Right on Marty!

Deescalation is a three legged stool; Don't put all the blame on the cops.

I just heard a discussion on the radio of the need to train police officers assigned to schools in deescalation techniques to help them avoid unnecessary violence in the schools. Sounds like a partial solution to me, but a necessary step. One way to deescalate is for the officer to recognize things that are not police matters, and refrain from stepping in. (If all you have is a hammer, pretty much every problem looks like a nail. If you are a police officer, are you not likely to see situations as requiring policing, even if they really do not?)

Are there not at least three people involved in each such incident -- the police officer, the student, and the teacher. Should teachers not also share in the blame for such incidents, and should they not receive training as to when to handle situations themselves, deescalating student behavior, and if necessary calling on the appropriate school official for backup rather than an inappropriate police officer?

What about parents? Should they not teach kids not to act up in school, not to anger teachers, and especially not to anger police officers? Parents in fact regularly teach kids to avoid problems and to deescalate situations before they become dangerous. Schools can also provide this training for kids, which may help them more in life than some of the lessons actually taught in school.

Los Angeles in the 40s and 50s -- Growing Up

The History Book Club to which I belong discussed Our Kids by Robert Putnam last week. In the process, several described their own high school experience, complementing Robert Putnam’s description of many school experiences in the book. I thought I might share something about growing up in west Los Angeles and attending public schools there from 1946 until high school graduation in the summer of 1955. Los Angeles was a unique place to grow up in that time.

My parents, European immigrants, moved to Los Angeles in late 1945 and bought their first car and first house in early 46. The house had two bedrooms and one bathroom, typical of the 1930s houses in our lower middle class price range. I should not have expected to grow up in so vibrant a community.

As an 8 year old, my first Los Angeles friends were the kids of my age on my block.

Paul's Dad, 1912

• Paul (who also went to school with me). His parents, both school teachers, were divorced, and Paul lived with his mother and older sisters. His father, a college graduate, also had a law degree, but never practiced law. His father was very unusual in that he had been on the 1912 U.S. Olympic team with Jim Thorpe, and had brought home the gold medal for the high jump. His father was the best U.S. athlete in the Decathlon and qualified for the 1916 Olympics in that event as well as the high jump, but those games were not held (due to the outbreak of World War I). Paul did not graduate from college, eventually opened and operated his own camera store.
• Dean, my next door neighbor, went to the MGM studio school. His parents were also divorced, and he lived with his mother and older brother. His father -- when I met Dean -- was staring as Curly in the original Broadway production of Oklahoma (in 1937 he had sung the role of the prince in Snow White -- Disney's first feature length film). Dean and his brother Guy were then already professional actors, Dean the more successful of the two; he would win a Golden Globe a couple of years after we met for his performance in Gentleman’s Agreement. It was through Dean and Guy that I met such actors as Margaret O’Brien, Claude Jarman Jr., Lionel Barrymore and Allen Ladd. NeitherDean nor his brother graduated from college, but both went on to successful acting careers – some 300 credits on the International Movie Data Base (both had starring roles in TV series that counted as single IMDB entries). His brother later started an acting school.

Dean's Dad, 1945

In primary school I added up some lifetime friends who went all through public school with me. The closest were:

• Allen: I don’t remember his parents’ background. Allen did well through college, becoming President of the Young Democrats and Secretary General of the Model UN in his senior year at Berkeley. Graduating he became a peace activist, going to jail for a year in the mid 60s after an anti Vietnam rally;  that turns out to be a good career move in the peace movement, and he had a long career in the American Friends Service Committee. Along the line he picked up a master’s degree and taught classes at Berkeley.
• Anthony: His parents were divorced, and both remarried. There were thus four parents  --  three with PhDs and a full professor at USC (who did not have a PhD). Anthony lived with his mother and stepfather in apartments in our neighborhood. His stepfather, Ingolf, I knew well, in part because he took our gang of kids hiking, camping and mountain climbing from the sixth grade to the summer between 11th and 12th grades. Included among Ingolf’s friends that I remember: Nobel Laureate novelist Thomas Mann, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Victor Borge, Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Aaron Copeland, Gertrude Laurence, and Leonard Bernstein. Ingolf was a department head at Tanglewood, Director of the Ojai Music Festival, Director of the Evenings on the Roof concert series, conductor of the Borge radio show orchestra, and ghosted some of Schroeder’s piano playing in the Peanuts TV cartoons. Michael Tilson Thomas (Ingolf’s student and now conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra) conducted the orchestra for the tribute recording of Ingolf’s works issued after Ingolf’s untimely death. Anthony’s mother’s was a friend of Ralph Bunch from their days as undergraduates at UCLA.  (He was, of course, the top U.S. official in the UN and a Nobel Peace Prize winner). Anthony’s biological father was the head of the script department at MGM, and wrote children’s books after he retired. Anthony got a teaching credential and a PhD, taught for a while a Michigan State, but moved to England where he ended his career as the chair of the English Department of the American High School in London. He has published several books since retiring from teaching.
• Dick: His parents moved from South Dakota to LA where his father worked in the Douglas Aircraft Co. factory; I believe his work was highly skilled and involved making models for parts of Douglas airplanes that would be part of the production process. I think both parents were high school graduates. Dick got a PhD in Neuroanatomy, got tenure in the USC medical school faculty, went back to get a second PhD in psychology and then worked as a consulting psychologist.

In junior high school I added Mike to my circle of friends.

• Mike’s parents were high school grads and divorced; he lived with his Mom and younger brother. Mike decided to be an actor and dropped out of college, taking acting and dance classes instead. After a personal crisis he changed religion, finished college, and went to divinity school, getting a graduate degree and becoming a Presbyterian minister. However, later he spent time in Japan studying acting technique for the No theater; he qualified in Japan for women’s roles in No drama (not many Americans did that). He has published at least one successful book on church liturgy. He worked as a minister for most of his adult life eventually leading a large church. Now retired, he performs occasional on the stage of a local professional theater.

