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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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I'm not sure what you meant by those symbols but educated does not equal intelligent. An imbecile could get a degree if they worked hard enough. They may actually even learn stuff on the journey, doesn't suddenly make them intelligent.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ Actually there seem to be people who become less intelligent with more education. And some degrees which may hasten the effect.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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One of the things that prompted me to write this was my experience in the RMIT professional writing and editing program. It actually got to the stage where I found the uniformity in political views in those classes irritating. It reached its nadir during the speechwriting component of one class, where student after student got up to speak about one progressive cause or another: refugees, feminism, animal rights, climate change, the need for a left-wing reformation of the ALP (!), etc.
When I got up to do my schtick on employers encroaching on the free speech of employees, I felt like Peter Costello turning up to a Socialist Alternative meeting by mistake – and I'm in many ways a radical leftist. It made me wonder how hostile/alienating such an environment would feel for an actual conservative. Keep in mind that this course is one of the main gateways to the local editing profession, and editors of course have a huge say in shaping what happens in the literary world and what gets published. Many of the teachers are prominent figures in the local editing scene, and needless to say they were all uniformly of the left too.
So, it raises the question that you could apply to other areas of imbalance (like workforces with skewed gender or ethnicity ratios): is it simply a matter of what kind of person tends to get attracted to this profession, or is it an environment that leads the minority of conservatives who might have an interest in the field to run the other way screaming? Given how much these industries rely on professional contacts, is a known conservative likely to be frozen out or passed over for work? If so, would that be a serious problem?
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
Last edited by David on Sat Jun 03, 2017 9:40 am; edited 1 time in total |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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| stui magpie wrote: | | I'm not sure what you meant by those symbols but educated does not equal intelligent. An imbecile could get a degree if they worked hard enough. They may actually even learn stuff on the journey, doesn't suddenly make them intelligent. |
!= is shorthand for "does not equal".
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | I'm not sure what you meant by those symbols but educated does not equal intelligent. An imbecile could get a degree if they worked hard enough. They may actually even learn stuff on the journey, doesn't suddenly make them intelligent. |
!= is shorthand for "does not equal". |
ta for that, I wasn't sure.
On your other post above, interesting. I'll reply to that later.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | One of the things that prompted me to write this was my experience in the RMIT professional writing and editing program. It actually got to the stage where I found the uniformity in political views in those classes irritating. It reached its nadir during the speechwriting component of one class, where student after student got up to speak about one progressive cause or another: refugees, feminism, animal rights, climate change, the need for a left-wing reformation of the ALP (!), etc.
When I got up to do my schtick on employers encroaching on the free speech of employees, I felt like Peter Costello turning up to a Socialist Alternative meeting by mistake – and I'm in many ways a radical leftist. It made me wonder how hostile/alienating such an environment would feel for an actual conservative. Keep in mind that this course is one of the main gateways to the local editing profession, and editors of course have a huge say in shaping what happens in the literary world and what gets published. Many of the teachers are prominent figures in the local editing scene, and needless to say they were all uniformly of the left too.
So, it raises the question that you could apply to other areas of imbalance (like workforces with skewed gender or ethnicity ratios): is it simply a matter of what kind of person tends to get attracted to this profession, or is it an environment that leads the minority of conservatives who might have an interest in the field to run the other way screaming? Given how much these industries rely on professional contacts, is a known conservative likely to be frozen out or passed over for work? If so, would that be a serious problem? |
Good post. It is a deeply intimidating environment if you cannot embrace the Leftist groupthink. I have a son doing history at a top UK university. His politics are mildly liberal Left, so he finds it easy enough to play the chicane, but he uses Orwell's term "fascist sniffing" to describe the atmosphere in both teaching and student populations. In history, one odd effect is that many politically eccentric people veer off into military history where the nodding-donkey left don't go. As a result, that field is booming !
