Who Will Have the Best Higher Ed in XXI Century?

World’s higher education is changing:

By the end of this decade, four out of every 10 of the world’s young graduates are going to come from just two countries – China and India.

The projection from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows a far-reaching shift in the balance of graduate numbers, with the rising Asian economies accelerating ahead of the United States and western Europe. The forecasts for the shape of the “global talent pool” in 2020 show China as rapidly expanding its graduate numbers – set to account for 29% of the world’s graduates aged between 25 and 34.

The biggest faller is going to be the United States – down to 11% – and for the first time pushed into third place, behind India.

I don’t believe in China’s higher education. I think it’s as much of a bubble as the Soviet education was and for the same reason. The Indian education, however, is hugely promising. All of my very best students at every university where I taught were from India. I don’t want to be stereotyping but I’m yet to meet a student from India who is not bizarrely good.

I hope our country realizes how important it is to invest in our own system of higher ed in the face of such impressive competition. Unless we want to turn into an intellectually insignificant backwards place that is completely dependent on others for ideas, research and technology, we need to stop looking at our universities as places that need to be squeezed for money and profits. We need to stop adjunctifying, scrimping, and cutting down on vitally important research needs.

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55 responses to “Who Will Have the Best Higher Ed in XXI Century?”

charlesrowley

July 13, 2012

Volume is an an inappropriate measure of higher education success. More, predictably means worse. What matters is high quality. In this regard, the United States, Canada, Australia and Great Britain dominate.

I agree with Clarissa about China. High quality education at any level is simply impossible in a dictatorship that lies about reality and represses views that threaten its survival.

I do not agree with Clarissa about India. Many Indians that I have taught are smart. But their culture is dreadful. They are brought up to cheat, plagiarize and even attempt to bribe their teachers. Until those habits disappear, UIndian universities will remain second-rate.

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bloggerclarissa

July 13, 2012

“Volume is an an inappropriate measure of higher education success”

– Not any more. We are living in the world where technology is becoming more ubiquitous with every passing day and manual unskilled labor is not needed nearly as much. What awaits people with no education after high school in the US is rapid lumpenization. I don’t think we need an even greater lumpen class than we already have.

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July 13, 2012

I understand your and charlesrowley’s points RE dictatorships, if you talk about literature or Social Studies (“a multidisciplinary major focusing on History, Government, Political and Social Theory, and Economics”).

But I don’t see any connection, if one talks of applied to military projects (atom energy or the space race between Soviet Union and US) or exact sciences at university (chemistry, physics, math, etc.)

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bloggerclarissa

July 13, 2012

Have you been to a Soviet university? Do you know how the semester was structured (do nothing all semester, pass exams by cramming and cheating in a week)? Do you know how rampant bribery and cheating was? How many people bought their dissertations, let alone graduating assignments?

Lectures in all courses consisted of a teacher standing by the blackboard and mumbling something for an hour while nobody listened because the exams were still far away.

I studied at the Polytechnic straight out of high school, so this song and dance about the great Soviet STEM education makes me laugh.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  Here is the book for Cordelia Fine: http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342193772&sr=1-1
  
  I don’t see any value in contributions on women in sciences from people who have not familiarized themselves with this meticulous and overwhelming research.
  
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PeppermintPanda

July 13, 2012

It certainly won’t be the United States …

With the recent move to extend Title IV to STEM fields it has become clear that higher education in the United States cares far more about the content of a person’s pants than the content in their head.

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el

July 13, 2012

//to extend Title IV to STEM fields

What is it? Why is it a bad thing?
I googled and found that:

“Within the final title of our bill, Title IV, NSF basic research funding is doubled. NSF is authorized to expand funding for STEM education through increased fellowships and trainee programs at the undergraduate and graduate level. …. In addition the NSF Tech Talent program is reauthorized with increased funding. This program provides competitive grants to undergraduate universities to develop new methods of increasing the number of students receiving degrees in science, math, and engineering. ”
http://teachers.yale.edu/story/index.php?skin=h&page=015-13

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1. PeppermintPanda
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  Having been a TA to a Computer Science course which was one of the easiest science options for people to get, I can say with certainty that the disparity of men and women in STEM fields is 100% based on choice not discrimination.
  