In high school I added a few more friends:

Luana in Coppola's first film

Gordon's memoir

• Luana: I didn’t know her parents. She started her career as an actress immediately after high school. She was Peter Fonda’s love interest in Easy Rider, starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s first film, and was the girl under the pendulum In The Pit and the Pendulum (81 IMDB acting entries before her untimely death). She starred in the title role in the national touring company of The Reluctant Debutant and starred across from Rex Harrison in a Broadway play that lasted only one night. She later had three scripts that she wrote made into films. She studied acting with Jeff Corey. (Soon after high school, not yet supporting herself by acting, she had a job as a messenger. She convinced a fellow messenger to come along with her to acting class on evening; thus began the career of Jack Nickolson.)
• Gordon: I didn’t know his parents. Gordon got an undergraduate degree and a PhD from Cal Tech. His published memoir tells about the important role he played at Seagate in the invention of the personal computer hard drive. He continues to do research and development of computer memory technology.
• Mark: His parents were as far as I knew high school grads; his father was at one time a professional musician. His uncle was with a professional musician with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Mark got a bachelor and masters degree from U.C. Berkeley. He eventually became the head of the metallurgy lab at Sandia and then the head of the special projects division. I understand that late in his career he became a well known volcanologist, studying volcanoes in Hawaii and the Mt. St. Helens eruption.

My own parents: Both were immigrants. Dad was a secondary school grad and Mom did not complete secondary school. Dad was a middle manager in a big corporation during our years in California. Mom was a stay at home mom for most of the time, but worked part time later. At one point, Dad was the office manager for the building owned by the company; since it provided the Screen Actors Guild with a suite of offices in the building, he served as office manager for SAG and got to know two SAG presidents rather well: George Murphy and Ronald Reagan. Later Dad became purchasing agent for office furniture, equipment and supplies for the company headquarters. It was at that time that Reagan asked him as a favor to set up his campaign office in LA for his first run for governor, which Dad did. Mom when I was a teenager worked a couple of days a week for the Mitchell family. He was a named partner in a law firm that specialized in the movie industry, and she was the daughter of a man whose company was one of several that build Hoover Dam. I got bachelors, masters, and PhD degrees from campuses of the University of California.

The basic point is that our middle class neighborhood had good schools. My friends and I had many role models provided by parents and parents’ friends. Some school friends went on to higher education some did not. All of my close school friends seem to have done well in their chosen careers.

Let me add a few more entries from my college days (1955 to 1959) at UCLA. They too indicate the richness of the Los Angeles environment in which I grew up.

• Chris, a friend made at UCLA whose father had a brief period in the limelight as Elsberg's Psychiatist when the break in of his office by President Nixon's "plumbers" was revealed to the public. These events ruined his practice and embittered him for life. Still, to me he represented the important and useful role that one could assume in adult life with the proper education. Chris went on to a long, successful career as an engineer.
• Jimmy, a Japanese America who was sent to school in Japan before World War II, and got stuck there during the war. He joined the U.S. army in Japan after the war and served in Korea. He Chris and I were inseparable in Engineering school, graduated together, and he went on to a long career as an engineer.
• Myron Tribus taught me Thermodynamics at UCLA, and his teaching approach influenced my own teaching. His accounts of his experience doing operations research during World War II I think influenced my own career choices much later. He left UCLA to become Dean of Engineering at Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering. He became Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology in the Nixon administration, and since President Nixon did not have a formal Science Adviser, served in that role as well. He then became Senior V.P. for Research & Engineering in Xerox Corp.
• Linus Pauling is still the only person to have received two undivided Nobel Prizes, one in Medicine for his discovery of the structure of hemoglobin and the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to the spread of atomic weapons. On two different occasions he took several hours to chat with me, an undergraduate from a different university. He continues to remind me that grace is not inconsistent with greatness.

Lets do something about student debt

Source: The Economist

I quote from an article in The Economist:

Student debt in America now totals $1.2 trillion, up more than threefold over the past decade. On August 10th Hillary Clinton announced a $350 billion plan to reduce this sum. It would increase federal subsidies granted to state-school students, and help existing borrowers refinance their liabilities. New loan originations have decreased every year since 2010, and default rates have stabilised.

I started at a campus of the University of California in 1955 when it was essentially free. I completed my last degree at another campus 20 years later, when fees were still quite low. I worked during college, and got a couple of scholarships, but I finished each stretch in residence on campus with more money than I started. I didn't have any student debt. There was nothing wrong with a university system that made that possible then, and I don't see why a system that at least makes higher education more affordable is not possible now. Lets reduce student debt, especially for majors where the earning potential does not justify the debt. 

A Modest Proposal for A New Legislation to Support Students in Colleges and Universities

The Economist has an article this week on the rising burden of college debt in the USA:

NEARLY three-quarters of the graduates now leaving America’s colleges are saddled with debt. On average, they owe $35,051. By comparison, roughly half of all graduates carried debt in 1995 and it averaged less than a third as much, says Edvisors, which tracks student aid (see chart).

We need a U.S. Defense-During-Globalization Education Act that subsidizes the higher education needed for this country to remain competitive in an increasingly global economy, as well as to help those who have been displaced from their previous jobs by competition from abroad to qualify for new jobs in sectors emerging in the USA.

Not only should people not be discouraged from getting the education and training that they need by high costs (incurring debts that will hang on the former students for years), but much of the benefit from such education will accrue to the general society in the form of increased GDP (not to mention, increased tax income for federal, state and local governments).

Of course, there are families that don't need or want help from the government to pay for higher educational services; don't provide it to them, and I wish them the best! Nor should the government subsidize students to attend inefficient schools or schools with sub-standard educational offerings. Students who wish to study fields that have little benefit to society beyond the edification and delight of the individual student should not benefit from subsidies from the legislation I propose, but best of luck to them.

Recommending a website on the rise of political freedom and the decrease in violence

There is a very nice website produced by Max Roser that shows a decrease in violence worldwide, and seeks to provide at least a partial explanation -- all in graphs. Here are three drawn from the site:

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Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but it does seem likely the increased education leads to social changes that both promote democratic governance and decrease violence in a society.

Latinos Will Keep America Strong!

The Economist has a full section on Hispanics in America. The opening article notes:

By the time of the 2010 census, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites (for simplicity’s sake called whites hereafter) was down to 64%. Some time around 2044 it is projected to fall to less than half....... 

America has twice before witnessed European migration waves that were proportionately even larger when measured against the population at the time: once in the 19th century and again at the start of the 20th century....... 