We have very different views, but at least you are intelligent and imaginative enough to see the possibility of an alternative. Most are not. It is worrying.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| stui magpie wrote: | | I'm not sure what you meant by those symbols |
The symbol "!" indicates negation. "!=" means "not equal to"; ">=" means "greater than or equal to", "!<" means "not less than", and so on. "Not equal to" can also be written as "<>".
| stui magpie wrote: | | educated does not equal intelligent. |
Absolutely. That was my point.
| stui magpie wrote: | | An imbecile could get a degree if they worked hard enough. |
Not so. Certainly not any degree anyone would take seriously. Hard work is certainly more important than raw intelligence, in study as in every other field I can think of, but you can't get a degree just by trying hard anymore than you can become an AFL footballer just by training a lot unless you have some aptitude. In both cases, you have to have enough of the basic talent: intelligence for a degree, hand-eye coordination and physical strength and so on for a footballer, musical ability for a musician. If you were born with more of the relevant talent, it's easier but you still have to work; if you were not born with enough of it, you can work hard for 20 years and still never make the grade.stui magpie
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| Mugwump wrote: | | ^ Actually there seem to be people who become less intelligent with more education. And some degrees which may hasten the effect. |
Do we have to talk about engineers?
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | One of the things that prompted me to write this was my experience in the RMIT professional writing and editing program. It actually got to the stage where I found the uniformity in political views in those classes irritating. It reached its nadir during the speechwriting component of one class, where student after student got up to speak about one progressive cause or another: refugees, feminism, animal rights, climate change, the need for a left-wing reformation of the ALP (!), etc.
When I got up to do my schtick on employers encroaching on the free speech of employees, I felt like Peter Costello turning up to a Socialist Alternative meeting by mistake – and I'm in many ways a radical leftist. It made me wonder how hostile/alienating such an environment would feel for an actual conservative. Keep in mind that this course is one of the main gateways to the local editing profession, and editors of course have a huge say in shaping what happens in the literary world and what gets published. Many of the teachers are prominent figures in the local editing scene, and needless to say they were all uniformly of the left too.
So, it raises the question that you could apply to other areas of imbalance (like workforces with skewed gender or ethnicity ratios): is it simply a matter of what kind of person tends to get attracted to this profession, or is it an environment that leads the minority of conservatives who might have an interest in the field to run the other way screaming? Given how much these industries rely on professional contacts, is a known conservative likely to be frozen out or passed over for work? If so, would that be a serious problem? |
I'll really address the last bit here and come back to tannin later.
I don't think there's a lot of doubt that certain personality types gravitate toward certain professions. With personality type you often find other common traits.
There's a number of other factors that also contribute, none the least what people are aware of and exposed to growing up. No one can be aware of all the possible kinds of occupations or what they're really like, so they gravitate toward the known that suit their skills and interests.
You could line up a lot of attributes that would attract someone to studying media and editing and a lot would correlate with people being left learning.
So that naturally goes toward different occupations can favour one or the other side of politics.
Does that then act as a deterrent for people to get into an occupation if their politics is opposite to the majority? Yes, it does. Not an absolute deterrent but a deterrent no less.
Will it be harder for someone to gain employment? Maybe, depends where they look. You probably wouldn't want to work for an organisation thats values were opposite to yours, so you look for places you fit. You may have less options on one hand, but the ones that are available you'll have less competition for.
For mine, this is just one of the natural systems of life. Trying to intervene in these things is to invite disaster. that doesn't mean there aren't areas where soft intervention can be encouraged. getting more females into trades apprenticeships for example, or more men into Nursing, but go gently on it so it can happen organically rather than being forced.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Tannin wrote: |
Not so. Certainly not any degree anyone would take seriously. Hard work is certainly more important than raw intelligence, in study as in every other field I can think of, but you can't get a degree just by trying hard anymore than you can become an AFL footballer just by training a lot unless you have some aptitude. In both cases, you have to have enough of the basic talent: intelligence for a degree, hand-eye coordination and physical strength and so on for a footballer, musical ability for a musician. If you were born with more of the relevant talent, it's easier but you still have to work; if you were not born with enough of it, you can work hard for 20 years and still never make the grade.stui magpie |
I disagree.
Your example about being an AFL footballer, I agree with but I see that as very different to getting a degree, certainly in the modern age and particularly in those occupation specific degrees. Someone who is willing to work hard enough to memorise enough information, even if they don't actually understand the application of it, would be able to do enough to pass the requirements for a degree these days.