  This course did not count as a credit for anyone who wanted a BSc which meant that it was only (really) taken by people in the social sciences and humanities. In spite of the fact that the students came from fields that were dominated by women, the class was still (about) 2/3 men.
  
  Since the 1980s there have been countless programs trying to encourage women to enter into these fields, and many of these fields have seen declining enrollment since the 1970s. My university had 25% women in their first Computer Science program and when I graduated in 2004 this had fallen below 11%.
  
  All applying Title IV to STEM fields is going to do is to lower entry standards for women until they get enough female students into these fields; and (since this will likely mean that the girls had high-school grades 20% to 25% lower then their male counterparts) the classes will be substantially dumbed down to pass these girls along to graduation.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    Sweet Jesus on the cross, not again! Choices are not made in a vacuum. There are reasons behind every choice. Do I need to recommend Cordelia Fine’s research on the subject or will people find it on their own?
    
    I had math books torn out of my hands all my life, told that doing science assignments was a stupid waste of time, that my studies at the Polytechnic were idiotic, and that of course I was going to fail miserably. Of course, then I CHOSE to drop out of the Polytechnic. Since 17-year-olds are robots who in no way respond to being ridiculed by their parents on whom they are financially dependent, this was so totally a free choice on my part.
    
    What is especially annoying, there are tons of research on the subject. Oodles of research. Yet people CHOOSE to blab unintelligently.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      July 13, 2012
      
      Here is the book for Cordelia Fine: http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342193772&sr=1-1
      
      I don’t see any value in contributions on women in sciences from people who have not familiarized themselves with this meticulous and overwhelming research.
      
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2. PeppermintPanda
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  I had a friend growing up who’s father beat him for being “geeky”, forced him into sports he didn’t want to play, and he still went to university to study Computer Science …
  
  If you wanted to be in a STEM field you’d be in a stem field, stop blaiming your choices on imaginary forces against you.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    “I had a friend growing up who’s father beat him for being “geeky”, forced him into sports he didn’t want to play”
    
    – You know absolutely nothing about human psychology, do you? You are not even aware which kind of abuse results in which kind of trauma. It’s sad to see such ignorance.
    
    “If you wanted to be in a STEM field you’d be in a stem field, stop blaiming your choices on imaginary forces against you.”
    
    – What did I say about familiarizing yourself with research before blabbing? Go pick up the book I recommended. I promise, it will make you feel ashamed of these unintelligent comments.
    
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3. PeppermintPanda
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  Ok … I’ll ask you another question …
  
  If the problem is “parents” or “society” discouraging girls from developing the skills and interest necessary to be successful in STEM fields, why should we lower standards and develop quotas to produce low quality graduates that happen to be women rather than focus on changing parenting or “society” to encourage girls to develop the skills and interests necessary to be successful in STEM fields?
  
  Are you also supportive of eliminating the overwhelming gender imbalance in the social sciences, and eliminating fields like women’s studies that have no place in them for men?
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    “f the problem is “parents” or “society” discouraging girls from developing the skills and interest necessary to be successful in STEM fields”
    
    – As I already said twice, do read the research. There is no need for you to be guessing. Just read the research.
    
    “why should we lower standards and develop quotas to produce low quality graduates that happen to be women rather than focus on changing parenting or “society” to encourage girls to develop the skills and interests necessary to be successful in STEM fields”
    
    – All these questions are answered in the massive amount of research on the subject. This is a complex issue that cannot be addressed through a couple of gross simplifications and generalizations. If this field of knowledge interests you so much, you need to start educating yourself in it. As I said, as soon as you start doing that, you will realize how simplistic and out of place these comments of your are.
    
    “Are you also supportive of eliminating the overwhelming gender imbalance in the social sciences, and eliminating fields like women’s studies that have no place in them for men?”
    