In just a few years.......there will be as many whites over 65 as white children. Among non-whites, children outnumber the old by four to one. Take away Hispanics and other fast-growing minorities, and America’s numbers look like those for Italy, a country full of pensioners with a shrinking labour force.

It would be a very good idea to educate the children of Hispanic ancestry well so that they might play their full and appropriate role in U.S. society in the future. It would also be a good idea to keep them in schools and colleges and out of gangs for the same reason.

Investing in Latino kids is going to be especially important for the future of the South West, the West and Florida, but Hispanics will be a larger part of the population of the rest of the country. If Texas, Arizona and California don't invest in their Latino kids, you can bet the Illinois, New York and Maryland will suffer some of the consequences.

Which degrees give the best financial returns?

 Engineers, computer scientists and math majors make more money according to The Economist!

A new report from PayScale, a research firm, calculates the returns to higher education in American universities. Its authors compare the career earnings of college graduates with the present-day cost of a degree at their alma maters, after taking account of financial aid. 

Top universities may be growing ever more selective, but the returns on a college degree depend far more on field of study than the choosiness of the university itself, the report says. Engineering and computer-science students earn most, achieving an impressive 20-year annualised return of 12% (the S&P 500 managed just 7.8%). Engineers were also least dependent on institutional prestige: graduates from less-selective schools experienced only a slight decrease in average returns. Business and economics degrees also pay well, delivering a solid 8.7% average return. Courses in arts or the humanities may pay intellectual dividends but provide more mixed economic returns. Students concerned about their financial outlook should worry less about their school's rank and spend more time brushing up on maths.

Happy Darwin Day

Today is the 206th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. It is also the 206th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, but this post is about American opinion with respect to evolution. It is based on a report from the Pew Research Center.

A solid majority (64%) of white evangelicals in a 2013 poll said that humans and other living things have always existed in their present form, while only 27% said that humans evolved. These views are largely mirrored by the positions of large evangelical churches, such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which explicitly reject evolutionary theory as being in conflict with what they see as biblical truth.

 Let me distinguish two situations:

1. Someone understands the theory of evolution reasonably well, understands that the vast majority of scientists accept evolution as real, but knows also that the leaders of the religion to which he belongs reject the theory of evolution. That person feels that his faith in his religion requires that he believe its view of creation.
2. Someone does not understand the theory of evolution, has little idea of the evidence that supports the theory, and thinks that scientists are divided on the validity of evolution. The person knows also that the leaders of the religion to which he belongs reject the theory of evolution. That person accepts the view of the leaders of his religion, and believe the religion's dogma on creation.

I much prefer people who correspond to situation one. Such a person has accurate knowledge of the theory and its acceptance by the scientific community and simply chooses not to "believe" in it.

As to the teaching of evolution and its alternatives, I quote again:

In spite of efforts in many American states and localities to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools or to teach alternatives to evolution, courts in recent decades have consistently rejected public school curricula that veer away from evolutionary theory. In Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana law requiring public school students to learn both evolution and “creation science” violated the Constitution’s prohibition on the establishment of religion.

Clearly appropriate science courses in the USA should teach evolution. That is the law. It is also the consensus of the vast majority of scientists as to what should be taught as science. Indeed, it is a basis for understanding much of biological science.

Private schools run by religious organizations can of course include courses on the dogma of their religion.

I also see a role to have courses on teaching "information literacy" -- the skill of discerning the credibility of information that one encounters from different sources. The evolution-creationism situation seems tailor made for getting students to think seriously about in what sense scientific theories are credible and in what sense religious teachings are credible. Unfortunately, I doubt that many K-12 teachers are capable of teaching such a complex topic well.

Public Funding of Education

"Those persons whom nature has endowed with genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and … they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth, or other accidental condition or circumstance."
—Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, 1779

I just read an article about the change in U.S. policy toward the public funding of higher education. The article suggests that a critical date in that change was 1967 when then Governor Ronald Reagan of California assured his constituents he would do nothing to undermine the excellence of the higher education system in California. That promise looks pretty hollow today. I was a beneficiary of the earlier system. I was a full time student in the University of California system from 1955 to 1962 and from 1968 to 1970, and a non-resident student while I worked on thesis and dissertation for several more years; I worked for the system for most of those years as a student; there was no tuition fee when I started, and costs were minimal when I finished. I saved money while a college student!

I do believe that all countries owe their young people a right to education. That right is limited by what a country can afford, in the sense that countries with high per capita GDPs provide more schooling for their people than do countries with low per capita GDPs.

How is the schooling assured? In part they do so by the provision of public schools that provide schooling free or for minimal costs (e.g. supplies). However, countries may allow for private schooling, religiously based schooling, or home schooling, simply imposing the requirements on families that they assure adequate schooling for those that prefer these alternatives to public schools.

Another issue is whether the right to education is a right to attend school for a certain amount of time, a right achieve some level of proficiency, or the right to fully develop some special gift (as the quotation above from Thomas Jefferson would suggest). In the USA we seem to veer among those ideas. We recognize that children develop at different speeds, emphasizing different aspects of development, and make some allowances -- providing specialized schooling to meet some of the special needs of different children. We also provide for a test to allow students to demonstrate proficiency comparable to that of a high school graduate; some secondary school students are allowed (encouraged) to attend university courses.

Countries also invest in education, not only in the assurance that the rights to schooling being provided (which of course yields national benefits in productivity, citizenship, and domestic life), but also investing in the education and training of people for specific roles in the society. As I consider the creation of new nations in Africa, clearly their development was limited by lack of professional engineers, public health physicians, skilled and ethical political leaders, business entrepreneurs, etc. These countries had to invest in the development of adequate cadres of such experts, and that required schooling for the few far beyond "the rights to education" of the majority. In part, the justification for public funding for the education of these folk is that they do not (or at least should not) recapture the cost of their education in remuneration during their careers. The benefits that they provide to society are much greater than those that the professionals should appropriate through their remuneration for their services. If the public benefits from the advanced education of certain people, then it seems only right that the public should invest in their education.

Of course, a problem is just which people should receive what education at public expense. It may be that some philosophers are needed in any country, but if so, how many and which people should be granted public support for the study of philosophy? Somehow it seems that the decision should not be left to teen age students, with the government willing funding as much schooling in French romantic poetry, ancient history, electrical engineering, or nursing as the students freely choose to study. (If parents wish to subsidize any kind of education and have the resources to do so, perhaps that is fine. But there is also a point that the rich are successful in assuring the prosperity of their children by providing them with superior education, but diminishing economic mobility for children of the poor and middle class.)

