Category — Education

Millions of people are acquainted with Edward Hopper’s painting  “Nighthawks” (1942).  You wouldn’t conclude from this painting that Hopper was actually a lousy painter.  He never mastered the art of drawing; he had trouble depicting the human form (the lady nighthawk’s arms?) and was clumsy with perspective and composition .  

He excelled in his depiction of light and shadow, and above everything else, he wrapped most of his scenes in a warm, restorative blanket of melancholy. Clement Greenberg wrote in 1946  ”Hopper simply happens to be a bad painter.  But if he were a better painter, he would, most likely, not be so superior an artist”.  
 
Hopper turned his hand to scenes of the Cape, of Gloucester and other locales, but  his urban scenes pose the possibility that a brickfront walk-up with shear curtains over two open windows, a steam radiator, plaster walls and a few hardcover books could be a refuge from the clatter and cultural cannibalism of American life.  Or, you could sit on a chrome and leatherette stool at midnight and have a coffee without hearing a siren or the thundering speakers of a passing Acura with wheels like razor blades.

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember places like the Nighthawk’s cafe. They existed everywhere  through the 1950’s; before the demons of urban renewal, flush with reformer’s gold and fanciful ideas about urban living, destroyed all of them, and most of everything else. Rustling up the inhabitants of the old neighborhoods, they herded them off to the soul-desolating brick and sheetrock iron maidens of ”the projects”. 

Now the third generation of these bereft pawns of progressive policy seek outlets in drugs and violence.   They have no refuge, no lonely personal place to restore themselves, no space to collect on the debts that progressive brutalism has imposed upon them.   A place to breathe without sighing.  We give them what we can, the tinsel of materialism and the fraudulent promises of more, and even more, education to force rational order from moral devastation.  It can’t be done.

We build mocking monuments to what we destroyed.  We gild the skulls and bones of the old cityscapes, scrub the surviving redbricks clean and lease the space to kitsch dealers.  We outfit malls and trendy shopping centers in the architectural image of the remembered store fronts, some of them even containing pieces of the real thing - retail Frankensteins, with a plinth here, a column there, and herringbone brick underfoot.    Disney does the same thing; the effect is fit only for children and undiscriminating adults.   

Everyone’s looking for a place to be alone, or to leave a mark in the hardening cement.  And something else they want, I think - a place free of cant, free of social commentary, free of the governing compulsions of reformers, free of a political class intending to service the contradictory demands of the spirit and the body, and a little silence that equals inaction on the part of our political masters.     

I expect to see a lot more of this as the progressive Obama years grind on.  Somehow the left thinks he can restore the good things we no longer have, and make us whole again.  By pressing hard enough, his beneficent state will turn ordinary human flesh into diamonds.   I guess we’ll find out.

Future “Captains of Industry” as advanced by NOW

Last Saturday, following Hartford’s West Indian Festival, shooting broke out and, in separate incidents, seven youngster were shot.   Among them, a 21-year old was killed,  a 7-year old shot in the head, and a 15-month old toddler was shot in the leg.  Saturday was distinguished only by its concentration of the behaviors and pathologies that grind on more slowly, year after year, in Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport and any other urban sinkhole of Progressive social policy.

This time, the city of Hartford has enacted a curfew, which naturally is under legal assault from the ACLU.   But that’s a natural coordinate on this map of misery, and also not the subject of this post.  There is no subject of this post, just desperation.  The ACLU is a freak liberal offspring of value-free rationalism.  It’s too late to kill it.  There could be dozens of other pests described here, too, all injecting their amoral poison into the bloodstream of the lost individuals and families snared in the web of the helping professions and that ludicrous system called “the schools”. 

Hartford spends between $11000 and $17000 per student depending upon your source, and has a graduation rate of 29%.  New Haven, as I recall, is higher by a few points.   The figures are always misleading, because the parasitic organisms that attach themselves to school funding today always consume a huge portion of the cash available for TEACHING.  On that subject, read this and this.  The City of Hartford carries only about 20% of the educational financing, while the State of Connecticut provides the rest.  

Among the moral absurdities of this distribution of responsibility is that the bureaucratic weight of the entire State of Connecticut is useless on the subject of school performance, and its reflection in pools of blood on asphalt.  The Devil has a sense of humor, however, in that he gave us the ludicrous Nanny-figure of Governor Jodi Rell as the bug-eyed, mocking gargoyle on the ethical rubble of  Connecticut’s capital city. 