    – Have you even seen any women’s studies course? If so, then what makes you invent the weird idea that there are no male students in them? As for my general attitude to the field, I find the term “women’s studies” to be hugely offensive. All reputable universities are changing the name to “Gender Studies.” As for social sciences, the Wikipedia defines them as ” These include: anthropology, archaeology, criminology, economics, history, linguistics, communication studies, political science and international relations, sociology, geography, law, and psychology.” You are trying to tell me that there are no men in these fields??? No male lawyers around? No male criminologists or archaeologists?
    
    I’m so tired of people who don;t even make an effort to educate themselves and just blab like obsessed parrots.
    
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4. PeppermintPanda
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  I haven’t taken a “Women’s Studies” course, but I did take a Sociology of Gender course taught by a professor of Women’s studies because it was a social-science option that fit my schedule and there were 40 students of which 3 were men; and I was the only straight man.
  
  Today we have universities where women are (roughly) 60% of the population, and the only fields men are not the minority is STEM fields. Most of the social sciences are as more imbalanced in favour of women then the STEM fields are in favour of men. If the imbalance in STEM fields is a problem that needs to be corrected through quotas that favour women, is it not fair to say that the imbalance in other fields is a problem that needs to be corrected through quotas that favour men?
  
  I know the reason you’re unwilling to answer these questions is because you can see the inherant unfairness in telling 40% of women in a field that they’re not allowed to study their field to make room for a man who has lower grades; but you can’t admit that without acknowledging that it would be unfair to tell 40% of men they couldn’t study in a STEM field to make room for a woman who has lower grades.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    “I know the reason you’re unwilling to answer these questions”
    
    – Please show me the questions that I refused to answer.
    
    “As because you can see the inherant unfairness in telling 40% of women in a field that they’re not allowed to study their field to make room for a man who has lower grades”
    
    – People who pretend to be mind-readers and assign their own bizarre idea to me annoy me. Please stop telling me what I think.
    
    “is it not fair to say that the imbalance in other fields is a problem that needs to be corrected through quotas that favour men”
    
    – Once again: social sciences that you CHOSE to mention include: anthropology, archaeology, criminology, economics, history, linguistics, communication studies, political science and international relations, sociology, geography, law, and psychology. Which of these fields is heavily dominated by women?
    
    I would also love to receive an answer to the question I have now asked 3 times and you ignored 3 times, as well: what is the reason behind your refusal to familiarize yourself with massive research in this area before trying to start discussions with better informed people? You don’t even seem to know what social sciences are. Your statistics are massively off. Your spelling is horrible. Your grammar is atrocious. What makes you think you are entitled to an opinion when your own education level is so abysmally poor? What makes you think you are prepared for discussions at this level? I, for instance, realize that my lack of knowledge of physics makes me incapable of butting into conversations between physicists. What prevents you from realizing that your uneducated opinions can only be risible to a pedagogue with 22 years of teaching experience?
    
    This is what happens in a society where every ignoramus who has read some “study” in a glossy magazine somewhere is suddenly an expert.
    
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5. PeppermintPanda
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  “Once again: social sciences that you CHOSE to mention include: anthropology, archaeology, criminology, economics, history, linguistics, communication studies, political science and international relations, sociology, geography, law, and psychology. Which of these fields is heavily dominated by women? ”
  
  First off, many of those degrees may be offered by different departments at different colleges. Economics is often taught under business; linguistics, communication studies and history are often taught within the humanities; and archaeology and geography can be taught under science if the school has a dedicated earth sciences department. Beyond this, I have never been to a university that taught law anywhere outside of its dedicated law school. Criminology seems like an odd addition to the list because, living in Canada, criminology tends to be studied at community colleges.
  
  I personally don’t know anything about international relations, but my experience with sociology and psychology would have me estimate that they’re at least 60% women.
  
  The reason I do not value the research is that I do not value the rigor of the research. When I was in school the studies we were forced to read in sociology classes were based on non-random samples that were too small to support the conclusions that were made if you performed a statistical analysis. An example of the lack of respectable methodologies is how Kinsey used a study of men in prison to estimate the prevalence of homosexuality.
  
