06-16-2020, 03:22 PM
In any event, college education has elite characteristics. Dullards invariably fail at it. That is why selective colleges rely upon board scores for admissions and even community colleges use board scores for guidance. I am more familiar with the SAT (which ranges from 200 to 800 for both verbal [SAT-V] and mathematical [SAT-M]) Conventionally one adds the two to get a composite score.
For that sum, 400 is the absolute bottom, and people scoring under 900 in total are at the 23rd percentile among college students taking the test and 29th on a national scale. People likely to score that low generally don't take the SAT and generally don't complete any degree program.
Any college worth attending demands both competence and effort for success... and the old-fashioned liberal-arts school, the old model, wasn;t for dullards. But note well: there are plenty of jobs in which the stupider one is the happier one will be doing them.
OK, getting into a selective college or university is itself quite an achievement. Graduating from an accredited college or universit of any kind is a genuine achievement. Someone who has done so has shown something out of the ordinary. Maybe it does not mean that one has specific knowledge immediately useful on the job, but it does mean that one can learn certain things not taught in college. It also suggests that one pays attention to detail and has some persistence with something intellectually difficult but still possible.
What, ideally, is the purpose of a college education? To make big money? No. Skilled trades pay better than most college majors. Owning and operating a small business may be even better for long-term earnings. It is to learn how to live well with resources available. With all the sophisticated technology available, people need to learn to separate the chaff from the jewels in life. This is especially true with the Internet. There's really-sick stuff on the Internet, and people who dive into that sewer (let us say Holocaust denial) and take its contents uncritically have big problems.
For that sum, 400 is the absolute bottom, and people scoring under 900 in total are at the 23rd percentile among college students taking the test and 29th on a national scale. People likely to score that low generally don't take the SAT and generally don't complete any degree program.
Any college worth attending demands both competence and effort for success... and the old-fashioned liberal-arts school, the old model, wasn;t for dullards. But note well: there are plenty of jobs in which the stupider one is the happier one will be doing them.
OK, getting into a selective college or university is itself quite an achievement. Graduating from an accredited college or universit of any kind is a genuine achievement. Someone who has done so has shown something out of the ordinary. Maybe it does not mean that one has specific knowledge immediately useful on the job, but it does mean that one can learn certain things not taught in college. It also suggests that one pays attention to detail and has some persistence with something intellectually difficult but still possible.
What, ideally, is the purpose of a college education? To make big money? No. Skilled trades pay better than most college majors. Owning and operating a small business may be even better for long-term earnings. It is to learn how to live well with resources available. With all the sophisticated technology available, people need to learn to separate the chaff from the jewels in life. This is especially true with the Internet. There's really-sick stuff on the Internet, and people who dive into that sewer (let us say Holocaust denial) and take its contents uncritically have big problems.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