Rell cares so much she’s regularly heard in PSA’s on the agony of 911 operators, or the use of child safety seats, or fuming about the tragedy of  pampered, upper-middle class kids killing themselves with the reckless use of high-performance automobiles.  Meanwhile, the walls of civilization are crumbling around her, and her smiles, bottle-blond coif and freckles console the already dead.

Childhood is was a time of testing one’s abilities and limits. Today, being a kid is banned as aggressive, antisocial and overtly masculine, Oh the shame, the shame of being Ritalin free.

At McLean School, Playing Tag Turns Into Hot Potato

Robyn Hooker, principal of Kent Gardens Elementary School, has told students they may no longer play tag during recess after determining that the game of chasing, dodging and yelling “You’re it!” had gotten out of hand. Hooker explained to parents in a letter this month that tag had become a game “of intense aggression.”The principal said that her goal is to keep students safe and that she hopes to restore tag (as well as touch football, also now on hold) after teachers and administrators review recess policies.

After her review, tag will be acceptable provided there is no running and being “it” is abolished. New touch football rules stipulate walking for a touchdown and saying in a modulated voice “you’re touched.”

Students will be gratified to know the:

The Fairfax County schools’ office of risk management maintains a list of activities that are prohibited at any school-sponsored events. In addition to bungee-jumping and scuba diving, students are not permitted to break dance or play dodge ball or tug-of-war.

Unregulated activities such as

A 14-year-old Arizona girl was arrested on suspicion of hitting another teen over the head with a folding chair…[snip]

are not part of written school policy. This seems to be of a more serious nature than tag. I guess proscribing this behavior might sully the student’s self-esteem. Better to raise girlymen.

One needs the awareness that the Constitution is silent on education. Since most schools at the time were church run with some private, the need for public education did not exist. Looking at what passes for education today, proves all those white men had smarts.
Catholic schools demand scholarship, ethics, parental involvement and student disipline, or else. The greatest lack in the Catholic schools is the lack of victimhood and the PC ethos.
Which is why they work.
Incidently, non-catholics are not required to take religious instruction.
Viewed this way, the demise of Parochial education is desired by the Left.

‘Crisis’ with loss of Catholic schools

[snip]
Since 1999, a total of 1,267 Catholic schools have closed and 374 have opened, according to the National Catholic Educational Association. The number of Catholic elementary and high schools fell from 8,719 in the 1989-1990 school year to 7,378 in the current year, according to NCEA data.

According to Fordham researchers, the NCEA data translates into about 300,000 students who have been displaced from Catholic schools, at a cost to taxpayers of about $20 billion as public schools absorb the students. In an interview last month with The Washington Times, Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington predicted that this trend would continue without government vouchers, saying the church faced continued challenges to “sustain all of these schools, particularly in the poorest, urban areas.”

As Catholic families increasingly moved to suburbs in the 1960s and ’70s, urban Catholic schools increasingly began educating poor, non-Catholic students, the report noted. There were solid academic results, it argued, citing evidence like Andrew Greeley’s 1982 findings, which showed achievement of minority students was higher in Catholic schools than in public schools. [snip](emphasis added)

The report authors also argued that private-school vouchers “are no panacea” — noting that programs in Milwaukee and the District have not really helped the Catholic urban schools there and the Archdiocese of Washington is turning seven of its schools into public charter schools. [snip]

Private school vouchers cannot be used at Catholic schools; that is forbidden by law thanks to the ACLU and the Donks.

As part of the study, Fordham also commissioned a survey of 800 adults. The majority of adults surveyed chose Catholic schools as the best to offer a disciplined learning environment and instill moral values, and public schools as the best to work with economically disadvantaged students. [snip] (emphasis added)

Mr. Lopez is the male, California version of an “override” mom. They can never get enough of your money to provide subsidized private school quality educations for their children. And when the hard times come for everyone, they’re quick to explain why that’s your problem and not theirs.

However, there are a few interesting things to note here:

I was sitting with Jeff Kelly, who moved into a costly fixer-upper last year just to be in the Ivanhoe neighborhood so he could avoid the cost of private school. He said he’ll pony up too, although on principle he’s conflicted.

Bet your last dollar that Jeff wouldn’t be “conflicted” about passing those costs onto his neighbors. “Override” moms myopically focus on their needs and never consider that other people are struggling to make ends meet too.