  As for my spelling and grammer, being a Canadian “Favour” is the correct spelling, and I believe that my spelling and grammer still meets the minimum standard of correctness to get a degree in any major university.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    “First off, many of those degrees may be offered by different departments at different colleges. Economics is often taught under business; linguistics, communication studies and history are often taught within the humanities; and archaeology and geography can be taught under science if the school has a dedicated earth sciences department”
    
    – I don’t understand what this is supposed to be in aid of. Are you trying to disagree with the definition of social sciences I’m using? Then provide your own. Because I’m starting to get a sneaking suspicion that when you say “social sciences” you mean sociology.
    
    ” but my experience with sociology and psychology would have me estimate that they’re at least 60% women.”
    
    – Oh, so for you social sciences = sociology? What was it that prevented you from stating from the start that you were talking exclusively about these 2 small fields?
    
    “The reason I do not value the research is that I do not value the rigor of the research.”
    
    – So, you “don’t value” hundreds of scholarly sources cited by Fine without even looking at them? Because Kinsey something something? I guess according to your logic, if there was one physicist who engaged in crappy research practices, the entire field of chemistry should be thrown out as a result.
    
    As for you “Canadian” grammar and spelling, the sentence ” Criminology seems like an odd addition to the list because, living in Canada, criminology tends to be studied at community colleges” because it sounds like criminology is living in Canada. The word “inherently” is not spelled like you spell it either in Canada or elsewhere. And don’t even start me on the intellectual capacities of a person who confuses sociology with social sciences.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      July 13, 2012
      
      I also want to remind everybody that these women-dominated degrees in sociology and psychology lead to the most low-paying jobs of all available to college graduates. So if men insist to be pushed into these low-paying fields through quotas, I support their wish most wholeheartedly.
      
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6. el
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  // I do not value the rigor of the research … An example of the lack of respectable methodologies is how Kinsey used a study of men in prison to estimate the prevalence of homosexuality.
  
  Haven’t you studied the critics and limitations of those researches too? I read something about Kinsey’s reserach on Internet once and it’s critic was mentioned too.
  
  Now I checked and, as I thought, he lived long ago – Alfred Charles Kinsey (June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956). Does recent research suffer from those problems to the same degree?
  
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7. el
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  //I also want to remind everybody that these women-dominated degrees in sociology and psychology lead to the most low-paying jobs of all available to college graduates.
  
  The grades needed to be accepted there are too quite low. I am sure those are very rare men, who try to be accepted, but can’t because of low grades. Btw, if universities in US don’t look at grades alone, don’t men trying for such fields already have better chance to be accepted than women with the same or even slightly higher grades?
  
  I would guess many men with high school education earn more than somebody with such a degree. If you in US create quotas for men to be accepted with any grades in those 2 fields, I am not sure there would be enough men to fix the imbalance.
  
  Especially since college can cost not a little for many, but even without that.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    The admissions process works as follows: people get accepted to the university in general and only much later (usually after the 1st year or even later) declare a Major. The Major can be changed as many times as one wishes. So the choice of the field is not in any way connected to the grades one had in high school. This changes when one applies to prestigious professional schools after getting a Bachelor’s. For example, my university has a very prestigious nursing program and my Seniors slaughter themselves to get into it. But that happens after they finish whatever Major(s) they chose.
    
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8. el
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  //So if men insist to be pushed into these low-paying fields through quotas, I support their wish most wholeheartedly.
  
  LOL!
  
  It’s a joke though, right? If you aren’t for quotas for women, why be for quotas for men? Or, do you positively discriminate in favour of men? 🙂
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    “It’s a joke though, right? If you aren’t for quotas for women, why be for quotas for men? Or, do you positively discriminate in favour of men? ”
    
    – I’m just saying that I’m more than willing to support men in their struggle to overtake low-paying fields if that’s what they want. It’s not my place to decide what men as a group should pursue as their career goals. If they choose this as their goal, my role is to be supportive.
    
