There is a huge bias against a college education in this country, mostly from uneducated people who had to either fight or swindle their way to their current position, or who work at the equivalent of walmart. I cant tell you how many time someone told me there was not money in my field of work in this area, I finally got tired of defending my decision and answered them with "Yeah Whatever".  I am doing just fine thank you, and could do quite a bit better if I chose to enter another branch of the field.

No matter what university you attend your education is what you make of it and btw, my daughter will be attending college whether she likes it or not.

Quote from: David R;272017So kyle as a Jew do you find that most Christians think you're "smart" ?

No. Why would they?

We don't have Christians like these creepy fathers with their daughters here in Australia. The only ones who believe stuff like that are the Mormon and Jehovah's Witness missionaries we get, and those are all American.

We have a few churches where the people are what we call "happy clappy" Christians, and sometimes they babble ("speak in tongues") and play with snakes. But those places have a core membership of an American pastor and his wife, and the rest are mostly made up of lonely elderly, mentally ill people and drug addicts. Basically, depending on your point of view, they prey on or they support the people our secular society has failed. But they're not any more sexist than society in general, both boys and girls are meant to remain virgins, they are neutral to the value of a secular education, and there's no particular respect for authority of father - after all, father might not be born again!

We have a few thousand fundamentalist Jews, the blokes wearing their black coats (brilliant dress choice in Aussie heat), the women wearing wigs, and so on. But they don't seek converts, so hardly anybody knows about them.

We occasionally get a loopy imam who wants to destroy Australia and turn it into an Islamic Caliphate, but usually their congregation has them removed and reports them to the Federal Police, who go and have a chat with him and persuade him to shut his stupid mouth before they revoke his permanent residency visa and send him back to whatever civil war wracked shithole he came from.

Aside from that we don't have loopy ones like this. We definitely have people who use their culture as an excuse to be shitheads to women. But that's got nothing to do with the particular faith or culture. It can be "a good Catholic girl wouldn't -" or "a good Sunni girl" or "a good Macedonian girl" or "a good Pitjantjara girl" or "a good Chinese girl". Oppression of women is cross-cultural.

Quote from: David RCan you blame women for wanting to go to college ? I mean apparently some want game design to have the "14 year schoolboy" test.....sounds like trouble if you ask me.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;272173No. Why would they?

Quoteriprock wrote:
I don't think Christians believe Palin is a miracle. I think they see her as more intelligent than the average woman -- probably due to her Jewish ancestors. So Palin can be VP because she's *smart*, whereas Little Suzie is more than one standard deviation below average IQ. College is not worth it for unintelligent students.

QuoteWhat the fuck are you talking about?

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=12875

Regards,
David R

Quote from: riprock;271997I don't really follow American politics, but I remember who the "republicans" are.  That's the party of men who pretend to be hetero but who actually solicit gay sex by tapping their feet in airport restrooms.

The republicans who are actually out of the closet are apparently the "Log Cabin" ones.

So a publically-out, self-proclaimed lesbian could just go the the "Log Cabin Republican" booth and sign up.  No problem at all.

So when you say you "don't really follow American politics" you really are full of shit. Or did you just happen across Dem talking points by accident?

Quote from: riprock;271805I suspect the fundies who don't want their daughters going to college believe the following:
1) My daughter will lose her virginity at college if she goes to college.
2) My daughter has very little, aside from virginity, to offer any husband.
3) My daughter is not interested in learning.
4) My daughter has few realistic career prospects beyond "homemaker."

I suspect that, given beliefs (1)-(4), keeping the daughter back from college is a logically supported course of action.  I will leave the proof as an exercise for the reader.

I think you're on to something here.  More problematically, I suspect that these fundies have held these kinds of beliefs the entire lives of their daughters, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you believe your daughter has no interest in learning before she can even speak then what effort are you going to make to foster an interest in learning?  If you believe your daughter has no prospects beyond wife and mother, then what effort will you make to encourage her to dream and have real ambitions?

It's sad.  Also, it creates really boring women that are impossible to tolerate.

Quote from: HinterWelt;271892Is it just me or is all this talk of "protecting" your daughter and having her "serve" her father seem a bit...creepy?

Also, as a product of American education system, please allow me to say Fuck You.

Thank you,
Bill

Deeply creepy, and even some Evangelicals consider it to be unhealthy and talk about it as Emotional Incest disguised as religion.

RPGPundit

Quote from: riprock;271946Anyhow, I speculate the people making the videos -- who are women, IIRC-- may have one agenda, and the men buying the videos have a different agenda.