At nearby Micheltorena Street School, where more than 90% of the students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, the principal told me that of course she can’t match that kind of parental support. She’s hoping that given the greater needs of her students, she’ll be spared harsh cuts. But like other principals, she doesn’t yet know how bad the news will be.

If we replaced the teachers at Micheltorena with PhD educated, highly committed faculty, do you think the educational outcomes would skyrocket? I’d argue no. They’re missing a key element that’s staring Mr. Lopez in the face—parental involvement. You can have the best teachers, facilities, athletics, etc, but it’ll go for not if parents abdicate their educational responsibilities.

Mr. Lopez’s active engagement is a huge difference maker in the quality of his child’s education. It isn’t strictly about squeezing more nickels out of his neighbors.

I wonder if Vermont teachers went to NY to help? The scores look like they did. After one gets by the dazzling footwork in Vermont, the scores are very close to one another.

Understand, the teachers of today went through the same educational system. This goes far to explain the problems in and with our schools.

Writing Mastery Eludes Majority In Eighth Grade

Three-quarters of eighth-graders in New York City’s public schools cannot write proficiently, a problem demonstrated by more than two-thirds of students statewide, according to results from a federally administered test released yesterday.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, found that 55% of city eighth-graders scored at the basic level, meaning they had a partial mastery of skills, and 20% scored below basic. The national average was 57% scoring at basic and 13% scoring below. The New York State scores represent no significant progress since the last time the test was administered, in 2002. Nationally, eighth-graders made modest but significant gains, with the average score rising three points since 2002, though the percentage of students scoring proficient, 33%, did not change significantly.

There is no way to record change over time for New York City, because 2007 was the first year the test results were separated out from state scores.

The city’s scores can be compared with other large central cities. By that metric, New York City’s scores were statistically neither better nor worse than the average; they were lower than three cities that topped the average: Charlotte, N.C.; San Diego, Calif., and Austin, Texas.

The director of research at the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, Jason Brooks, released a statement comparing the NAEP results to results produced by New York State tests, which last year showed eighth-graders posting large improvements on a reading test, with 42% meeting state standards versus 37% the year before.

Mr. Brooks said the discrepancies prove state exams are “dumbed-down.”

A spokesman for the city Department of Education, David Cantor, pointed out that the writing scores are higher than the levels the city’s eighth-graders posted on national reading and math tests last year. On the 2007 reading exam, 19% of eighth-graders scored proficient, and 16% did so on the math. [snip]

I need an explanation. 42% score proficient in writing; 19% score proficient in reading. How can some one score higher on a writing test that the reading test? How would they know what they wrote?

On the writing test, 19% of New York City eighth-graders were tested with accommodations, the highest percentage of any city included in the study and above the national average, 9%.

Meanwhile, 2% of eighth-graders were excluded from the test, a lower number than several cities, such as Cleveland, where 11% were excluded.

Sample questions from the writing test can be viewed at http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/. One question asked students to write a letter describing what a backpack is.

The education historian Diane Ravitch, who has served on the governing board of NAEP, said, “The conclusion we draw is we have some serious issues having to do with reading, writing, and math by the time kids are in eighth grade.” [snip]

School vouchers are the only answer.

Good for Cheektowaga Central Middle School for instituting a little discipline.  Schools are educational institutions first and foremost.  Social activities, sports, and clubs are privileges that should be linked to academic performance.

Of course, not everyone is happy: 

Critics of the tough-love approach cite studies showing that students active in extracurricular activities tend to perform better in class, and they worry that without structured activities after school, troubled youngsters will be more apt to find trouble.

So the D and F students get involved in debate and Model UN?  This is like sampling the Harvard Law class and declaring that extra curricular activities increase LSAT performance.  Something tells me the debate team didn’t lose half its members when the GPA requirement got instituted. 

Whiney liberal educators need to straighten out their priorities.  Being told you can’t attend a dance stings for a day; being stupid handicaps you for a lifetime.

This convoluted reasoning supporting Prop 2 ½ overrides is like getting brain freeze after eating a really cold desert too quickly:

“No one likes to pay taxes,” said Jayne Adelman of Lexington. “[My husband] and I struggle each year to figure out how to pay our tax bill. I sometimes think of moving out of Lexington to a community where the taxes might be lower. If I stand on a corner with these people, it is not because I am a mom for more taxes….

Just admit it—you’re for higher taxes because your neighbors are subsidizing your kid’s “private” school education. Moving out of Lexington for lower property taxes can wait until your kid(s) graduate from high school.