    Of course, the idea that somebody purposefully excludes men from low-paying and unprestigious professions is quite entertaining.
    
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9. Lindsay
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  Hello, I’m a woman with a STEM degree and a humanities degree! (Biochemistry and English literature, to be exact). I’m also self-educated in a lot of feminist literature, and have read a lot about the Women in Science question in particular.
  
  I think Clarissa is right on this matter: lots of factors still discourage women to pursue STEM fields, even if less of it (but not zero, no, not even today) is overt discrimination. I also second her recommendation of reading Cordelia Fine’s book: it’s well written, it’s a good introduction to a vast body of psychological literature, and it’s fun.
  
  Now, to answer your question (I don’t know that you actually asked one, but I am interpreting your skepticism as a request for more information) about what kinds of pressures there are: for one, children don’t just passively believe whatever their parents tell them, they try to figure the world, and people, out for themselves. They look for patterns. They try to generalize about the world from the patterns they see. So, if all the women they know are stay-at-home moms, teachers, or nurses, while all the men are principals, doctors, police officers, or people who go to an office every day and do mysterious things that people seem to think are important, they might decide, if they are girls, that their future will involve taking care of children, or, if they are boys, that it will involve being in charge of other adults. (For a random example). Now, it’s true that every generation since the second wave of feminism in this country has grown up in a progressively less strictly gendered world, and has a broader range of possible futures and identities to choose from. This is good, but it’s still ongoing. Gender still affects children’s ideas about what people are like and what they can and can’t do, even if it doesn’t do so as strongly as it did fifty, or even twenty, years ago.
  
  There is also a thing called stereotype threat, which is where you are always hyper-aware of the fact that you are a member of a group that’s believed to be bad at something, so you overcompensate by trying extra hard not to make a mistake and have people blame it on your being a woman, or black, or poor, or a foreigner. You sort of “psych” yourself into doing poorly this way: you’re afraid to take risks, to attempt more difficult tasks. So a girl who is quite good at math might believe herself to be worse at it than she is, and over-cautiously sign herself up for easier math classes than she could be taking. It might never occur to her that she could be an engineer, a physicist, or a mathematician, because while she might do okay at math, she’s not great at it, she thinks.
  
  There is also the fact that mentoring relationships are really helpful for people starting out at something, and most STEM professors are male, and were educated at a time when few women entered their fields. (Computer science is actually an interesting anomaly, because when the field was new it was a “women’s” field! They thought of it as a natural extension of secretarial work.)
  
  Once we are getting into more advanced stages of a STEM career, there’s also the fact that women still have to deal with the caregiver role they’ve been brought up to think is theirs. If their partner is also a STEM professional, there’s going to be a conflict about whose career is more important, and, almost always, the woman’s career loses. But you were talking about undergraduates, so this part of it is probably not relevant. But it does help explain the dearth of women at higher levels in STEM departments, who might otherwise be there to mentor younger women students.
  
  Finally, about whether men are being unfairly kept out of the humanities and social sciences: I think there, what you are seeing might be an artifact of the fact that, in general, more women than men go to college in the first place. Some colleges are indeed making it harder for women applicants to get in, to try and make the balance more 50/50. But it’s not as simple as women doing better in school and being more studious; it’s also that men have more opportunities (although these opportunities are fewer than they used to be) to have decently-paying jobs that don’t require college degrees. So if you take two hypothetical people, Joe and Jane, who are 100% identical except for their sex, and who are both unstudious types who do okay at school but don’t particularly like it, but who do like, and excel at, more hands-on things, Jane is probably likelier to try to go to college anyway, maybe get some kind of engineering degree or technical certification, while Joe might think better of his odds of getting into a skilled trade on the ground floor.
  
  It is possible that men feel pressured not to study the humanities, that they feel like they have to study something “practical” that will translate into a good job, or that, say, studying literature is unmanly. I don’t know enough to comment intelligently on that, but I remember about half, or sometimes a little less than half, of my English classmates being male, and most of the professors being men. Male students also do not seem at all inhibited about speaking up, which Clarissa has previously complained about in female students.
  