The women in question are the daughter of the pastor Geoffrey Botkin, who is a major figure in this particular evangelical movement. They are essentially acting as mouthpieces for his theology.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;272173We don't have Christians like these creepy fathers with their daughters here in Australia.

You might be surprised. They might not be there in the numbers that they are in the States, or as visible in the public sphere, but a huge number of evangelical pastors who are very intensely visible in the "Intelligent Design" movement and the christo-patriarchy theology are Australian.

RPGPundit

Oh. First I've heard of Palin's "jewish ancestors". And I don't see how that would help her popularity with fundamentalist Christians, quite the opposite. And her being "smart"? Er... Smartly dressed, maybe. Otherwise, dumb as shit.

Which is why I scan over riprock's posts, and missed that. Because he talks utter bollocks.

Quote from: David R;272175http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=12875

Of course, riprock's not the only one talking bollocks.

Yeah, I never heard anything about Palin having "jewish ancestry" either...

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;272203You might be surprised. They might not be there in the numbers that they are in the States, or as visible in the public sphere, but a huge number of evangelical pastors who are very intensely visible in the "Intelligent Design" movement and the christo-patriarchy theology are Australian.

Well, maybe so. We also have a couple of Holocaust deniers, too. But every country has a few loopy people. For example, our former Education Minister wanted to teach creationism in schools as science, but he got shouted down so it got shunted to religion and philosophy classes [see here]. And his party lost the next federal election - that wasn't an issue in the media nor did anyone I spoke to bring it up, but I'm sure it didn't help his personal image as a bit of an idiot, or his party's image as being backwards and out of touch.

It's a bit different when their loopy views are an accepted part of the political process.

Looking at the webpage of the Evangelical Alliance - Australia, a site search for "sex" and "pre-marital" and the like pull up exactly zero pages talking about whether or not to do the deed. And one article says that you (the evangelical Christian reader) shouldn't vote for someone just because they say they're Christian, but,
   "Of course we need more Christians in politics, but we don’t just need Christians, we need people of integrity whose integrity is not only motivated by their Christian faith but also evidenced by their actions.[...] don’t just elect Christians but ensure the people you vote for are people of integrity, and the best people for the job. They may also be Christians and if so, that’s a bonus."
So even the happy clappy Christians who babble and play with snakes in Australia have a balanced view of public affairs. Even the loopy Assemblies of God Christians, their website's only mention of sex is being against same-sex civil unions. They believe in divorce only for adultery and in the case of physical abuse. I think they're wrong in both cases, however their position is pretty far from this creepy father-daughter stuff we're talking about here.

Again, every country has crazy people, there's no doubt Australia has its fair share. But when the craziness has an organised movement and formalised process for its craziness, that's a different thing. And we don't really have that here Down Under, thank God.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;271984This is why I was careful to say I hadn't studied the data recently. I'm aware of the claim that college grads make more money, but this could be a product of mere credentialing. In other words I've read claims that once you control for factors like high school performance, and possibly socioeconomic status, the economic return on college is diminished or even vanishes completely (but I haven't examined them closely). Throw in the direct and opportunity costs of college (i.e., there's four years when you could be making money and getting real-world experience) and the effective requirement that people need a BA for many jobs may be a net loss to the economy, however much it may help subsidize advanced research and give graduate students jobs.

Elliot, I normally find you to be a very sensible guy, but I'm not getting your anti-college thing at all.

A college education is, hands down, the best investment one can make.  It has an average rate of return better than anything else you can do.  It's not a claim, it's a fact backed up by decades of research.

The average yearly wages, according to the 2005 census, for a high school graduate was $31,539.  For a college graduate, it is $50,944.  

Over a 50 year employment history, the hs grad would earn a total of $1,576,950.  If we only give the college graduate 46 years, that's still $2,343,424.  Even if we take out another $100,000 for the costs of college, that's still almost one and a half times more earnings over a lifetime.

There's no contest.

Quote from: jgants;272320Over a 50 year employment history, the hs grad would earn a total of $1,576,950.  If we only give the college graduate 46 years, that's still $2,343,424.  Even if we take out another $100,000 for the costs of college, that's still almost one and a half times more earnings over a lifetime.

There's no contest.

To be fair, what degrees are we talking about here?

Clearly, there is a vast difference in earnings potential between a Master's (or even a Bachelor's) in Computer Science* and a Doctorate in 13th Century Norman Poetry.

