Nature's (one of them) Editorial: Geoscience on the chopping block

[Wahoo Redux]

True greatness is when a megastar rocks out with all us little people.

I also forgot:

Blondie (has never been properly recognized for their genius)
No Doubt
Nirvana
Bow Wow Wow (grossly underappreciated)

[Parasaurolophus]

I'd like to know more about this fabled 'altruistic potential' of geosciences.

Is it that you could find some untapped shale gas and donate it to charity?

[namazu]

I'd like to know more about this fabled 'altruistic potential' of geosciences.

Is it that you could find some untapped shale gas and donate it to charity?

Very funny!

There are many ways a wannabe do-gooder could put geoscience education to good use:
- Climate crisis
- Public health (modeling/finding ways to minimize contaminants in groundwater, particulates and various diseases, etc.)
- Natural disasters (early-warning systems, better design of built environment, etc.)
- Regional-scale environmental problems (remediation of mine drainage, oil spills, etc.)
- Science policy
- Science education
- Etc. 

But Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert's point

Nobody denies that geoscience post-secondary education is needed. The problem is that people seem to be in denial about technological changes reducing demand for graduates in many markets (first article) or openly suggest recruitment strategies that are intentionally prey on students' lack of awareness (second article).

is well-taken.

[Wahoo Redux]

Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert's point

Nobody denies that geoscience post-secondary education is needed. The problem is that people seem to be in denial about technological changes reducing demand for graduates in many markets

is well-taken.

No snark.
Maybe a tiny bit of bitterness, but...

We are turning our colleges into trade schools.

Perhaps this is just evolution----as the kids say, "It is what it is"----but employment outcomes are what the Tower is predicated upon.  We should just go business and trade engineering.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

No snark.
Maybe a tiny bit of bitterness, but...

We are turning our colleges into trade schools.

Perhaps this is just evolution----as the kids say, "It is what it is"----but employment outcomes are what the Tower is predicated upon.  We should just go business and trade engineering.

I would say that "employment outcomes" have been a factor for many decades now (e.g. original GI bill clearly considered education to be a way to a good job after the war). It is just that implicit employment promise is steadily becoming more explicit. I.e. "black box" paradigm "go to college to get some job later" is slowly becoming more transparent "go to college to get a specific job later". This shift occurs not least because implicit promise does not work out for many people anymore.

[dismalist]

original GI bill clearly considered education to be a way to a good job after the war

The original GI bill was intended to keep returning soldiers quiet. Obtuse benefits for WW I returnees led to rioting later on, see the Bonus Army. Never mind Freikorps springing up.

Roosevelt wanted the program restricted to the poor. In the end, it was available to all veterans.

Benefits included low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business or farm, one year of unemployment compensation [52/20], and dedicated payments of tuition and living expenses to attend high school, college, or vocational school. Clearly, monies from the Bill were not restricted to college. Less than one third of GI Bill beneficiaries attended college.

The point is that efficient government largesse to a likely deserving group included substitutes for college, and lots of them.

[quasihumanist]

Look - the fundamental problem is that automation is slowly and gradually making a larger and larger portion of our population disabled.

Just as the guys with 70 IQ were mostly replaced by the washing machine and vacuum cleaner (and more recently the microwave oven) - and note there are employed people with 70 IQ; it's just that we have far more 70 IQ people than jobs for them - more and more automation is making a larger and larger segment of society disabled.

Going to college doesn't make you a lot smarter - most of that happens earlier in life.

The trade school doesn't help.  Our CS majors who have a 2.5 GPA can't get jobs coding, because they just aren't good enough at it to be worth a First World salary, and I'll add that in most cases we've tried very hard and they've tried very had to be good enough, but they just can't get good enough.

[dismalist]

Look - the fundamental problem is that automation is slowly and gradually making a larger and larger portion of our population disabled.

Just as the guys with 70 IQ were mostly replaced by the washing machine and vacuum cleaner (and more recently the microwave oven) - and note there are employed people with 70 IQ; it's just that we have far more 70 IQ people than jobs for them - more and more automation is making a larger and larger segment of society disabled.

Going to college doesn't make you a lot smarter - most of that happens earlier in life.

The trade school doesn't help.  Our CS majors who have a 2.5 GPA can't get jobs coding, because they just aren't good enough at it to be worth a First World salary, and I'll add that in most cases we've tried very hard and they've tried very had to be good enough, but they just can't get good enough.