  I have written a book.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    “So, if all the women they know are stay-at-home moms, teachers, or nurses, while all the men are principals, doctors, police officers, or people who go to an office every day and do mysterious things that people seem to think are important, they might decide, if they are girls, that their future will involve taking care of children, or, if they are boys, that it will involve being in charge of other adults. ”
    
    – Exactly! This is what I keep saying.
    
    “I have written a book.”
    
    – On what subject?
    
    Thank you for a great comment, Lindsay!
    
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10. Lindsay
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  Oh, I just meant my comment was so obnoxiously long it was practically a book. That’s all.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    Autistic here! Taking everything literally!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
    
    This keeps happening to me.
    
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bloggerclarissa

July 13, 2012

What is this about pant contents?? Is this still a thread on education??

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Aaron

July 13, 2012

Soviet education in math (and I think also in related subjects) was top notch. Many of the best mathematicians of the 20th century came out of the Soviet system, including many people from eastern Europe who went to the USSR for university. In fact, many of the best mathematicians in the US today came from that system (and also many of the great and very good — I’m not just talking about ‘superstars’).

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bloggerclarissa

July 13, 2012

“Soviet education in math (and I think also in related subjects) was top notch. Many of the best mathematicians of the 20th century came out of the Soviet system”

– A few stars here and there prove absolutely nothing. They would have still be stars anywhere. I happen to know very well what the math education was in the USSR. I have several relatives with math degrees. And I know only very well how exams were passed through an intricate system of cheating.

“In fact, many of the best mathematicians in the US today came from that system (and also many of the great and very good — I’m not just talking about ‘superstars’).”

– And how many completely unenlightened barely literate people did that system reward with diplomas? You are talking about a few smart kids who studied on their own because they enjoyed it. What on Earth does that have to do with the system? Can you name any components of the system that fostered knowledge? How do you feel about the Soviet Gen Ed requirements? About the system of “final exam = 100%”? Proliferation of oral exams to make the bribery and dishonesty easier? Forced work on collective farms at least 2 months from the academic year? Because when you take of the system, this is what you should be talking about. Now few smart people who managed to preserve their brains in the midst of this stupidity.

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anon

July 13, 2012

What Clarissa said. All the brilliant physics professors I know from such countries are self-taught, or when they went to university managed to find a similarly brilliant professor to work with them one-on-one as their mentor. One such professor literally told us he didn’t understand the point of classes since he just learned it all on his own (you can probably guess he wasn’t a very good teacher).

Though I think there are some generational effects. Of the current grad students I know from ex-soviet countries, many did get an excellent education. But that was because they showed promise at a young age and were funneled into very good programs that were specifically designed for nurturing their science and mathematical talent. I have no knowledge about the quality of education received by somewhat more average students during the present day in those countries.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  “Of the current grad students I know from ex-soviet countries, many did get an excellent education. But that was because they showed promise at a young age and were funneled into very good programs that were specifically designed for nurturing their science and mathematical talent. ”
  
  – My husband is a case in point. He tells me that the Soviet math education that he received was good. Then he also tells me how he did nothing for 5 years but study 14 hours a day (and knowing him, I know it’s true). Why did he have to study so much? Because the actual classes gave him nothing. Then he met one great prof who was interested in him and mentored him personally. This is not what a good SYSTEM should be like.
  
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Sister

July 13, 2012

When a country is the size of what the USSR was, there are bound to be at least some smart & successful people to come out of the system no matter what

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bloggerclarissa

July 13, 2012

That’s my point exactly. As a system, however, it was not conducive to intellectual development.

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1. el
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  What have you studied at the Polytechnic, if not a secret?
  
  Btw, aren’t most US female students in Cordelia Fine’s book of age? If so, according to your stance, don’t they have only themselves to blame? I do think society extremely powerfully influences most people (of both genders, of course), but you’ve told many times it’s all what people choose to do to get benefits. No?
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    “What have you studied at the Polytechnic, if not a secret”
    
    – I’m still not sure. 🙂 It was the time when everything was in the state of flux. The first 2 years were always gen ed courses. I didn’t stay long enough to see what the specialization was going to be.
    
