France – the new overwhelming the old

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My father spoke excellent French, good enough for him to be an  RAF liaison officer between the British and the Free French forces after D- Day.  He loved France, as my wife and I do, and would have been devastated, not only about the current state of French politics, but about the fate of smaller, ancient and historic towns in la France profonde that he showed me back in 1949, when, thanks to the war, you felt you were stepping back at least a hundred years in time, or more.

On March 1st the New York Times carried a story about Albi, one of the oldest and most attractive of these old towns in Southern France.  The advent of supermarkets and out-of- town shopping has decimated the economic life of the town.  The food shops and the market have gone, the cafes and shops boarded up and deserted.  What thrives are the hotels and tourist souvenir shops, and presumably the  restaurants savvy enough to supply international food to an international audience.  The place is becoming a museum, like Carcassonne or Mont St. Michel. (This, by the way, has happened in Britain, too, only most of the towwns affected are not as picturesque as the French ones)

Of course, young people have been abandoning these towns for decades in favour of Paris or abroad. The French have done a great job, with the help of the EU, keeping the countryside looking like countryside, even if the shepherd and the cowherd have disappeared, and the average age of the “paysans” is, well, rather high.   But, alas, the great tide of mass marketing is destroying the towns.  How long will it be before tourists conclude that they’ve seen enough museums?  I am sure that, were he alive today, Epicurus would mourn with us the loss of the old, relaxed – and at one time the seemingly never-changing – French way of life.

Really bad taste

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Am I the only person (apart from my wife) who writhed in acute embarrassment at the point in Trump’s speech to Congress last week, when the cameras played upon the poor, grieving, widow of the dead soldier, Ryan Owens, killed in Yemen on an assault on Al Queda?

For years Presidents on this type of occasion have used individuals in the audience as political props, but this was particular bad taste. A brief glimpse of the tearful lady might have been one thing, but we had to watch her for about three excruciating minutes. Poor Mrs. Owens! Democrats joined Republicans in lapping up the scene, like gruesome vampires.

Then the story gets worse. We discover that Mr Owens Sr. refused to meet the President or attend the speech with his wife, and has demanded an enquiry. We learn that the raid was not “rewarding”, and that 32 innocent Yemeni civilians, including a small child, were killed. 32 people! No mention of them by the President, and little or no discussion of them in the media at all (that I saw). This type of uncaring treatment of civilians further alienates the moslem population. (Why does one even have to point that out?)

To cap it all Trump refused to take responsibility for this event, the first of its kind since he became President. It was planned by Obama ( he explained) …..”the generals wanted to do it, so I went along….the generals are great guys”. Disgraceful! Every military operation from day one is Trump’s military operation.

The outcome of all the above? “A complete change in tone”. “The bit about Owens and his widow was so touching” etc. etc. What, I asked myself, has gone wrong with people’s judgment?

An introduction via quotation.

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As a new contributor to this blog, I’ve yet to introduce myself properly. But instead of writing about my life story in a rambling sort of way, I thought I’d instead present to you my favourite quotes. They cover a range of topics, from religion, to philosophy, to poverty and even love. I hope they also show you my personality and even my sense of humour. Enjoy!

“The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.” Thomas Paine

“No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavour to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.” Jeremy Bentham

“Death, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that when we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not.” Epicurus. (I had to include this one given the nature of the blog…)

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war, is worse.” John Stuart Mill

“Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries.” George Orwell

“The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of common man.” William Bevridge

“A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong” Socrates

“Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.” Saint Augustine

“MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.” Christopher Hitchens

“The Bolsheviks killed their own most loyal supporters at Kronstadt in 1921, because they failed to understand that the revolution no longer required revolutionaries, but obedient servants.” Peter Hitchens

“What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don’t want to study the social sciences, because it’s not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history.” Barney Frank

“I’ve said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!” Harry S. Truman

“It’s weird: The leader of the Conservative Party in England is two years younger than me, and I still don’t really feel like a responsible adult.” Jarvis Cocker (referring to David Cameron)

“To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we’re probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.” Douglas Adams

“When you want to make it clear to the rest of the world that you are not an imperialist, the best countries to have with you are Britain and Spain.” Bill Maher

“I entered the health care debate in response to a statement in the United States press in summer 2009 which claimed the National Health Service in Great Britain would have killed me off, were I a British citizen. I felt compelled to make a statement to explain the error.” Stephen Hawking