More from this “override” mom:

…I would carry a sign because I believe that we as human beings have an obligation to take care of one another and to provide basic human and social services for one another.”

Lexington can’t provide “basic” educational services without an override? I’d like to see Mrs. Adelman make that case. But besides knowing the schools will open tomorrow, aren’t we all a little numb to these Chicken Littles? You can only tell people life will cease as we know it without more taxes a couple of times before the sheep get wise to the fact they’re being fleeced.

However, there are always exceptions that prove the rule. For example, Newton taxpayerssheep are still considering funding the Taj Mahal of high schools. Its “projected” (read not done growing yet) budget is $186 million. Basic educational services indeed!

That one needs to even ask these questions should tell of the dismal conditions of today’s institutions.

Questions to Ask Before You Send Your Child to College.

Before you take out a second mortgage or otherwise deplete your savings in order to pay for your child’s college education, you might want to ask the colleges to which your child is applying some questions.

Can one obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree at your college without having read a single Shakespeare play, one Federalist Paper or one book of the Bible?
If so, why attend such a college?
Does the college allow military recruiters on its campus?
Before being threatened by Congress with a cutoff of federal funds, many colleges denied military recruiters access to their campus. They did so either because of their hostility to military in general or specific hostility to the war in Iraq, or because of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays. If you believe, as reason and history argue, that the American military has done more to preserve liberty on earth than all the professors in all the universities combined, you might not want to send your child to a university that is hostile to the military.
In the political science, English, sociology, anthropology and history departments — or any other liberal arts department — what is the ratio of Democrats to Republicans among the professors?
Over 10 years ago, the Rocky Mountain News reported that registered Democrats on the faculty of the University of Colorado at Boulder outnumbered registered Republicans 31-1. If such a ratio exists in the social science departments of your child’s prospective college, why would you want your child to attend such an institution?
What are the names of the speakers invited and paid with college funds to speak last year at the college?
Just ask to see the previous year’s speakers list. Colleges set aside funds for visiting speakers. One would assume that a good college seeks to encourage thinking and to that end invites speakers throughout the political spectrum. If your prospective college has a speakers list that is balanced 10 to one in favor of speakers from the political left, that will help you decide whether indoctrination rather than exposure to great ideas is the university’s real agenda.
Can my child live in a same-sex dorm and are the bathrooms co-ed?
One generation ago and for all of American history, the university acted in loco parentis, in the place of the parent. You could send your daughter to college more or less assured that the college would act on behalf of her welfare as you would — meaning, for example, that boys had to leave girls dorms by a certain hour. Now, most colleges have no boys or girls dorms and do everything they can to enable boys and girls to fraternize in each other’s rooms at any hour of the night and even share bathrooms.
Is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States the most widely assigned American history book?
If the answer is yes, you should consider sending your son or daughter to another university or at least be aware that you will be paying a lot of hard-earned money for your child to be manipulated into believing that America is a bad country, certainly no better than others, as he or she reads what is essentially a proctologist’s view of American history. Zinn believes, as he told me in an interview on my radio show, that America has done “probably more harm than good in its history.”
Would a typical graduate of your university be able to say anything intelligent about Josef Stalin, Louis Armstrong, Pope John XXIII or Pope John Paul II, differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, Cain and Abel, the Gulag Archipelago, Franz Josef Haydn, Pol Pot, Martin Luther, Darfur, how interest rates affect the dollar, dark matter, and “Crime and Punishment”; explain what the Korean War was about and when it was fought; identify India on a map; and know the difference between the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council?
How could someone be considered in any way educated and not be able to intelligently answer all or nearly all of those questions? If they don’t know about such essential and basic things, what do they know? Movies? The supposed dangers of global warming? The importance of race, gender and class? The meaning of menage a trois (or “threesomes”)? Great gay writers?

Unfortunately, the chances are that if you receive any response at all to these questions, it will be a discouraging one. Outside of the natural sciences, colleges are either more interested in liberal indoctrination than in a liberal arts education, or they enable students to take courses that are so narrowly focused that your child graduate will likely graduate as a cultural and historical illiterate. Why so many Americans go into debt paying so much money to such failed institutions is one of the riddles of the universe.

It is time to demand that universities teach. Forcing them to answer the above seven questions is a good way to begin. Because granting a Bachelor of Arts degree on someone who never heard of Cain and Abel and never heard a Haydn symphony is a fraud.