    ” If so, according to your stance, don’t they have only themselves to blame?”
    
    – I’m not asking anybody to pity any specific people. I’m suggesting that we are going to fall behind as a civilization if we don’t make quality higher education a priority.
    
    ” I do think society extremely powerfully influences most people (of both genders, of course), but you’ve told many times it’s all what people choose to do to get benefits. ”
    
    – I’m suggesting we collectively change the system of assigning benefits according to gender. Mind you, I’m not proposing this as a charitable measure for any specific women. I’m interested in the survival and advancement of my civilization. Bluntly put, it’s my benefits that preoccupy me. 🙂
    
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2. el
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  Btw, in your case, do both your parents have lit education? Was your mother a lit teacher? If I may ask, who was your father before becoming a writer, a lit prof?
  
  I wondered how it influenced their reactions. In my family all women had 2nd degrees in math and my mother worked as a programmer for a while. From their stories I got the impression that in FSU many women studied math, were programmers later, etc. Cordelia Fine’s research is about US, which is a completely different country from FSU and different in what women did in 50ies f.e. too. I would guess in US such reactions of parents happened more often then, at least.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    My father is a linguist (applied linguistics, language software creation.) My mother was a math teacher.
    
    ” In my family all women had 2nd degrees in math and my mother worked as a programmer for a while.”
    
    – Yeah, my mother was, too. 🙂 She left programming after receiving an inordinate amount of badgering and humiliation from male colleagues and bosses. This went beyond harassment, it was bullying, pure and simple. She became a school teacher because, that way, at least, there were no male colleagues to bully her. She is no wilting flower. but being a single woman in a room with 20 men all of whom humiliate and bully you on a daily basis was not something that she CHOSE to deal with in perpetuity.
    
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NancyP

July 13, 2012

Your impression of mainland Chinese students may reflect the fact that Party connections and/or business connections plus Party-friendly personal political history are at least as important as grades in getting that exit visa. Ability to pay helps considerably.

Resident Indian students do not face such barriers to exit visas. Grades, and for students without full scholarship, ability to pay are the factors that count in getting access to American / Canadian / English / AuZ universities.

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bloggerclarissa

July 13, 2012

I don’t have anything against Chinese students. But I do know that an education system of any tolerable quality cannot exist in a country with harsh censorship. People in Communist societies are punished harshly for exercising their thinking capacities. They are taught to cram and reproduce faithfully the information they are given. I don’t see the value of such “education.”

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1. NancyP
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  I agree. In the sciences, it is possible to keep a low political profile and still think about the science subject (most of the time – see history of Soviet genetics).
  
  Japan has a huge cramming problem. Many countries have educational systems in which thinking and learning to think are relatively or completely unimportant to advancement toward a degree.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    “Japan has a huge cramming problem.”
    
    – Very true! I noticed a huge gap between us and our Japanese colleagues at a conference two years ago. It was very obvious.
    
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July 13, 2012

//a single woman in a room with 20 men

My mother worked with all women & 1 man, who partly because of his gender (she tells there were better programmers there, but women took X time after birth) was a boss.

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bloggerclarissa

July 13, 2012

I hope that everybody understands that my message here is not “let’s pity my mother.” My message is “let’s pity a culture that castrates itself in this way and deprives itself of an intellectual and scholarly contribution from a huge part of its population.”

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1. el
  
  July 13, 2012
  
  You used the word “pity”. Twice.
  
  I wasn’t mentioning feelings at all. Only trying to describe my perception of reality (in this discussion). When I said “society extremely powerfully influences most people”, my point was that wide culture exists and changing it is important. That it isn’t “if only you XYZ” then “entire world will do TYU”, f.e. live in a friendly atmosphere in IT community as a woman.
  