“I think that people have to reward those individuals who are prepared to work across the political aisle. I don’t see any other way; if you don’t talk to people with whom you disagree, you’re never going to solve problems.” Angus King

“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” Noam Chomsky

“Both [the right and the left] suspect the white poor. The right regard them as scroungers, who steal the money of the middle classes, either by breaking into their homes or by taking their taxes in benefit cheques. The left regard them as sexist and racist homophobes.” Nick Cohen

“Children who are treated as if they are uneducable, almost invariably become uneducable.” Kenneth Clark

“I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don’t let it bother me. I don’t let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.” P.J. O’Rourke

“Why do people say “grow some balls”? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.” Sheng Wang

“Women are there to be loved, not to be understood.” Oscar Wilde

“It would be embarrassing to get married again. It’s something we’ve never talked about. Anyway, we’ve got our gay friends, they are all getting married, people like Elton (Elton John). They have taken the load off all us heterosexuals living in sin.” Janet Street Porter

“There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats.” Elton John

A government of looters

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 This is part of a posting on Tomgram, Feb 6, 2017,  (Copyright 2017 Tom Engelhardt)
“We have here in the United States the wealthiest cabinet in our history, a true crew of predatory capitalists, including a commerce secretary nicknamed “the king of bankruptcy” for his skills in buying up wrecked companies at staggering profits; a Treasury secretary dubbed the “foreclosure king” of California for evicting thousands of homeowners, including active-duty military families, from distressed properties he partners picked during the 2008 financial meltdown; and the head of the State Department who only recently led ExxonMobil in its global depredations.  As a crew, they and their compatriots are primed to  dismantle or reduce the agencies they’ll run or shred their missions.  That includes the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, a man long in the pay of big energy, who seems determined to reduce the EPA to a place that protects us from nothing; and a fast-food king who, as the new labor secretary, is against the minimum wage and would love to replace workers with machines.
“And don’t forget the White House, now that it’s a family operation — a combination of a real-estate-based global branding outfit (the Trumps) and a real estate empire (son-in-law Jared Kushner).  It’s obvious that decisions made in the White House, but also in government offices in foreign capitals, on the streets of foreign cities, and even among jihadists, will affect the fortunes of those two families.  I’m not exactly the first person to point out that the seven Muslim lands included in Trump’s immigration ban included not one in which he has business dealings.  As patriarch, Donald J. will, of course, rule the Oval Office; his son-in-law will be down the hall somewhere. Thought about in a certain way, you could say “welcome to Saudi Arabia or Bashar al-Assad’s Syria before the catastrophe”.
“From health care and tax policy to environmental protections, this will undoubtedly be a government of the looters, by the looters, and for the looters, and a Congress of the same.  As of yet, however, we’ve seen only the smallest hints of what is to come.  In such a leave-no-billionaires-behind era, forget the past swamps of Washington.  The government of Donald J. Trump seems slated to produce an American swamp of swamps and, somewhere down the line, will surely give new meaning to the phrase “conflict of interest”.  Yet these processes, too, are barely underway.  From this government of 1% looters, you can expect but to be looted and to experience crimes of every sort”.
And to make it worse are the suspicions about the (unproven as yet) deal made with Putin – “you help tip the scales of the election,  Vlad, and I will……” do what?  We are waiting to find out, and surely will, one way or another.  And Mr. Engelhardt doesn’t have room to mention the power behind the throne, Bannon, and the damage he is likely to do.
Epicurus was right – politics is a dirty business. But then there is a lot of (our) money at stake. Meanwhile, half the country seems not to care a tinkers’s cuss, indeed, applauds it all.  What a come- down from the country I thought I knew.

Britain’s sleep crisis

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A charity has called for the Government to implement a “national sleep strategy” after a survey it commissioned found that British people are on average getting only 6.8 hours a night – around an hour less than they feel they need. The Royal Society for Public Health wants people to be given “slumber numbers” (guidance on how much sleep different age groups need) and for cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to be made more available for sleep disorders. Lack of sleep is known to increase the risk not only of various medical conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, but also of mental illness. “Insomnia, the most common expression of mental disease, is like a Cinderella disorder – seldom receiving proper attention, despite being the most treatable precursor to depression,” said Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at Oxford University.