They'd be lousy in the job, but they'd have the piece of paper.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| stui magpie wrote: | | Tannin wrote: |
Not so. Certainly not any degree anyone would take seriously. Hard work is certainly more important than raw intelligence, in study as in every other field I can think of, but you can't get a degree just by trying hard anymore than you can become an AFL footballer just by training a lot unless you have some aptitude. |
I disagree.
Your example about being an AFL footballer, I agree with but I see that as very different to getting a degree, certainly in the modern age and particularly in those occupation specific degrees. Someone who is willing to work hard enough to memorise enough information, even if they don't actually understand the application of it, would be able to do enough to pass the requirements for a degree these days.
They'd be lousy in the job, but they'd have the piece of paper. |
Most of the point of the assessment process, in any form of study worth its name, is to discover whether the student understands the subject, and is capable of thinking about it in a disciplined and evidence-based way.
This is especially so at tertiary level. Indeed, it is often said that the primary difference between secondary education and tertiary studies is that you can no longer get away with just memorising stuff out of the book.
So in this respect, you are dead wrong.
In another respect, you are probably spot on. Tertiary education since about 1990 has declined significantly in quality. There have been three main reasons for this.
The first - and I think you touch on this in your post - has been the neo-liberal emphasis on marketable certifications at the expense of pure and applied learning. Universities have been gutted by political bureaucrats (not necessarily party political, I'm talking as much about internal departmental politics here) building empires cloaked in bullshit buzz-words and empty of real value. Paper factories, in short. .
The second has been the commercialisation of education. Universities no longer exist to advance knowledge and to teach, they exist to make as much money as possible from fee-paying students, in particular foreign students who (correctly) see an expensive degree as a backdoor way to game the immigration system, particularly as Daddy is paying for it. This encourages courses that any fool can pass (with or without talent, and with or without much effort on the part of the student) because there is no profit to be had in failing fee-paying students. Lecturers are pressured into rubber-stamping PASS where it is not even close to justified, and the more honest ones soon find themselves struggling to get renewed appointments, let alone promotion.
Most of all, universities are being fed students who, by comparison with the students of, say, 1985, can only be described as "clueless". This is largely the fault of the secondary education system and its mindless insistence on high retention rates. When you fill up classes with bored, disruptive students who would rather not be there (which is exactly what we started doing in the 1980s under moronic bureaucrats like Kirner and Dawkins), the only thing you succeed in doing is messing up the education of the students who actually do want to learn stuff. It's a lose-lose policy.
Result? (a) Some degrees - far too many - are no longer worth the paper they are written on. (b) Mugwamp's counter-factual claim that there is no connection between education and liberal political views is at risk of coming true. As education becomes more worthless, it gets easier and easier for not-too-bright right wingers to get degrees - especially when Daddy is paying for it.
PS: Bear in mind that this whole thread seems to be operating using David's bizarre and silly conception that "left-wing" means something like "pro-gay rights and drinks latte".
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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So leaving aside the second last paragraph, we agree. 
There are courses that teach and require thinking, not just memorising facts but as all the things you refer to combine, many of the courses are indeed not worth the paper they're printed on.
Off the occupation specific degrees, Nursing is a possible example (ducks and waits for Morrigu and WPT to launch assault)
Not that long ago, Nurses were hospital trained. It produced some great nurses but the downside would be inconsistent learning across the sector. The qualification requirement, once introduced, has gradually kept creeping up the scale til now it's a degree for a registered nurse and a diploma for an enrolled nurse.
Is this turning out better nurses? I'm not sure but a fair proportion of them come into the workforce clueless and need a minimum of 12 months on the job training.
I'm picking on Nursing only because I'm more familiar with it than with other occupation specific degrees, but I'd be gobsmacked if it didn't apply more widely.
In regard to the overseas students, our Chief medical Officer went back to uni in 2016. I can't recall what it was he was doing but when I asked how a mid 50's gay white man fitted in at uni these days, he replied (and i'm paraphrasing) that the courses were full of Indians and Chinese and he never wanted to study Engineering more in his life.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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