  I think society’s forces will work on you, whether you want it or not. Individual people in the West nowadays can choose how to live their lives, but imo it still isn’t 100% unlimited, free chice regardless of gender.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    July 13, 2012
    
    “When I said “society extremely powerfully influences most people””
    
    – My friend, this sentence makes absolutely no sense. Don’t you see that? It’s like saying that my head extremely powerfully influences me. Society consists of people. And of nothing but people. It’s like saying “people influence themselves.”
    
    I believe the word “influence” should be excluded from this discussion. People form societies and together work out certain norms of coexistence. Many of these norms are deeply problematic and should be changed. Not because they influence anybody but because they are not the optimal ways of human coexistence.
    
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NancyP

July 13, 2012

It is well known that certain parts of the IT community and certain IT employers maintain an atmosphere hostile to women. Gaming is particularly prone to having hostile communities. I remember a brouhaha a few years ago when a reasonably prominent woman IT was harassed so much, including death threats, that she backed out of being a speaker at a conference. It is common for online gamers to harass female persona players, and it is also common for female gamers to assume male online personae. Because gaming is a common entry into an interest in IT, this is likely to dissuade some women from pursuing an IT career. Nothing is more dismal than planning a life’s career among colleagues who are assholes.

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bloggerclarissa

July 13, 2012

“It is common for online gamers to harass female persona players”

– I once watched my husband play and saw the comments gamers were exchanging while playing. I was so traumatized by the amount of woman-hating and homophobic comments that I never watch again. N. enjoys riling up the woman-haters and homophobes but I don’t possess the necessary calmness. I just want to smash the computer.

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July 13, 2012

//The admissions process works as follows: people get accepted to the university in general and only much later (usually after the 1st year or even later) declare a Major. The Major can be changed as many times as one wishes. So the choice of the field is not in any way connected to the grades one had in high school. This changes when one applies to prestigious professional schools after getting a Bachelor’s. … But that happens after they finish whatever Major(s) they chose.

How many years does a Major take? In Israel to be a programmer, one goes to uni (usually after army and may be a trip abroad) for 3 years. Engineering is 4 years, a doctor – much longer (6 or 7). Grades of a bagrut (country wide examinations to graduate from high school) and of a psychometric exam are of extreme importance. Only in some fields, like a doctor, one has an interview. Otherwise, you just send your data and hope for the best.

Can’t a person in US, who wants to get a degree faster, immediately go for programming f.e.? What if somebody is from a poor family and/or wants to end it as fast as possible?

I thought a Bachelor’s was the 1st degree, not something after which you have to study more to get a profession.

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bloggerclarissa

July 13, 2012

“How many years does a Major take”

– That depends but normally you can do it within 3 years.

“Can’t a person in US, who wants to get a degree faster, immediately go for programming”

– Programming yes. Medicine and law, no.

“What if somebody is from a poor family and/or wants to end it as fast as possible?”

– A way to do that is to take the maximum allowed number of courses and take courses in the summer. I did my 60 credit Honors program in 2,5 years. But I walked like a dog to achieve that.

“I thought a Bachelor’s was the 1st degree, not something after which you have to study more to get a profession.”

– If we are talking about medicine, law and business, you need a BA and then the next degrees (MD, JD, MBA). A Bachelor’s is a stepping stone here.

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July 14, 2012

The latest “The Weekly Sift” reviews a book partly touching on the questions we discussed with PeppermintPanda – Chris Hayes, “Twilight of the Elites” (2012)

In Search of a Unified F***-Up Theory

What do you think?

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bloggerclarissa

July 14, 2012

I haven’t read this book because I know I won’t like it already. I read small bits of it here and there, and, God, what rubbish! The part about the Hunter Academy in New York was very stupid.

I used to love this journalist, yet he has gone all doom-and-gloom on us.

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David Bellamy

August 1, 2012

Students in mathematics from China whom we admit to graduate study tend to be extremely good. We admit around a third of those who apply, if the situation is the same as when I was on the graduate committee.

I missed this post while I was in Mexico. Sorry for coming to it so late.

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bloggerclarissa

August 1, 2012

I actually love it when old posts get revived. 🙂

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