6.8 hours!  That’s a lot! I come from a long line of sleepless people.  Not only am I affected (sometimes being awake all night for 4 or 5 days in a stretch, and I am not exaggerating), but my sister and her children are affected in a similar way.  I joke that our ancestors were night sentries in prehistoric days, protecting our families in the dark hours from woolly mammoths, and thus our genes for sleep were altered.    It is a terrible affliction, and yes, I attest that it is not treated very seriously – few believe you. On the other hand I hardly think it leads to mental disease.  Yes, irritability, confusion and forgetfulness, but not “mental disease”, however you interpret that.  As it happens, by coincidence, I offered my study services in a sleep study to Professor Espie’s clinic in Oxford some while ago, but never had the privilege of a reply.  So maybe  lack of sleep isn’t as urgent a problem as he makes out.  One cannot have people with mental disease walking around unattended.  It’s irresponsible.

The Moon, the Earth and our profligacy

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Last night I was gazing at the bright sliver of tropic moon in the evening sky, reflecting on the fact that that moon, and somewhere on Earth a similar reflection of the sun upon it, have been in existence for nigh on three billion years, month in, month out. Our earliest ancestors witnessed the same new- ish moon and maybe wove religious mysteries around it.

And in only 250 years, give or take, we humans are managing to degrade and despoil this wonderful planet, pouring gunk (apologies for the sudden departure from more poetic language) into the atmosphere, heating the climate, melting the ice, and causing a mass extinction of scores of creatures, many of whom (like the fish in the sea) we depend upon, demolishing the huge tropical forests in favour of commercial crops, and destroying the fertility of the soil with long-term destructive fertilisers.

And to add insult to injury, we discover that a significant proportion of the population, in a massive exercise in lack of common sense and wishful thinking, think this is all “fake news”.

Maybe, if the $90 million demanded by Elon Musk for his proposed trip round the moon was instead the price of a bus fare, we could take the whole population of Earth on such a circular trip round the moon. In the loneliness and silence of the universe they might understand how small and how infinitely precious our planet is, and understand that to take such stupid short-term risks with it as we are doing threatens the lives and well-being of our grandchildren.

Outsourcing, responsible for low and stagnant wages

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In Britain Conservatives, set on “reducing the size of government” have outsourced almost everything able to be outsourced, even many aspects of military life.  A handful of huge private contractors undertake nearly all the tasks that used to be done by lower level government employees, including in healthcare, education, recruitment  – the list goes on and on, as does the potential for corruption and incompetence.  These contractors seem to be  no better as man/woman managers, possibly worse, since their priority is profit. Wages are as low as they can get away with.  They do not have a good track record.

The same problem exists in the United States.  Trump goes on about manufacturing industry, but he will never re- build the size of manufacturing workforce that existed in  the 1950s – the trend is about automation, not human hands and heft.

The people and the jobs Trump should be concentrating on are the people doing outsourced “non- core” jobs, and now employed by sub- contractors and temp agencies.  The  outsourcing has grown hugely since the 1980s as a way of avoiding unions and workplace regulations, and pegging or reducing costs. It is one of the main drivers of poverty.  Over the last 10 years it has been estimated that these contracting and temp agencies have accounted for 94% of employment  growth in the American economy, and now account for 24 million jobs.  The result has been an effective reduction in income to millions of people.  Outsourcing the jobs of janitors, for instance imposes a 7% wage penalty; for security guards this figure is 24%; for temp teachers 14% and those in retail 9.4%. ( partly extracted from an article on March 1st by Eduardo Porter in the New York Times)

The old idea of mutual loyalty of corporation to worker and vice- versa has now disappeared, and the shareholders (and directors) have harvested the savings, while leaving too many people living an uncertain and poorly paid life.  In the old days the corporation looked after its workforce.  There were holiday entitlements, sick pay, annual review of pay, and pensions.  All this is going or gone, including loyalty and interest in the future of the company.

Epicurus might ask the pertinent question,”What is life for?  Are so many of us just human machines, to be cast aside when convenient.  Or are we human beings who can offer service to a company, loyalty and that little bit extra every day to give thanks for a secure and predictable life?” We have all this, is pursuit of profit at any price, totally wrong.