I'm all about the college, and I am certainly not suggesting that universities cut out anything that won't directly contribute to getting a lucrative job, but let's face it:  many college graduates really don't have a good skill set to get those jobs you are referring to.  I don't have a college education, but I am easily earning what a college graduate would.  My circumstances, of course, are a matter of luck and technical training from the Air Force, but I am not in the industry I was while in the military.

I think Mr Willen has something of a point, or at least a popular perception.  Most parents - who were likely unable to go to college themselves - push their own kids to get 'an education', thinking it a Golden Ticket, without advising them on what they should be doing there.  This certainly leads to a perception that college is a waste of time, because many graduates don't work in the field they studied.

That said, college costs have risen to something like 40% of a middle income family's take-home, but even so, I am sure your statistics are only slightly impacted, and a college education still gives the best bang for the buck.



*or Biology/Genetics, or Chemistry, or... you get the point

Quote from: jgants;272320Elliot, I normally find you to be a very sensible guy, but I'm not getting your anti-college thing at all.

A college education is, hands down, the best investment one can make.  It has an average rate of return better than anything else you can do.  It's not a claim, it's a fact backed up by decades of research.

The average yearly wages, according to the 2005 census, for a high school graduate was $31,539.  For a college graduate, it is $50,944.  

Over a 50 year employment history, the hs grad would earn a total of $1,576,950.  If we only give the college graduate 46 years, that's still $2,343,424.  Even if we take out another $100,000 for the costs of college, that's still almost one and a half times more earnings over a lifetime.

There's no contest.

Well, I'm enjoying being the devil's advocate, but I'm not just talking nonsense. The point here is that the comparison of wages for college graduates with everyone else isn't a controlled experiment, far from it. You are comparing people who choose to go to college and who have enough smarts and diligence to get their degree with people who either don't have the initiative, or the money (an indicator of socioeconomic status), or the wherewithal to enter and see it through.

Suppose you took some of those people, the ones who in the current environment choose to go to college and finish their degree, and sent them right into the workforce. Assuming they could get past the prejudice against people without Bachelor's degrees--let's say they got a waiver which allowed them to legally forge their diplomas--how would they do? Well, they're probably more ambitious and smarter, and better connected, than the average person who doesn't go to college (note: average). They'll probably do better. How much better?

It isn't just me asking this question, in fact I can't claim to have thought of it myself. I came across the issue in some online periodical; you'll have to take my word for it that it wasn't something fringe but a reasonable site like Slate. And it's been addressed by research--for example, I found this paper which says that once you control for socioeconomic status and other factors, you get "a substantial reduction in estimates of the rate of return to education." I'm just going from the abstract, but the authors have respectable institutions behind them.

It's worth noting that this and similar studies don't really engage the "pure credentialing" issue. By that I mean, they don't ask how much of someone's earnings is attributable just to having the sheepskin. In theory, earning a college degree could be partly just a signal: it proves you're able to get through, and so people are willing to hire you. It's not that you learned anything, just that you had the ability to learn enough. What if, instead, employers used the same measurements that colleges use for admissions--a mixture of standardized test scores and high school GPA? True, those aren't perfect predictors of college success, but college success isn't a perfect predictor of career success. And again, college is expensive both in terms of immediate costs and lost wages (by the way, those costs compound over a lifetime; simply subtracting a hundred grand from the total underestimates the effect).

Then there's the fact that the real-world economic return on a college degree isn't the same for all schools and all majors. Four years studying EE--I can believe that'll get you ahead. Four years doing history or English? Hmmm...

By the way I graduated from a top private school with a degree in history, and my wife will, with any luck, get her BA from a top public university next spring, with no small amount of support and encouragement on my part. I may not have taken maximum economic advantage of my degree (if I had to do it over, I'd probably have done something a little more quantitative or techie), but I'm not under any illusion as the real-world advantages I've enjoyed, and which I hope my wife will enjoy.

I do suspect, though, that "college education" is an inefficient way for the country as a whole to provide itself with a skilled workforce and its citizens with good jobs.

Quote from: CavScout;272177So when you say you "don't really follow American politics" you really are full of shit. Or did you just happen across Dem talking points by accident?

People really follow American politics know which interests are funding which lobbyists to pay out which legalized bribes.  I don't go into that level of detail.

I have trouble ignoring the "democrats" like Clinton, who think that oral sex isn't sex, and the "republicans" who claim they're not gay when they have gay sex.