I wish I had answers, but sometimes it is useful to raise the questions.

Added Comment:

I just read an article about Yitang Zhang, a Chinese American mathematician, and was reminded how much new knowledge we probably lose by not educating potential geniuses around the world to fully achieve their potential. Yitang Zhang in 2014 published a paper making a major advance in number theory, an advance that has been honored by several major prizes. He was 49 at the time, and had only published one significant paper previously.

He had been caught as a child in the political upheavals in China; he and his mother were sent to the countryside as farm workers, separated from his father. His efforts to study mathematics on his own were discouraged by ideologues who believed mathematics was unimportant. He was unable to enter the university until the age of 23, and on graduation was made a part of a team working on an area of math that was of more interest to his professor than to himself. Fortuitously he was recruited to enter graduate school at Purdue in 1985 by a professor visiting China, and managed to obtain his PhD in mathematics there at the end of 1991. However, he could not immediately get an academic job and had to take work in a market. It was not until 1999 that he got a non-tenure track position teaching calculus at the University of New Hampshire.

We were fortunate at several points in his life that his persistence was rewarded by an opportunity to advance his career as a mathematician. Had any of them failed to materialize, he would probably not have been able to continue his mathematical career. The study of large prime numbers, once a field of mathematics that was considered to have no applications, has become important with a number of practical applications.

I am reminded of Ramanujan:

an Indian mathematician and autodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, (who) made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions. Ramanujan initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation...........When his skills became apparent to the wider mathematical community, centered in Europe at the time, he began a famous partnership with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy. He rediscovered previously known theorems in addition to producing new work. Ramanujan was said to be a natural genius, in the same league as mathematicians such as Euler and Gauss.

Ramanujan wrote to Hardy from India presenting him with some of the theorems he had proved in isolation in India, and Hardy was interested enough to follow up, and eventually invited Ramanujan to England. But here too was a man who contributed significantly to global knowledge who might have died unknown and unrecognized but for the insight of one man.

How many more potential geniuses are born today who will never achieve their potential due to lack of opportunity? I suspect that there are many!

A thought about education

I saw a news broadcast the other day about a school in California that had a special program which it described as life preparation. High school age kids from a poor neighborhood were taking a course preparing them for jobs in the health service industry. They had a lot of on site training for entry level jobs.

On the one hand, I think it is great that these kids, who come from families where parents may not have finished high school and certainly did not go to college, are likely to get jobs right out of high school -- jobs other than flipping burgers in fast food restaurants.

On the other hand, I wonder if they are not being shifted off into a side track that is going to be a dead end. Will they be able to get more education later, shift into higher paying jobs, and have careers that will offer real upward social and economic mobility.

My Dad finished high school but my mother did not. Most of my close friends similarly had parents who had not gone to college. But my did wanted me to go to schools that had good academic preparation and chose to buy a house in the catchment area for such schools. A lot of my fellow students did have parents with college educations, and a lot of them expected to at least graduate from college -- many planned careers that would involve graduate degrees.

So my close friends and I rather naturally adopted the aspirations of the majority of our fellow students. Moreover, we all went on not only to graduate from college, but to get graduate degrees; I got a Ph.D. Dick was the exception -- he got two doctorates.

We tended to change careers, and the educational preparation helped us to do so. It also helped the country -- one of my high school friends went on to invent the computer hard drive.

In a globalized economy, where America competes with low income countries, people with relatively little education may be competing with people in those low income countries on the basis of pay -- dooming the yanks to low pay. The folk with little education are also likely to be challenged by automation of their jobs. While people with hands-on service jobs may see their incomes rise somewhat with the rise of the general economy, they may also face more competition for those jobs with people who have not received the necessary education to get jobs in creative industries, especially as others in their boat have lost their jobs to automation.

Community Concern for a Proposal of the Montgomery County Public Schools

I attended a community meeting last week in which several hundred residents of my community came together to discuss proposals from the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) to:

• Move the MCPS School Bus Depot to the site currently occupied by the Blair Ewing Center for Alternative Education Programs, and
• Move the Blair Ewing Center to the English Manor School location (currently leased to the Children's Learning Center which closes in June 2015).

The community meeting suggested alternative measures:

• That a larger, commercially zoned site be found for the MCPS School Bus Depot -- one with less congested road access.
• That the Blair Ewing Center remain in its current location on Avery Rd.
• That 150 students from the Lucy V. Barnsley Elementary School be moved to a reopened English Manor Elementary School.

Here is a map showing some relevant school locations.

The members of the community offered reasons that I found convincing that their alternative was superior to that of the MCPS.

Better for the Students

The Blair Ewing Center is currently operating successfully for its population of those middle school and high school students who require alternative education. Its physical structure allows the middle school students to be separated from the older high school students, and it has a number of rooms designed for enrichment programs. Moving the students to the smaller and older facility with fewer specialized facilities -- a facility that was designed for primary school students -- would not serve the older students well; there would be less separation of the middle school students from the older high school students.

The Barnsley School is now serving both magnet students and students from the local community; it has more than twice the student population for which it was designed. Moving half the students to a reopened English Manor school would be better for both the remainning Barnsley and the new English Manor students.

Moving the School Bus Depot to Avery Road Is a Bad Idea

Currently 400 school buses are based at the current depot in Crabb's Branch Way (see map). That facility will be closed. 700 cars owned by drivers and employees of the depot are parked at the Crabb's Branch daily. Even demolishing the Blair Ewing Center and using the existing park paid for by the City of Rockville as a parking lot, the Avery Rd. site (see map) is not large enough to house the School Bus Depot.

The MCPS proposal would add significantly to congestion on Route 28, which is already one of the most congested roads in the county. 400 school buses would leave from and return to Avery Rd. during morning rush hour, and the same 400 school buses would leave from and returning  to Avery Rd. during the afternoon; 700 cars would arrive at Avery Rd. in the morning hour and leave in the evening rush hour  

Parking 1100 vehicles at the Avery Rd. site on a daily basis, as well as the other operations of a School Bus Depot would appear likely to pollute Rock Creek, which is quite nearby. Millions of dollars have been spent to assure the creek water is clean. The creek (and its related walking trail and park) runs all the way into Washington DC. At least an environmental impact study would appear to be required before such an action were taken. It was suggested that the  Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission be involved in any decision involving a potential threat to the Rock Creek environment.

