Politicians, state workers and the media talk constantly about how we must be doing more to get children into college, especially those from minority backgrounds or poorer families. But what is ignored is the fact that the number of people enrolling is nothing like the number of people graduating; at Cal Tech, the four-year graduation rate is just 19%. To solve this, California has declared that freshmen will no longer have to sit math and English placement tests…
That is an astonishingly low graduation rate. Part of me wonders if it is in part people who do not have the money to finish their degree now, and they leave hoping to finish it later. That degree may be an extravagance, which people are cutting back on as the K-selection approaches.
Still, college without math or English competency could only happen in a time of r. Just imagine if we could produce another hundred years of r. What would the average human’s cognitive abilities be like? And r-selection produces this across the board, from morality, to intellect, to accomplishment, to freedom – and it all improves reproductive ability in times of r.
Either way, you can see there will be a lot of Darwinian selection the day that the $1 trillion of borrowed money flooded into the system every year stops, along with another $1 trillion or two that will fall back due to economic failure, the trillions that will evaporate when the derivative bomb blows, the pension failures, and as everyone’s self-perception of net worth plummets as investment wealth is crushed.
Spread r/K Theory, because we need to get it taught in college before college is obsolete
[…] No More Math Or English Tests At Cal-Tech […]
There was a misprint in the original article. Cal State has a 19% graduation rate. Cal Tech is an entirely different school.
Their graduation rate is 88%, still low. 19% is the four year graduation rate. Idiots are flunking and retaking courses to muddle their way to a degree. (And 12% of them aren’t even making that.)
It isn’t the money — in fact, it might be the other way around, since, as long as you haven’t graduated, you can keep taking out student loans and living (and partying) on them.
Corrections — the article is about Cal State, not Cal Tech. The author is as dumb as the students.
Cal State’s overall graduation rate is 55%. That distinction still stands, but 55% is still abysmal. It’s a garbage school that gets people who should be going to community college for two years because they couldn’t get into a good school. It’s disproportionately hispanic (40% of the student body) which explains why English isn’t being screened for.
I still stand by my assertion. It’s not r/K directly, it’s just stupid people who shouldn’t have been in college in the first place flunking out.
I looked at this a bit different when I first heard about it, primarily due to my experience at college. I graduated high school with honors and had received good grades in Alegbra 1 & 2, Geometry, Statistics, and Pre-Calc, yet for some reason, I was still required to take a remedial Algebra class once I got to college. If they’re removing this basic math class out for cases like me, I take no issue with it, but if they’re letting a bunch of people slide through who can’t do basic multiplication, then yes, I agree with your premise.
My guess is that Caltech students take more than four years to graduate because the work is so demanding, not that they drop out. When I last looked, they had 14 Nobel Laureates on the faculty, implying a very tough curriculum. And the State of California has no say in the matter of admission tests at Caltech, which is a private school.
When do you think “the day that the $1 trillion of borrowed money flooded into the system every year stops, along with another $1 trillion or two that will fall back due to economic failure, the trillions that will evaporate when the derivative bomb blows, the pension failures, and as everyone’s self-perception of net worth plummets as investment wealth is crushed” is going to come? 2018? 2020? 2024? By 2032 I’m pretty sure we will already have hit reset on this shit.
2030 is around when most think, but if all the numbers today are bullshit, it could be much sooner.
The other r-mechanism at work is that rabbits who’ve been told for 12 years that they’re really smart will naively enroll in colleges that are far too challenging for their actual intellectual ability. Then they blame the college and their instructors for the inevitable result. Right now our society is so far into r that this happens ar the community college level, not just elite schools like Cal Tech.
AC, FYI, the article has been updated. The author made a mistake citing CatTech, which is a very elite school. He meant the California State university system, Cal State campuses.
I am in the middle of this college thing with 2 kids, one going and one soon to be. The graduation rate was something I was paying attention to as we were looking at what schools to apply to. The Cal State system is a mediocre system at best, so the level of student attending is very average. The main reason for the low rate of kids that get out in four years is your basic high school education leaves the kids short changed. If you do not take as many AP courses as possible and take and pass the AP tests you will be forced to take a good number of basic courses in your freshman year making it very difficult to get out in 4 years. And not just math and english but history, economics and others.
AP courses are vital to take to give the kid the ability to get out in 4 years. Depending on the degree requirements, you might be able to get it done in less then 4 years with enough AP courses taken and tests passed.
Four year colleges are an enormous waste of money regardless of ones sex or ethnicity if the student isn’t committed to pursuing an education in the sciences, tech, engineering, or medicine. If the USC, or any college/university, administration wanted to improve both their enrollment and graduation rates all they would have to do is waive remedial, core, and elective course requirements for a diploma.
A while ago i read a book about John Boyd. There was a chapter that described his air force training near the end of WW2 (it’s been a while since I read the book so I might be getting the dates wrong). The trainer was a veteran and made it clear that he hoped that at least 2/3rds of the class would die in training, that way the “worthless sons of bitches” wouldn’t get anyone decent killed in actual combat.
If people can’t graduate from a college, that shows that the college is doing it’s job.
I don’t think this pertains to Cal Tech, possibly the nation’s top STEM school. I think this applies to schools in the Cal State system, the lower level of California’s two-tier public college system.