Automation has been a severe problem since about the 1750's. For individual skills. Yet as a whole, we are richer than ever before. Hell, the poor have never had it so good. Here, and world wide.

No calls to Luddites!

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

original GI bill clearly considered education to be a way to a good job after the war

The original GI bill was intended to keep returning soldiers quiet. Obtuse benefits for WW I returnees led to rioting later on, see the Bonus Army. Never mind Freikorps springing up...

Other parts of the GI bill (or even its overall objective or effects) are irrelevant here.
Are you denying that extra access to education provided by the GI bill was considered valuable to the recipients because said education offered path to better employment opportunities?

[dismalist]

original GI bill clearly considered education to be a way to a good job after the war

The original GI bill was intended to keep returning soldiers quiet. Obtuse benefits for WW I returnees led to rioting later on, see the Bonus Army. Never mind Freikorps springing up...

Other parts of the GI bill (or even its overall objective or effects) are irrelevant here.
Are you denying that extra access to education provided by the GI bill was considered valuable to the recipients because said education offered path to better employment opportunities?

The education provisions of the GI Bill were the only ones to be opposed by the smaller veteran's organizations, including vehemently by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. They were worried the provisions would topple the whole bill.

The education provisions were intended to keep veterans off the labor market, avoiding unemployment. In other words, keep the boys off the streets.

At the onset of the Korean War, the whole GI Bill was made less generous, including for education.

All this predates human capital theory and indeed, signalling theory.

Substitutes for education, such as buying a house, are always relevant.

[mamselle]

Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe, too.

My dad could not have afforded to attend college, and complete his degree, without the GI Bill.

He'd have found work one way or another, without it (as Depression kids they got coal that dropped off the trains from the switching yard near their house; he worked three jobs before enlisting, and finished his degree a year early by taking exams to test out of some classes before enlisting, and coming back and picking up afterwards as soon as possible).

He'd apparently studied all through the war as well: we found those small, half-sized government-issued paperback study books in history, three different languages, geography, and so on, in his Army chest when we cleaned out the house.

I doubt if he would have been a demonstrator, he'd have been too busy working his three jobs and looking for more.

N=1, of course.

M.

[dismalist]

We can't prevent all good things from happening!

But while a limited subset of the population were enabled to signal their competence through the GI Bill [hell, maybe some even accumulated human capital] using the example of that Bill to argue for further support of higher education  today is fundamentally misguided. We already have an arms race going in education. Less support is called for, not more.

[jimbogumbo]

There is no question that many GIs used the benefit to gain access to to all kinds of degrees. Those choosing Engineering and Accounting were actually able to enter a job market that had too few qualified people.

While it may have in fact kept them quiet, and avoiding the unrest in DC in 1932, it also kept them out of an overcrowded applicant pool for jobs which did no require advanced education or training.

From the VA website:

"Before the war, college and homeownership were, for the most part, unreachable dreams for the average American. Thanks to the GI Bill, millions who would have flooded the job market instead opted for education. In the peak year of 1947, Veterans accounted for 49 percent of college admissions. By the time the original GI Bill ended on July 25, 1956, 7.8 million of 16 million World War II Veterans had participated in an education or training program.

Millions also took advantage of the GI Bill's home loan guaranty. From 1944 to 1952, VA backed nearly 2.4 million home loans for World War II Veterans.

While Veterans embraced the education and home loan benefits, few collected on one of the bill's most controversial provisions—the unemployment pay. Less than 20 percent of funds set aside for this were used."

[Hibush]

"In the peak year of 1947, Veterans accounted for 49 percent of college admissions. By the time the original GI Bill ended on July 25, 1956, 7.8 million of 16 million World War II Veterans had participated in an education or training program.

In that era, there were few college graduates. The GI Bill nearly doubled college attendance for a few years. Prewar, high school completion was ~25% and college attendance <10%. In 1947, there were a bit over 2 million college students (vs 24 million today. 

We may be on the other side of the optimum now. The macro-economic forces driving that must be very different from the ones in the 1945 to 1960 era.

[Wahoo Redux]

New York (CNN Business)A record 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August, evidence of the considerable leverage workers have in today's economy.

About 2.9% of the workforce quit in August, up from 2.7% in July, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report, released Tuesday. That marks the highest quit rate since the report began in late 2000.

The number of workers who quit rose by 242,000 from July as more Americans demanded higher pay, better working conditions and more flexible arrangements.

I can only imagine how great such mobility would be.