The Local Community Has Not Been Adequately Involved in the Decision Process

The families of the students of the Blair Ewing Center are deeply concerned with the welfare of the children who would be moved under the MCPS proposal. 

The MCPS proposal would greatly increase vehicle traffic into the English Manor neighborhood. It also raises safety concerns for the residents of the neighborhood.

The community proposal to reduce crowding at Barnsley Elementary School and reopen English Manor Elementary school would be beneficial to the students of both schools and their families, as well as to many residents of the neighborhoods surrounding those schools.

A large number of Montgomery Country residents would be negatively affected by an increase in congestion on Route 28, and a large number of residents would be affected by any deterioration of the Rock Creek environment.

Property values would be affected, perhaps quite negatively in some cases, with implications for the property taxes raised by the county. The economic impact on county residents of the MCPS proposals should at least be considered.

The Aspen Hill Civic Association representatives were informed of the MCPS plan three days before the Board of Education held its hearing to consider that plan; residents along Avery Rd. and in other concerned areas learned of the plan only much later than that meeting and than the vote of the Board approving the plan. Thus county residents have had inadequate opportunity to properly evaluate the plans, much less to respond to the Board of Education and the County Council.

The Board of Directors of the Aspen Hill Civic Association voted unanimously against the MCPS plan, and a large majority of the members of the Association expressed opposition in a poll that was taken. Other local Civic Associations are only now taking up the issue.

For more information I suggest you check out:

• SaveBlairEwing.Org (formerly SaveEnglishManor.Org)
• NextDoor.Com (for local news about your local community)
• The Aspen Hill Civic Association material on the MCPS Proposal to Relocate the County AEP Programs to English Manor

Ranking of Latin American Universities 2014

There is a new ranking of Latin American universities. It is based on a weighted combination of scven indicators, and a different weighting or different indicators would presumably yield a different ordering of the universities. It focuses on 300 universities chosen originally to be the best in the region (thus some of those not ranked my be better than some of those ranked low among the 300)

Five of the top 10 are in Brazil, two in Chile, two in Mexico and one in Colombia.

Long ago I worked and taught in three of those universities:

• 29 The Catholic University of Valparaiso (Chile)
• 39 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria (Chile)
• 51 Universidad del Valle (Colombia)

Higher Education After 2015

I was asked to comment on the question “What will 2015 mean for higher education? Where are we coming from, and where are we going?” 2015 marks the end of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals and also the end of the Education for All effort, so there has been an effort to consider what if anything should be put in place after 2015 as goals and objectives in international development.

It is almost 60 years since I entered engineering school as a freshman. The world of the student has changed completely since that time. The tools of the engineer have changed, as has the task of the engineer. Indeed, there are whole fields of engineering now that did not exist then. Still, a knowledge of mathematics and language are still fundamental, as are understanding of how to analyze and synthesize.

A decade later I started working in a University computer center in Chile. The machine there was much less powerful than the decade old machine in my home on which I am writing this. My first job was to get software for the simplex algorithm for linear programming and PERT chart calculations up and running. I had undocumented binary decks of cards with the programs, not debugged, from the users group to start with. There were no journals, few books and few colleagues with any computer experience. When I taught Fortran the next year, I had to write and mimeograph a manual for my students – there were none available in Spanish.

The changes are obviously huge. Higher education has expanded greatly in recent decades, both due to an increased demand from qualified students and to an increase in the number of institutions of higher learning offering educational services. The role of the private sector has increased. Higher education has diffused from rich countries to former colonies, and globalized with many more students studying abroad. There has come to be a huge problem of quality – great universities are not built overnight. The promise of new technology and new insights into learning has become apparent, but in my view it has not yet been fulfilled.

As I think of higher education in the United States, in Brazil, in China, in India, in Western Europe, and in Africa, I suspect that the differences are greater than the similarities. Certainly the economic resources for higher education are very different from country to country. If the role of institutions of higher education is not only education, but knowledge creation and organization, and service to the community, then the challenges faced in India are different than those faced in the Russian Federation, Mexico or Uganda. I think it important to recognize that each country has to recognize its own challenges, opportunities and resources for higher education; global benchmarks may not be very helpful.

We are a quarter century after the end of the Cold War, but the specter of conflict is still with us. A challenge remains in the 21^st century to build the defenses of peace in the minds of men. Climate change now seems inevitable, and the world is challenged with thinking through how to limit its extent and ameliorate its impact. It appears now that population projections were too optimistic, and the challenge of feeding an ever growing population with limited land and water resources and changing climate is even more daunting. Poverty remains a huge global problem, and the inequality of income and wealth militates against economic progress. Thus the future presents huge challenges for all countries, and all countries will be looking to their institutions of higher education for help in meeting those challenges.

A Metaphor

“What should any well educated person know?” If one asks that question I think there would be some common grounds. A well educated person should command at least a native language and possible another tongue, should have some facility with mathematics and some knowledge of geography, science, books, and culture. But I suggest that once you got down to details, the answer would be different in Japan than in China, in India than in Pakistan, in Brazil than in the United States, in England than in France. However, that to me seems a fundamental question that should be asked in each country as it looks past 2015 and plans for the development of higher education.

Clearly the institution of higher education should and must provide different learning experiences for someone who will become a professional historian, versus a physician, an architect, lawyer, or teacher. Perhaps one might think of the common core that any well educated person should command as the trunk of a tree, from which different branches extend. Those branches grow. The body of world knowledge today is much greater than when I began my university education; of course, some branches have died and been pruned from the curriculum, while others have ramified (thus aeronautical engineering has changed to include space technology). But the tree must continue to grow and ramify, with a canopy expanding as human knowledge expands.

In this metaphor, the tree is rooted in the culture of the country and the social and economic needs it recognizes that its institutions of higher education must fulfill. Higher education is dependent on the economic and human resources it obtains from that general society in which it is rooted. It may benefit from material from the global higher education system grafted into its structure.

