comment to Thiels article in "TechCrunch"
posted 5/25/11
It"s too bad the only "education" in THIS country is "book-learned" academic's. Not everyone is cut out to be a "professional" (and I use that term loosely. We have over-funded academics, while short-changing vocational/technical "The trades" education. Sad as electricians, mechanics, HVAC, millwrights etc. slowly die off, with no one to take their place. While liberal arts majors are paying off their student loans selling burgers, Tradesmen are making relatively good money, Unfortunatly with no apprenticeship programs left and scarce vocational training, this door is locked to the majority of people who really COULD improve their lives.
cl
Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/
A controversial view, but....
Instead, for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble. “A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”
Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans:
Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.
Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels.
more: http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/
Letter to the Editor RGJ 05/15/2011
Re: RGJ article of 5/15/11 "Nevada's budget crisis poses threat to rural Nevada colleges".
I have often criticized the NV College System for their lack of understanding of vocational/technical education. And while I think a separate system would be the ideal format, we have what we have, and with the budget crisis, I foresee no new system in the near future. So it's sad to see that GBC, one of the last College's in the state to have a decent Vocational program struggling. Without a manufacturing base, there is no middle class. Without competent technical workforce education, there will be no resurgence of manufacturing in this country. With no middle class, there will be no USA.... . Also, Without the wages (taxes) of the middle class, social welfare programs will be history. Welcome to the third-world folks
Nevada's budget crisis poses threat to rural Nevada colleges
As I commented on in a previous post.... We need to train a highly skilled technical workforce SO... how is that working out? GBC has a great track record of vocational workforce training... But........................
Henry Brean , Las Vegas Review-Journal May. 14, 2011
ELKO -- Great Basin College resembles the grounds of any small college, a cluster of brick buildings arrayed around a fountain and a clock tower.
But this campus doesn't stop at the dorms or the ball fields. It stretches south to Pahrump and north to Oregon and Idaho, taking in a swath of mountains and sagebrush larger than the state of Georgia.
It could be the most far-reaching school you've never heard of.
"We've got a large service area, but there's not a lot of people in it," says college President Carl Diekhans.
Great Basin's service territory includes 54 percent of Nevada's total land area but less than 5 percent of its population.
As a result, the school ranks as the state's second smallest community college by enrollment, with about 4,000 students, most of them part-time.
But its effect is amplified in six of Nevada's most isolated counties, where the college turns townfolk into teachers, nurses and other needed professionals.
Schools, hospitals and mines get skilled workers. Rural residents get careers and a reason to stay in communities hundreds of miles from the nearest big city.
"We're doing what we're supposed to do," says Bret Murphy, dean of technical trade programs and other so-called applied sciences. "We're a community college. We're serving the community and its industries."
Now school officials insist that mission is jeopardized by mounting state budget cuts and, worse, talk of consolidating Nevada's community colleges.
Diekhans calls it the worst crisis he has seen since he was hired as a math and computing instructor at Great Basin in 1980.
"I get a little possessive. This is my college, and I don't like people messing with it," he says. "They're really messing with it right now."
Today the college offers about 40 associate degrees and seven different bachelor degree programs. It has branch campuses in Battle Mountain, Ely, Pahrump and Winnemucca and 13 satellite centers in smaller towns from Jackpot to Amargosa Valley.
Last fall, the college expanded into the Nye County seat of Tonopah, where it set up an interactive video class inside a room at a local casino.
You don't deliver classes across 62,000 square miles by sticking to convention.
About a third of Great Basin's courses are offered through an interactive video network that enables a professor in Pahrump to simultaneously teach political science to students in Winnemucca, Ely and Elko.
At some more remote sites, most instruction is by television and computer. Tests and term papers are turned in by fax or email. Larger class projects are boxed up and put in the mail.
Sean Pitts, who teaches history part-time at the branch campus in Ely, says interactive video takes some getting used to, but is effective.
"You can fill a class of 20 people from five different locations," Pitts said.
Without that ability to draw students from across the service area, a lot of classes would have to be canceled because of insufficient enrollment....
More at: http://www.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011105150357
U.S. manufacturing attempts a high-tech comeback
LA Times... http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-manufacturing-revival-20110515,0,569232.story
....For several decades, prominent economists and business leaders argued that so long as Americans came up with the ideas for great new products, it didn't matter where the products were manufactured.
Today there is a growing sense that the nation's lack of production capability is an Achilles' heel. In this view, the country must regenerate its manufacturing base — not necessarily producing the same things it made in bygone years, but churning out
high-value goods that can compete on price and quality in today's global marketplace.
Unless such a revitalization takes place, most economists agree, millions of people will face a more volatile and less prosperous future. And as consumers' ability to spend erodes, so will the prospects for corporate America.
It also will be extremely difficult for the country to deal with government deficits and the soaring cost of such fundamental programs as Social Security and Medicare.
OK........ So we know the problem, we know what needs to be done to solve it. Manufacture, or become a third-world country. And (as I and others have been commenting on these many years), If we are to have a manufacturing base... we must have a highly trained technical workforce. So we are going to do this, right?