You know the following groups extol truth, light and the American way. Why would they fudge the facts or let them get in the way of desired ends.

The “Truths” We Accept

We think of teachers, and indeed the whole education community, as a group of noble, fair-minded, dedicated professionals. We think of tax revolters as self-interested, pompous obstructionists who care little about educating our society’s young people.

I see a parallel from the world of Earth science. We think of the scientific community as a group of noble, fair minded, dedicated professionals. And we think of oil company executives as self-interested, pompous obstructionists who care little about protecting our environment.

Let’s not kid ourselves. The scientific community is as self-interested as anyone else. As their monolithic thinking can be on any particular issue. The grant-writing potential in saying global warming is caused by humans is far greater than it is in saying otherwise. I do not know enough about global warming to dispute the statements of anybody on the topic. But I know enough about human nature to be skeptical of the statements of everybody on the topic.

And let’s not kid ourselves. The education community is as self-interested as anyone else. [snip]

Don’t believe me? The President’s Commission on Excellence in Education said the exact same thing a few years ago:

Since 1975, the “up to 40 percent” APPE target has taken on symbolic value far beyond congressional intent in 1975. Many still perceive this 40 percent figure as a representation of “full funding.” Over the past several years, marked increases in IDEA Part B funding have been based on a desire to meet this “full funding” target. However, the increases to meet this target have been based on expenditure-driven data, rather than on estimates of the true excess cost of achieving excellence for students with disabilities.

The Commission recommended a formula for determining true excess cost that hasn’t been followed at all. So imagine saying the federal government has imposed this burden on states and local school districts, when the exact opposite is the case!

We should all be skeptical now. Almost enough to wonder if the same twisted arguments are used in other areas of our lives, such as Earth science.

Best and brightest’ dim on history

Tomorrow is President’s Day, so it’s an appropriate time to see who has a good handle on national history or government. If you think, however, the nation’s college students have the most knowledge about the subjects, think again.

College freshmen earned an average grade of ‘F’ — or just 53.7 percent — when asked a series of questions about U.S. presidents and key historical events from their times in office. After four years of college, their knowledge didn’t improve.

College seniors got just 55.4 percent on the 60-question quiz given to 14,000 students at 50 colleges and universities around the country as part of a study designed to test their knowledge of America’s history, government, international relations and market economy. [snip]

It found that Harvard University seniors did best, with a grade of just 69.6 percent — a D-plus. In general, the higher a college ranked on the widely publicized U.S. News & World Report rankings, the lower it ranked on civic learning. In schools such as Cornell, Duke, Yale and Princeton, all ranked in the magazine’s top 12, seniors actually did worse than freshman.

You’re surprised at this?

Bill would require California’s science curriculum to cover climate change

SOME THINK SCIENCE ISN’T DEFINITIVE ENOUGH TO TEACH

Reading, writing and . . . global warming?

A Silicon Valley lawmaker is gaining momentum with a bill that would require “climate change” to be among the science topics that all California public school students are taught. [snip]

“This is a great idea. I don’t think there’s any reason to talk about politics,” said Christine Bertrand, the group’s executive director. “There’s no argument that there is climate change. The argument is how much is caused by the activities of mankind.”

Bertrand said teachers would have plenty to discuss: rising levels of carbon dioxide, how temperatures are measured globally, and what is known and not known about global warming. [snip]

Not too much to worry about here, schools have a hard time teaching kids to read, much less giving them required science opinion.

Enough of the candidates “creating jobs” or “bringing back jobs” or talk of full employment tripe, if they were any good at what they purport to do, they would be in the private sector, being useful and accomplishing good in the world.

Skills Deficit Makes ‘Creating Jobs’ a Pipe Dream

[snip]
That might seem strange at a time when the economy is teetering on the brink of recession, and has eclipsed Iraq as the No. 1 issue on many voters’ minds.

Here’s my reason: Other than during the depths of the Great Depression, the government doesn’t “create jobs.” (World War II created most of the jobs then anyway, and I’m not sure that’s the direction we should go.) Instead, a sensible government should help to create a skilled workforce and a decent business climate. If it does that, the jobs will take care of themselves.

Skills Gone South

To appreciate this distinction, consider two thought experiments. Here’s the first one:

1. How many different jobs could you find in the next six or eight months if you had to? Not perfect jobs, but places where you could get hired and earn a salary reasonably close to what you’re earning now.