Education

Education is a human right, but how much schooling must a country provide to its citizens gratis? How good must that schooling be? That seems to me to be a decision that must be by each country for itself. Clearly a rich country can provide more schooling on average to its citizens than can a poor country. I enjoyed the right to attend university virtually free as a young man, at campuses of the University of California, because the people of California treated that as a right for its people; that allowed me to study at very low cost through the level of PhD. California no longer makes that choice.  I would guess that a rich country can also provide a wider variety of school choices to its citizens than can a poor country; one country may choose to train concert level musicians or artists of international caliber at government expense (choosing the most talented applicants for such government grants) while another may not choose to do so, perhaps finding it can not afford to treat such aspirations as rights of its citizens.

Schooling is also an investment. The return to the society for training some professionals is so high that that investment is more cost-effective than other investments. Here we are talking about higher education, and investments in schooling in institutions of higher education. The investment in training people trained to quickly detect and stop outbreaks of communicable disease, before they become epidemics is one such investment. So too is the investment in training people to build and maintain the infrastructure that the nation needs – roads, ports, airports, electrical power, dams, canals, railroads, etc.

Schooling is also a service that a country can provide to those willing to pay its cost. The citizen who wishes to take a management course in order eventually to enable a transfer to a more responsible job in another country may well be able to finance that training personally or have an employer do so; I see no reason why a country might not provide such opportunities, and no reason why they should be subsidized by the government. Another person may chose to study French poetry, Japanese painting, or Russian ballet; perhaps such course might be offered if a sufficient number of students exists for their justification, but again perhaps a country can justifiably decide that they must be funded privately.

The Creation and Organization of Knowledge

Knowledge can and should be shared internationally, but it has become clear that some knowledge is site specific. Examples might include knowledge of Andean crops, tropical forests, or the ecology of the Great Lakes of Africa. Institutions of higher education in all countries may choose to contribute to the global stock of scientific and technological knowledge, as well as knowledge of history and culture, and their governments may choose to support that work as part of a national responsibility. However, there are areas of knowledge in which universities and other institutions of higher learning must invest, because they are vital to the people that they serve.  Clearly Ebola must be studied in Africa, where it is found, and the genetic diversity of quinoa and other Andean crops is best studied in the high Andes. Of course, research of these kinds is relatively useless unless it is published, and unless it is communicated in an intelligible manner to those who can utilize the results. Thus a university agriculture field station, creating knowledge of greatest utility to local farmers, must publish its findings and is best operated in conjunction with an agricultural extension service.

 A traditional area of work for people in institutions of higher education is the writing of text books, organizing knowledge for the students it serves. So too, faculty must translate the literature of other nations into that which can be understood in their own. Faculty members are often the gatekeepers, seeking out information from other countries and introducing it to their own. They design curricula which organize old and new knowledge, traditional and modern understanding, and materials from foreign and domestic languages, providing the teaching materials and aids that make the new synthesis available to their country’s students.

Service

I come from a country, the USA, in which service to the community is generally accepted as a responsibility of universities. It is not always so, and I feel that the university-community linkage should be strengthened. I do so in part based on personal experience.

Many years ago, working in a technical university computer center, I helped faculty provide services to the community. We conducted an operations research effort in one company, showing it how to greatly expand its business. In another case we discouraged a company from adding to an already overly complex product line. In a third case, we encouraged a company to focus more attention on its production facilities which were in fact the limiting factor in its growth, and less on its marketing. Thus a university can provide services to the private sector.

In that same setting we helped a local government to schedule its traffic lights, and helped the national electric company to better plan the location of its power lines and to decide whether to build an integrated power generation and water desalinization plant. In another country, years later, my graduate students helped the local health officials evaluate alternative sites for a new major hospital. Other students helped the same officials evaluate the pharmacy policies used in the network of health centers in the region, suggesting major improvements.

What then Would I Suggest?

The world is generating knowledge quickly. It is also becoming a more complicated place, in which huge challenges are must be met. Countries must utilize their higher education resources to meet the challenge. Of course, part of the effort will be to continue to expand higher education to meet increasing needs and demands for educational services, creation and organization of knowledge and service to society. That means in all probability not only more “bricks and mortar” but also more professors, instructors, and support personnel.

There will be a need for more emphasis on continuing education and education of adults; the world is changing, and people need to keep up. They will need to adjust to faster changes in the workplace and in careers, to faster changes in the economy, and indeed to changes in the physical environment. An ever increasingly urban population will be expected to need and want more information.

It seems to me that the organization of higher education will have to change. Financing will have to be rethought and restructured in many countries. I am a fan of the U.S. system of two year colleges which prepare some students for paraprofessional careers and prepare others for further education in universities; I hope other countries will consider building networks of these institutions.

There is a huge task facing developing countries in improving the quality of higher education. That task is not only complicated by the lack of financial and human resources, but also by the simultaneous need to expand.

Higher education will need to expand the use of science and technology in accomplishing its own missions. It will need to draw on advancing understanding of how people learn. I fully expect that information and computer technology will become a more effective aid to the educator, the researcher, and the provider of services to the community. I would also expect that the social sciences will play a greater role in helping higher education institutions understand their role in society and improving their function in that role. Management science will help to better organize universities and improve their service orientation.

A central role for the institution of higher education is, ultimately, the promotion of cultural change. Yet this is also potentially the most dangerous of its activities. Fortunately, institutions of higher learning are the natural home of the humanities and of public intellectuals. They must find a way to help preserve cultural heritage, be informed and led by cultural leaders, and sensitive to the potential for doing damage to their cultural matrix, while at the same time helping a culture to adapt as it must to changing circumstances. The political realities of the necessary promotion of change, and the education of a new generation of men and women to live actively in a changing world, must be met and successfully navigated.

I can only wish the best for the educators, and especially university educators in the 21^st century!

A thought triggered by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I recently came across a comment on Facebook in which someone wrote that he would not study Islam because no Muslim had ever died in the service of the United States. Of course, he was wrong and many Muslims have served this country in the military, and some have been killed while doing so. I was even more bothered by the wrong headed idea that one could only benefit from studying ideas of people like oneself.

