accepted. We pay taxes on the tuition fee, but that's it.

On the other hand, although I've thought the helicopter parent meme was a crock ever since I heard the words, last weekend my sister-in-law, a professor in a nursing program, told me she has parents calling her up constantly to tell her their child is sick and can't come to clinic; can she give them a do-over; etc.

I find that bizarre.

Ed says he's never heard from a parent in his entire career. Of course, he did once hear from a psychiatrist that one of his students wanted to murder him along with a couple of other professors. (That's another story.)

His brother said Bryn Mawr hears from parents, but I have no sympathy for Bryn Mawr given what it's charging. Of course if parents are calling their kids in sick, my feeling is the kid better be in the hospital even with the $40,000 bill.

sheesh



accountability at the graduate level

Interestingly, graduate-level programs probably have quite a bit of accountability.

Ed is the head of the Institute of French Studies, which awards Ph.D.s. The university closely tracks placement of their graduates in assistant professorships. One year the statistics got messed up so it looked as if they hadn't placed their new Ph.Ds in jobs, and Ed heard from the administration right away.

I'm going to try to get him to look into what kinds of accountability exists for undergraduate education in general.


accountability in schools of design

Gosh, I wish I could remember the conversation Ed had with our friend who is an architect on the Ground Zero buildings....

He was talking about the point at which gatekeeping should begin.

I think he said that in the field of design, professor-as-gatekeeper should start in early graduate school. Assuming I'm remembering this correctly, I believe he said that by then a professor in a good school of design can easily distinguish different levels of talent and accomplishment, and that the job market in design is so competitive that it is an absolute waste of money to pusue an advanced degree in design if your professors don't think you can make it.

It's possible he said this about undergraduate programs like RISD's, but I don't think so. I have the distinct impression he put the gatekeeping function pretty far down the line. I definitely recall finding what he said both useful and commonsensical. It made sense to me both as a person who once attended graduate school and as a person who may one day be trying to pay for graduate school.

In any case, I dislike surrogate gatekeeping. Medical schools don't need Cornell to help them winnow out applicants.


speaking of medical schools

One of our administrators is friends with a high-level administrator at a medical school. (I think the friend may be a dean.)

He said that across the board the best colleges produce students with the best standardized test scores. This is true without fail.

None of this stuff is a mystery.

And no medical school needs undergraduate institutions to make their choices for them.



^* In this case the problem is almost certainly that the student simply is not prepared for college level work. Of course, this raises the question of whether the college should be taking the parent's money, and I don't know the answer to that since I don't know what the student's scores and grades were.

summer reruns, part 2

tour de force