prole

I actually liked your idea of reforming some of the administrative bloat, revisiting fancy construction projects that don't add educational value, competition for the cushiest dorms, athletic programs, shit like that...

Hey Jim, rather than pile on the indicators pointing to the positive benefits of higher education, it would probably just be easier for you and Jay to post those studies showing the negative impacts that higher education is having on people's lives. I mean, good lord...

Bit more substantial...

I always thought "more than 12 years of education" implied college...

I know this is an "article" but...

Where the #%^$* are they gonna work?

Yes, "hopelessly compromised" along with quintiles and households. More Addams Family thinktank parlor games.

Unfortunately, most of it is sloshing around in markets that have absolutely nothing to do with problem solving whatsoever...

Well, then I guess it's a good thing that Jay was the only one that was ever engaged in that "debate"? Great Caesar's Ghost, this Romper Room is exhausting sometimes...

Financial aid does provide a huge subsidy for lower income kids (thank god). But despite Jay's protestations to the contrary, higher education more often than not leads to better outcomes and not just in terms of income. Unless you subscribe to the dumb-and-proud-because-corporations-and-government-know-what's-best-for-me version of social engineering, we still need an educated, informed citizenry that's capable of critical thinking skills that, pardon me, we're not really seeing form Amerika's Hi-Skool Gradjeates.

A cc.com party?

Love the Billcoe-style interjection. Keepin' it spicy!

Unfortunately, for many Americans the ability to take on massive debt to attain a higher education is exactly that: an existential crisis. Oh well, IKEA needs factory workers...

Ya, duh!

although your plot above reflects the rising trend in educational achievement post ww2 (which owes nothing to neoliberalism), it doesn't show the increasing access discrepancy between low and high income brackets. What ever you do, don't mention class!

Uh yeah, gee whiz...

Thanks, Dr. Pangloss! That's it? Toasters are cheaper now? Leaving mass extinction and ecological crisis aside, apparently you haven't noticed that in this country we're backsliding in a number of key areas; the ability for many to meet basic needs, like health care, and access to higher education is increasingly breaking down along class lines. Your "best of all possible worlds" is only possible when you ignore rising inequalities or factor them out of your equations (hence your love for disaggregated statistics and cherry picking). We've heard nothing on this data from you in the last 5 years but denialism and obfuscation so blatant and transparent that some here have openly wondered if you might be a sociopath. Why? Elitists of the past had no problems explaining where their loyalties lay and airing the ideological underpinnings of their thought. You and other neoliberals of today hide behind a supposedly value-neutral market, "the math", or conflate neoliberalism with economic development as a whole (as you do above) while the directly observable consequences and collateral damage of your ideas-in-practice mount. Like all the dead-enders of the past (British imperialists, Stalinists) you keep telling us that a more rigid application of your ideas is the cure for what ails. Yes, you can point to the folly of nostalgia for an imagined past, but you've little or nothing to offer for our future.

The real threat is there might be Syrian lesbians in Orange County!

Apparently the charge of "relativism!" is only valid when applied to others. You can't make any determinations about better from worse? How is this anything other than a complete cop-out and a turn away from democratic politics?

Yeah, I hate it when that happens too. If you're really worried about it... Link.

Maybe just a touch of retardation in there somewhere?

Are you retarded? Seriously.