I recently came across this:

Shortly after his retirement from the bench in 1933, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr was paid a courtesy call by President Franklin Roosevelt who was surprised to find Holmes reading Plato's Symposium in the original Greek. Roosevelt asked Holmes why he was bothering to study Greek. Holmes, who was then 92 years old, replied, 'Why? To improve my mind."

Of course, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr,  did serve in our country's army. As a young officer in the Union army, he was wounded at Ball's Bluff -- the closest battle to my home, the first battle of the Civil War, and the only battle in U.S. history in which a serving U.S. senator was killed. He was also wounded at Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American military history. He was wounded a third time at Chancellorsville. Like many Union soldiers, he suffered from (a near fatal case of) dysentery.

He is much more famous as a judge, serving as both a Justice and Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and for 30 years as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was known as "the Great Dissenter" for his many dissenting opinions written at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was perhaps the most scholarly of all 20th century Supreme Court justices, and his opinions were perhaps the most influential on the Court for the rest of the 20th century. Many of the positions he advocated in dissent later became the majority opinions of the Court and the law of the land.

So why did he read Plato in the original Greek? Of course, Plato was one of the greatest thinkers in human history -- one of very few whose thinking has been studied for a couple of thousand years. And of course, reading in a foreign language exercises the mind in a different way than does reading in your native language, the language you speak every day and usually read and write in.

I don't understand Greek, and my junior high school Latin was never much good and is long forgotten. I do read Spanish, French and Portuguese. I feel that reading things written in these languages rather than in translation I sometimes see nuances that are not available in the English translation. Of course, one does not get the flow of the original language when reading poetry in translation, and in poetry it is how something is said as well as the nominal meaning of the words that counts. So reading Plato in the original Greek would presumably improve Holmes' mind more and differently than reading him in English translation.

The Facebook comment is especially wrong because its author failed to realize that by studying a culture other than his own he would have new experience, would experience the world in a new way. He would stretch his mind. If Holmes at 92 was still seeking to improve his mind, who are we to stop short at much younger age?

Moreover, in this smaller world, it well behooves us to understand other cultures, and a good place to start is by trying to understand the religions that they follow. It is easier to live in peace and harmony with others when you understand them.

Here are some other pieces of wisdom from OWH Jr.:

• A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
• The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.
• The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts, but learning how to make facts live.
• If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
• A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.
• Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
• Every idea is an incitement... eloquence may set fire to reason.
• Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
• Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.

John Quincy Adams: from his first message to Congress in 1825

Upon this first occasion of addressing the legislature of the Union, with which I have been honored, in presenting to their view the execution so far as it has been effected of the measures sanctioned by them for promoting the internal improvement of our country, I can not close the communication without recommending to their calm and persevering consideration the general principle in a more enlarged extent. The great object of the institution of civil government is the improvement of the condition of those who are parties to the social compact, and no government, in what ever form constituted, can accomplish the lawful ends of its institution but in proportion as it improves the condition of those over whom it is established. Roads and canals, by multiplying and facilitating the communications and intercourse between distant regions and multitudes of men, are among the most important means of improvement. But moral, political, intellectual improvement are duties assigned by the Author of Our Existence to social no less than to individual man.

For the fulfillment of those duties governments are invested with power, and to the attainment of the end—the progressive improvement of the condition of the governed—the exercise of delegated powers is a duty as sacred and indispensable as the usurpation of powers not granted is criminal and odious.

Among the first, perhaps the very first, instrument for the improvement of the condition of men is knowledge, and to the acquisition of much of the knowledge adapted to the wants, the comforts, and enjoyments of human life public institutions and seminaries of learning are essential. So convinced of this was the first of my predecessors in this office, now first in the memory, as, living, he was first in the hearts, of our countrymen, that once and again in his addresses to the Congresses with whom he cooperated in the public service he earnestly recommended the establishment of seminaries of learning, to prepare for all the emergencies of peace and war—a national university and a military academy. With respect to the latter, had he lived to the present day, in turning his eyes to the institution at West Point he would have enjoyed the gratification of his most earnest wishes; but in surveying the city which has been honored with his name he would have seen the spot of earth which he had destined and bequeathed to the use and benefit of his country as the site for a university still bare and barren.

In assuming her station among the civilized nations of the earth it would seem that our country had contracted the engagement to contribute her share of mind, of labor, and of expense to the improvement of those parts of knowledge which lie beyond the reach of individual acquisition, and particularly to geographical and astronomical science. Looking back to the history only of the half century since the declaration of our independence, and observing the generous emulation with which the governments of France, Great Britain, and Russia have devoted the genius, the intelligence, the treasures of their respective nations to the common improvement of the species in these branches of science, is it not incumbent upon us to inquire whether we are not bound by obligations of a high and honorable character to contribute our portion of energy and exertion to the common stock? The voyages of discovery prosecuted in the course of that time at the expense of those nations have not only redounded to their glory, but to the improvement of human knowledge.

We have been partakers of that improvement and owe for it a sacred debt, not only of gratitude, but of equal or proportional exertion in the same common cause. Of the cost of these undertakings, if the mere expenditures of outfit, equipment, and completion of the expeditions were to be considered the only charges, it would be unworthy of a great and generous nation to take a second thought. One hundred expeditions of circumnavigation like those of Cook and La Prouse would not burden the exchequer of the nation fitting them out so much as the ways and means of defraying a single campaign in war. but if we take into account the lives of those benefactors of man-kind of which their services in the cause of their species were the purchase, how shall the cost of those heroic enterprises be estimated, and what compensation can be made to them or to their countries for them? Is it not by bearing them in affectionate remembrance? Is it not still more by imitating their example—by enabling country-men of our own to pursue the same career and to hazard their lives in the same cause?

In inviting the attention of Congress to the subject of internal improvements upon a view thus enlarged it is not my desire to recommend the equipment of an expedition for circumnavigating the globe for purposes of scientific research and inquiry. We have objects of useful investigation nearer home, and to which our cares may be more beneficially applied. The interior of our own territories has yet been very imperfectly explored. our coasts along many degrees of latitude upon the shores of the Pacific Ocean, though much frequented by our spirited commercial navigators, have been barely visited by our public ships. The River of the West, first fully discovered and navigated by a countryman of our own, still bears the name of the ship in which he ascended its waters, and claims the protection of our armed national flag at its mouth. With the establishment of a military post there or at some other point of that coast, recommended by my predecessor and already matured in the deliberations of the last Congress, I would suggest the expediency of connecting the equipment of a public ship for the exploration of the whole north-west coast of this continent.