Trying to stop Breibart News

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Breibart News is the ultra-right wing outfit associated with Bannon.  It espouses ultra-nationalism and hatred of Moslems, homosexuals, liberals etc etc.  It now aims to subvert the elections of several European countries, and any advertising revenue paid to it helps in this effort.  Several organisations have been campaigning to get advertisers to stop supporting Breibart News.  So far some 900 companies have agreed to desist –  quite a good effort.

But not all companies have CEOs with ethical outlooks.  Shopify is a $1.9 billion dollar company with 325,000 online stores in 150 countries. It runs the online stores for a large number of companies and brands, including Budweiser, Red Bull, Tesla Motors, The Economist and Herschel.  It also runs Breitbart’s online store — selling offensive clothing that tells migrant workers to “Get in line”, and boasts about building a border wall.  Shopify’s  CEO, Toby Lütke, maintains that the company and its software are “neutral” and that he has neither the right or the authority to decide what kinds of companies to do business with.

But when you are talking about misogyny, racism, xenophobia and homophobia there can be no neutrality. Epicureanism stands for toleration, respect and treating people the way you would like to be treated yourself.  The world is the worse for the number of ruthless people who run their companies seeking profit alone, and paying no attention to the human needs and sentiments of employees, customers and the general good.

A reminder – this is why we have government and regulations – to try to get corporations to behave in a civilised way, even if the regulations irritate them.   All the worse for those, including Shopify, who use weasel words to justify spreading slurs, slander, false news and hatred.  We cannot, probably should not,  ban Breibart, but We shouldn’t support it either.  At least we can clip its wings by persuading people not to advertise with it.

 

Making decisions

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We spend an inordinate amount of time, and a tremendous amount of energy, making choices between equally attractive options in everyday situations. The problem is, that while they may be equally attractive, there are often tradeoffs that require compromise.

If these mundane decisions drag on our time and energy, think about the bigger ones we need to make, in organizations, all the time. Which products should we pursue and which should we kill? Who should I hire or fire? Should I initiate that difficult conversation?  If so , when should I do it? And how should I start? Should I call them or see them in person or email them? Should I do it publicly or in private? How much information should I share? And on and on . . .

Here are three suggested methods of dealing with decisions:

1.  Use habits as a way to reduce the number of silly little daily decisions. For example: get into the habit of getting up at a particular time in the morning.  Decision-making energy should be saved for more important  things.

2.  Use  ” if/then” thinking to routinize unpredictable choices. For example, let’s say someone constantly interrupts me and I’m not sure how to respond. My if/then rule might be: if the person interrupts me two times in a conversation, then I will say something.

3.  For decisions about complex unpredictable things that some people ponder for weeks and get hung up on, simply set a deadline – say 15 minutes, not a minute more.  The time you save by not deliberating pointlessly will pay massive dividends, reducing your anxiety and letting  you get on with other things.  (Adapted from an article by Jennifer Maravillas, NBR).

I once met a very successful lawyer from New Zealand.  He said, ” A lot of anxiety is generated about decisions.  It’s better to make a decision than no decision at all.  Just think through the pros  and cons, then decide and never waste time regretting what you decided”.  I may have made some clunkers of decisions over the years, but I can’t remember ever thinking, “that was a really stupid thing to do; I wish I could turn back the clock.”  Ah, the clock.  yes, I agree with Ms. Maravillas: give youself 15 minutes, decide, and get on with your life.

A house divided against itself cannot stand: Why America is exceptionally uncivil.

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When Abraham Lincoln famously said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he was of course referring to the issue of slavery. Whether a human being could be considered property of another, was an issue so contentious, Lincoln believed the federal government ought to uphold the dignity of every person, even if it meant going to war. Now there were a multitude of reasons for the Civil War, slavery being a key one. But overall there was a recognition on both sides that there are limits to tolerating different moral outlooks, albeit within a federal system that allows for such differences.

Unlike during the Civil War, there is no equivalent of slavery as a single, irreconcilably obnoxious institution today. Instead, what is tearing America apart is a difference of world views. Amongst voters, more than 40% support a man who holds the norms of a functioning liberal democracy in complete contempt. Trump wants to use libel laws to silence the press, who he deems  “enemies of the people.” He wants to bring back torture worse than waterboarding, because he believes some people deserve to be tortured. His criticism of the judiciary is so disproportionate, even his own appointee, Neil Gorsuch, felt the need to speak out. In short, what Trump and his supporters want is a de facto revolution. They reject constitutional principles of limited government and due process, however fervently they claim otherwise. Instead, they would empower President Trump to do as he pleased, disregarding all opposition as illegitimate. No longer are political adversaries people with mere difference of opinion, they are unpatriotic, evil people who ought to be totally sidelined.