I suspect this answer is going to vary widely among the people reading this column. For a star pediatric heart surgeon, the answer might be 10; every major children’s hospital would love to have him or her on staff. For an unemployed autoworker in Michigan, the answer is zero — or else he wouldn’t be unemployed.

The crucial point is that unemployment and low wages are not a function of too few jobs, as most politicians would have you believe. They’re a function of too few skills.

Joblessness in Context

We’re used to hearing about the unemployment rate, which climbed to 5 percent in December. Even that figure is somewhat misleading, though, because there’s extraordinary variance by education level. According to the most recent data from the Department of Labor, the unemployment rate is:

• 8.2 percent for high school dropouts.

• 4.7 percent for high school graduates with no college.

• 3.7 percent for workers with an associate’s degree or some college.

• 2 percent for workers with a bachelor’s degree and higher.

See the pattern?

Not Everybody’s an A-Rod

Here’s the second thought experiment, which gets at the heart of trade, outsourcing, and related causes of employment anxiety:

2. In December, the New York Yankees signed Alex Rodriguez to a 10-year, $275 million contract with a $30 million bonus if he breaks the all-time home run record. Why didn’t the Yankees hire a Chinese or Indian worker who would take the job for $500 a year, with a free moped for breaking the home run record? [snip]

A Clear DistinctionThat’s why I find it both puzzling and frustrating to hear politicians talk so much more about jobs than skills. The sad fact is that if a modern automobile plant came to Flint, Mich., most of the unemployed workers there wouldn’t have the right skills to get hired. [snip]

Skillful Questions

So here are three things the presidential candidates (and any other politician) should be talking more about:

• Preschool education

• The high school completion rate for African Americans and Hispanics

• A plateau in the proportion of Americans getting a college degree

Getting the colleges out of the business of remediation for high school students by insisting the students in K-12 actually learn instead of feeling good. Discipline, study and a strict requirement for graduation will go a long way to clearing up the current malaise.

We don’t need college grads, we need educated high school students.

Commentary - Melanie Scarborough: Stop throwing tax dollars at well-funded colleges

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - When a friend’s daughter was in town a couple of years ago visiting American University, where she had been accepted as a freshman, I showed the girl — a California native — the sights of Washington, D.C.

As we crossed the National Mall, she asked me what that big building was at the end. I told her it was the Capitol, and she asked, “What’s that?” I explained that was where Congress meets, and she asked, “What’s that?”

The girl was weeks away from graduating from a swank high school, had been accepted into a supposedly competitive university, is the daughter of parents with post-graduate degrees … and she’d never heard of Congress.

I would have assumed she was an anomaly or blamed the California school system if I hadn’t heard similar comments from other young people who attend top-rated high schools in Virginia, such as the daughter of a co-worker who mentioned a classmate visiting Europe — “one of those places that starts with an A.” Amsterdam? Austria? Antwerp? “No,” she said. “I think it was Alcatraz.”
[snip]

So you wonder why they put pictographs on the Mickey D’s cash registers?

When Bush said the illegals were doing jobs Americans won’t do, I thought he meant won’t. He didn’t, he meant CAN’T. There is a large group of Illexicans working fast food. I guess they’re smarter, they know what the pictures mean.

The failure of secondary education means that a college degree is roughly the equivalent of what a high school diploma was a generation ago. Consequently, college instruction is not necessarily higher education; in many cases, it’s remedial, with universities having to teach freshmen basics they should have learned in ninth grade. Employers know that, which is why even the most menial of jobs now requires a college degree — spawning lower-tier state universities that are essentially seat-selling operations.

For example, at Radford University in southwest Virginia, the average SAT score for incoming freshmen is a meager 990. Only 6 percent of students graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class; 28 percent finished in the bottom half.

Yet Virginia taxpayers send about the same amount of money to Radford ($58 million in fiscal 2009) as they send to the College of William and Mary, where the average SAT score is 1350, and 85 percent of students were in the top 10 percent of their class in high school.

The demand for more college seats creates a demand for more financial aid, and Congress blithely complies. Last week, the House passed a measure to spend an additional $20 billion on financial aid to students — the biggest boost since the G.I. bill of 1944. It did so not only without asking whether all the students eligible for financial aid need to be in college, but whether the colleges they will be attending need the additional money. [snip]

This is why we are heading for a recession? When this great waste arrives at the end of the tracks, you will see a train wreck bigger and longer than the Great Depression.

I hope we can hang those responsible.