The establishment of an uniform standard of weights and measures was one of the specific objects contemplated in the formation of our Constitution, and to fix that standard was on of the powers delegated by express terms in that instrument to Congress. The governments of Great Britain and France have scarcely ceased to be occupied with inquiries and speculations on the same subject since the existence of our Constitution, and with them it has expanded into profound, laborious, and expensive researches into the figure of the earth and the comparative length of the pendulum vibrating seconds in various latitudes from the equator to the pole. These researches have resulted in the composition and publication of several works highly interesting to the cause of science. The experiments are yet in the process of performance. Some of them have recently been made on our own shores, within the walls of one of our own colleges, and partly by one of our own fellow citizens. It would be honorable to our country if the sequel of the same experiments should be countenanced by the patronage of our government, as they have hitherto been by those of France and Britain.

Connected with the establishment of an university, or separate from it, might be undertaken the erection of an astronomical observatory, with provision for the support of an astronomer, to be in constant attendance of observation upon the phenomena of the heavens, and for the periodical publication of his observances. it is with no feeling of pride as an American that the remark may be made that on the comparatively small territorial surface of Europe there are existing upward of 130 of these lighthouses of the skies, while throughout the whole American hemisphere there is not one. If we reflect a moment upon the discoveries which in the last four centuries have been made in the physical constitution of the universe by the means of these buildings and of observers stationed in them, shall we doubt of their usefulness to every nation? And while scarcely a year passes over our heads without bringing some new astronomical discovery to light, which we must fain receive at second hand from Europe, are we not cutting ourselves off from the means of returning light for light while we have neither observatory nor observer upon our half of the globe and the earth revolves in perpetual darkness to our unsearching eyes?.......

The laws relating to the administration of the Patent Office are deserving of much consideration and perhaps susceptible of some improvement. The grant of power to regulate the action of Congress upon this subject has specified both the end to be obtained and the means by which it is to be effected, "to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". If an honest pride might be indulged in the reflection that on the records of that office are already found inventions the usefulness of which has scarcely been transcended in the annals of human ingenuity, would not its exultation be allayed by the inquiry whether the laws have effectively insured to the inventors the reward destined to them by the Constitution—even a limited term of exclusive right to their discoveries?.........

The Constitution under which you are assembled is a charter of limited powers. After full and solemn deliberation upon all or any of the objects which, urged by an irresistible sense of my own duty, I have recommended to your attention should you come to the conclusion that, however desirable in themselves, the enactment of laws for effecting them would transcend the powers committed to you by that venerable instrument which we are all bound to support, let no consideration induce you to assume the exercise of powers not granted to you by the people.

But if the power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases what so ever over the District of Columbia; if the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; if the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes, to fix the standard of weights and measures, to establish post offices and post roads, to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States, and to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying these powers into execution—if these powers and others enumerated in the Constitution may be effectually brought into action by laws promoting the improvement of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, the cultivation and encouragement of the mechanic and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound, to refrain from exercising them for the benefit of the people themselves would be to hide in the earth the talent committed to our charge—would be treachery to the most sacred of trusts.
Source

Here is some good news about the world!

Child mortality has dropped and life expectancy has grown around the world since 1950.

Vaccines have helped eliminate many diseases from much of the world entirely.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/whats-the-best-time-in-history-to-be-born-2014-9#ixzz3GO4Jtwxm

Important information for the young -- how to choose a career!

College Majors: How do they pay? How meaningful it the work? Are they recommended?

This graph is a screenshot of an interactive site provided by the Washington Post. I suggest that you check out the original. If you put your pointer on a point, it will tell you what the major is.

The graph shows that a lot of majors lead to meaningful jobs with not very satisfactory pay, and a lot of majors lead to not very satisfactory jobs but with pretty good pay. A lot of people will opt for one or the other of those options. Still, the green spots, representing majors that are recommended by the folk who pursued them are primarily in the top part of the graph, and the red dots below the mean.

The majors in the high pay, high satisfaction quadrant  that are most recommended tend to be in engineering fields. Of course, not everyone is cut out to be an engineer, and some would not find the work rewarding. Still, if you are about to choose a major, consider engineering. I did, and I enjoyed the work and found the training great when I went on to other kinds of work.

Check out the: 10 most-meaningful majors | 10 least-meaningful majors |10 best-paying majors | 10 lowest-paying majors

Interesting Data on the Impact of Educational Achievement

The 2014 OECD Education at a Glance publication provides these graphs. They indicate that across nations, the more education a person has, the more trust they express in others and the more that they believe that they have a say in government. I read those data to suggest that education may tend to build social capital. (Of course, people with more education may indeed have more influence with government. They may also be of higher social status and accorded more trustworthy treatment by others.)

The data are for OECD countries, that is the "rich nations' club" nations.

Note that the impact of education on trust and feeling of having a say in government is highest for Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, and the United States. It is low for Italy and Spain, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic, and Germany and Japan. It would be interesting to explore if there are aspects of the cultures of these countries that cause these results, or whether the traits are due to the nature of their historical experience.

Foreign Students in the USA

This map from a report by the Brookings Institution shows the hometowns of international students studying at U.S. schools on F-1 visas, which are the most common visas for foreign students. The size of each circle shows the number of students from that city who came to the United States to study from 2008 to 2012. The cities that sent the most students were Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hyderabad and Riyadh, in that order. The U.S. schools that accepted the most students were the University of Southern California, Columbia University, and the University of Illinois. 

Thanks to The Washington Post for this map and data.

The International Institute for Education (IIE) Open Doors report discovered 819,000 foreign students in the USA for the 2012-2013 school year. They contributed $24.7 billion to the U.S. economy. Most of the foreign students attend one of a few hundred U.S. colleges and universities, while the rest are scattered among thousands of other institutions of higher education.

Be nice to your local foreign student. These folk are likely to be the leaders of their countries in the future. If their experience in the USA is good, it will affect their view of this country for the rest of their lives. So too, if the experience is bad, it will leave a bad image for decades. The opinion of the USA that these people bring home with them will affect U.S. foreign affairs and U.S. foreign commerce in an a world growing smaller every day.