So when non-Trump America is faced with such uncompromising vitriol, it’s inevitable that their response will be ugly. A good example is liberals’ response to Milo Yiannopoulos, a pro-Trump campaigner, who spends his days writing inflammatory articles for Breitbart, or picking on people he deems to be ‘social justice warriors’. When Milo went on liberal comedian Bill Maher’s show, fellow guest Larry Wilmore completely lost his temper, and exploded in a fit of rage. Whether it was Milo or Larry Wilmore who was in the right is beside the point. The world views of the Trumpists and progressives are so far apart, they are incapable of having a civil dialogue. Though there may be exceptions, this is generally the rule.

Of course, many academics (including some of my lecturers) would challenge the notion that the decline of American civility is due to increased ideological polarisation on the basis that polarisation is largely a myth. They point out that most Americans identify as moderates. Ideological congruence is rare, and disproportionately found amongst elites. They are joined by naive socialists like Bernie Sanders, who believe most people share his vision for a Nordic-style welfare state on American soil, and thus only vote for self-interested billionaires like Trump because the Democrats didn’t promise enough government spending.

Both the hopeful academics and the democratic socialists are wrong. The former fail to consider that more informed voters vote more regularly, and the more informed tend to be more polarised. Even if most voters are centrist, they certainly aren’t putting pressure on their representatives to behave accordingly. Amongst Democrats, most want the party to be more progressive, even if they voted for Clinton. In particular, most of the energy and dynamism was behind the Sanders campaign, as could be seen at his rallies, which drew thousands of people each. Similarly, the Trump campaign generated far more enthusiasm than the campaigns of relative centrists like Jeb Bush or John Kasich. Even if the median voter is in the centre, there clearly aren’t very many median voters who engage in political activism or vote in primaries.

Sanders and his supporters are equally deluded. Granted, many Trump voters were hopelessly misinformed, but not as misinformed as to vote for a man who wants to dramatically cut the taxes of the wealthy, on the basis that the Democrats didn’t want to raise taxes on the wealthy by enough. The reason why Clinton lost wasn’t because she wasn’t socialist enough, but because she was seen as too corrupt and out of touch by the American working class; it was a question of character, not policy. During the primary season, both Sanders and Trump drew large crowds, and many pundits believed both crowds wanted the same thing. This false equivalence turned out to be inaccurate: Trump supporters liked the fact that Trump embodied traditional American capitalism, Sanders supporters liked Sanders’ holistic rejection of America’s current economic model, even in a society where ‘socialism’ is still associated with the ‘Godless Communism’ of the USSR.  Now Sanders is entitled to his views, provided he has the intellectual honesty to admit they are well outside the mainstream. He should stop pretending he speaks from some silent majority and come clean. Nordic-style socialism would be almost as radical a departure from America’s traditions as the authoritarianism Trump and his followers espouse.

So since American civility will continue to be at rock-bottom levels for the foreseeable future, America may have to learn from Lincoln as to what ought to be done. If a house divided against itself cannot stand, the house must be rebuilt, or else it will collapse. There are a few solutions I consider to be worthy of Lincoln’s radicalism:

  1. Radical devolution. The Federal Government would cease to have such a broad policy coverage. Federal welfare programs, intervention in healthcare, and social security systems would be abolished. It would then be up to individual states to finance and administer them. So Vermont could become the North American Denmark, and Alabama would be an Evangelical version of Poland. Only defence, the US dollar, the federal justice system, immigration and a few other minor functions would remain in federal hands. This would allow democratic socialists to make real progress in achieving their goals, without having to pretend a majority of the country supports them. Equally, fiscal conservatives would be held directly responsible were they to take away people’s healthcare coverage, and couldn’t blame their opponents. The only trouble would be the abandonment of vulnerable minorities, such as the large black population living in the Deep South- who would have to suffer the consequences of Republican policies, without ever being able to outvote the white, conservative majority.
  2. The break up of the Union. Its clear the Union isn’t working, so its reasonable to question its existence. There are two ways this could work. There could be a straightforward partition into two states: one with the liberal Northeast and West Coast, the other with the former Confederacy and most of the Midwest. The problem with this is that bits of each country may be cut off from one another. So instead, there could be multiple countries with greater geographical coherence. New England would be a viable independent state. California could certainly do it on its own. In this scenario, the Federal Government would be a bit like the EU- there to maintain free trade, freedom of goods, services and possibly people, as well as perhaps a common currency. But ultimate sovereignty would like in the hands of the new countries. The problem here would be the immediate economic shock of losing the Union. Unlike option 1, new constitutions would have to be written. But like option 1, there’s still the problem of permanent, vulnerable minorities.
  3. A new political party system, enabled by proportional representation. This option is based on the reasonable belief that America has been failed not only by its two parties, but by the two party system, which fails to represent the vast array of different beliefs a country of 318 million people has. Under a proportional representation system, no party would have a majority, so policies would be the result of coalition building, just like in most of the rest of the developed world. This ought to appeal to progressives, who constantly talk about the Nordic welfare state, while ignoring its pluralistic, consensus-based political culture. It would also end the Republican party’s divisions between the Trumpists, the Christian social conservatives, the economic liberals (Chamber of Commerce, Wall St Journal), and the moderates. Voters would be given a greater choice at the ballot box. Having said that, the current system of single-member districts would have to change, and there is no consensus on what the alternative would be.

Overall, its clear America is in dire straights. The coarseness of the dialogue in political discourse nowadays is shameful. Its caused by fundamental ideational divisions within the American polity, that cannot be resolved within the system as we know it. While I’m aware of the many flaws in the three solutions, I hope this post promotes radical thinking.

Next Monday, something non-political.

Will many small American colleges fail? No.3 of 3 posts

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About 40% of American colleges enroll 1000 or fewer students.  Another 40% enroll 1000 – 5000 students. Most are dependent on tuition fees and don’t have decades of giving by alumnae behind them.  The smaller colleges are competing for a shrinking number of students.  The huge amount of money spent by their larger competitors on sport and facilities means that they cannot compete unless they have some unique thing to offer.  Moreover, the Southern states and to some extent the Western ones, will account for the growth of high school graduates over the next decade, leaving the North and Eastern states in steady decline. To add to the complexity, the number of Hispanic students is expected to grow substantially, and the smaller colleges are unprepared for this diversity, or, at least, for recruiting Hispanics. The successful trick seems to be to offer a broad liberal arts education along with specific technical training, concentration on the health sector being a good example; then aggressively recruiting students within a 150 mile radius.  (based on an article in the Wasington Post by Jeffrey Selingo)

The result of not having an effective recruitment strategy has been that some colleges are discounting their fees by as much as 47%.  Notwithstanding this, 40% of them missed their recruitment targets last year.  A neighbour of ours whose job involves advising colleges and universities on the recruitment of students, told us years ago that he foresaw a mass bankruptcy of a lot of smaller educational establishments without big endowments.  Fees are too high, the fear of huge student indebtedness too scary – poorer kids are beginning to skip the college experience, which is a great shame for them and bad for the country.  Not all colleges overspend on sports and other expensive facilities, or overpay their principals, but nonetheless further education is going to be beyond the reach of all too many young people.

Undermining higher education – a seriously stupid move, No. 2 of 3 posts

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In America educational institutions have struggled with low graduation rates and the fact that graduates have failed to pay off their loans after earning degrees with “little value in the job market”.   Obama tried to strengthen consumer protections for those at for-profit colleges,  introduced a system called Scorecard that was designed to help students and parents make better  decisions about where to go to college, and allowed students to make fraud claims (viz. Trump University) if the tuition was useless.  In this case the government would help discharge the loans.  Colleges keep raising their fees, expecting the Federal government to underwrite them with federal aid. Obama resisted this.  All this annoyed the for-profit colleges.

Trump has now appointed Jerry Falwell, head of Liberty University to deregulate the educational business  and to loosen the rules for accreditation.  This is a potential disaster for education and for the students, and their parents, who commit themselves to ever more expensive education, in the expectation of getting top jobs..

Accreditors are supposed to maintain high quality in colleges, but they are paid by the educational institutions and therefore their efforts can be suspect.  It is difficult for parents and potential students to know ahead of time what they will be getting.  What so many do get is high grades but little extra knowledge, no extra critical thinking and poor teaching, and they don’t of course, know what they don’t know.  If regulations are eased or abolished there will be no way of being sure that any except the best known institutions are any good and not just money-making businesses, a type of college Jerry Falwell is well familiar with.  Apparently, only 38% of Liberty borrowers manage to pay as little as $1 on their student debt three years after leaving, and 41% of them earn less than $25,000 6 years after leaving.

The higher education industry is heading for a bust if Falwell is allowed to do what Trump wants.  No one will want to attend.  What’s the point?  Just keeping the lads and lasses off the streets?

 

 

 

 

How we do a disservice to education, number 1 of 3 posts

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From Merrill Lynch’s “Investment Doctor”, under the heading ” the 11 worst degrees if you want a job in today’s job market”:

“Surveys of hiring managers have found that having no degree may be better than getting a liberal arts degree. One survey question asked hiring managers what degrees they preferred, and just 1.6 percent said liberal arts. A whopping 64 percent, on the other hand, said they’d hire someone with no college degree. The problem? It’s not specialized enough to prepare you for a specific career. That’s why most liberal arts majors end up working in an entirely different field, such as real estate, business, finance, or sales. While it might make you a more well-rounded person, it probably won’t help you get a decent job.”

Makes you despair, doesn’t it?  One shouldn’t shoot the messenger; whoever wrote this was reporting a total misunderstanding of the point of education.

Or have they misunderstood it?  Undoubtedly, the idea that college/university is a training ground for the benefit of particular types of  profession and business has been fostered by business itself.  An education should teach you to think for yourself, look at things broadly and comprehensively, be able to problem-solve, and to understand human motivations.   Could it be that executives don’t want smart arts graduates who can think for themselves and have the impertinence to second- guess the boss.  Maybe they want, say, accountants who can keep the books quietly and obediently from day one.  Of course, they may not even be aware that this is their motivation.  Cocky youngsters can be a pain.

There is another aspect of this – resentment.  When I was looking for a younger person to potentially succeed me as managing director, I recruited a very intelligent and personable female graduate with a good (arts) degree from Edinburgh University.  This went down like a lead balloon with the employees. To start with, she was female, and they were not comforatable about the idea of a female telling them what to do.  Secondly, she did what I wanted her to do –  question what we were doing and why. Some of her ideas probably did arise out of ignorance of the market, and these were short-term learning problems.  But the staff simply made it impossible for her to operate, in a collective passive-aggressive refusal to cooperate.  I supported her, but in the end I had to give in – she left the company, a rather humiliating failure on my part.  But in a society that is still class-conscious and resentful of privilege I guess I mis- judged the willingness of the employees to accept intelligence and creativity of ideas as one way of keeping them in their jobs.   I don’t know whether this would happen in the US, but given the resentment of “us against them” at the moment, it wouldn’t surprise me.  Emotion and fear of the different can colour everything.

Does traffic exhaust cause dementia ?

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People who live near busy roads are more likely to develop dementia, new research has found. For the cohort study, scientists in Canada examined health data on some 6.6 million adults in Ontario over 12 years, and, by looking at their postcodes, divided them into groups according to how far they lived from “a major thoroughfare with medium to large traffic capacity”. Once they had adjusted the figures for various factors, including preexisting illnesses, and whether the subjects lived in urban or rural areas, they found those whose homes were within 50 metres of a busy road were 7% more likely to be diagnosed with dementia than those who lived at least 300 metres away. Traffic pollution contains a number of damaging toxins, including nitrogen oxide. However, the study has proved no causative link and has clear limitations: for instance, it was based on where people lived at a point in time before the study began; we know nothing about  the subsequent exposure to pollution.  (The Week Jan 13, 2017).

Thus the case against Big Oil grows and grows.  We will always need oil, but hopefully not in the huge quantities we are recklessly taking from the planet. The demand for oil has provoked so many wars, coups and invasions it would take a book to enumerate them all.  Worst of all is the affect of burning tons of oil every day upon the environment, a fact agreed upon by all except those with financial interest in the status quo.  These people have now come to power in the US, but they will pass, be rightly swept away like those who were so certain that the Earth was the centre of the universe all those years ago.  Hopefully, this will happen before Miami and other low- lying cities, disappear under the sea. Meanwhile, we are told that the toxins in the burnt oil may be causing dementia among those constantly by traffic fumes.   Common sense tells us this could be quite true, but don’t jump to conclusions, blah, blah.   Come on, get real!