A Columbia University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Interview with University Professor and sociologist Jonathan R. Cole. Read the full interview here, on the College of Arts and Sciences page.
Posted by admin | 0 commentsIs the modern university able to change? A Websites claim to provide free free-credits-report.com reports and scores, but you rarely get what they promise. panel, moderated by Nick Lemann and featuring Jonathan Cole, discusses the transformation of higher education in the 21st century at the 2013 TIME Summit on Higher Education.
Posted by admin | 0 commentsThe University of Texas at Arlington”s Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program presents “America”s great universities: today and tomorrow,” a lecture and book-signing by Jonathan R. Cole. Cole frotingslot is the John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University and Provost and Dean of Faculties, Emeritus at Columbia University and a best-selling author.
Reception to follow.
Posted by admin | 0 commentsIn the early 20th century, the distinguished philosopher Alfred North Whitehead observed: “The task of the university is the creation of the future…” Harvard”s current president, Drew Gilpin Faust, noted that this creative work is done “by educat[ing] those to whom the future belongs, and by generating the ideas and discoveries that can transform the present and build a better world.”
This is the mission of great universities and the United States has been preeminent in the world at translating these goals into the reality that has improved our lives. Yet, perhaps paradoxically, our international leadership in higher education is under threat from nations that apparently understand better than we do that investment in human capital and knowledge creation hold the key to economic well-being in the future. Asian and south Asia societies, like China and India, are investing roughly 3 percent or more of their GDP in higher education; the United States is investing about 2.7 percent of its GDP in its universities and research related activities. The trend line in America is down; in Asia it is up. Too many Americans apparently prefer believing in magic rather than what has worked over the past 100 years to improve America”s welfare and competitiveness. What accounts for this paradox?
Americans say they strongly believe in exceptional educational systems. They want their kids to attend college and to get good, well-paying, prestigious jobs. In surveys a significant majority say they are willing to pay higher taxes to support medical research (largely conducted at our best universities) that is designed to cure or treat diseases, like cancer or Alzheimer”s. Yet, it seems quite clear that these same people have very little idea about the mechanisms that must be put in place for the preeminence of our greatest universities to continue. Their revealed preferences don”t match their aspirations for their children. They seem lost and rely on what can only be described as “magical thinking.” If they wish the University of California to remain great, it will somehow materialize without investments — perhaps out of the ether. If they want Arizona State University to help create a new type of American university that emphasizes innovation, new combinations of disciplines, and access for the needy, it will simply happen regardless of what they do to affect these outcomes and certainly without raising public money to pay for it. This magical thinking is also present when Americans consider how to repair broken K-12 educational systems that feed institutions of higher learning.
Those who see investments in education and research as critical to our future, including liberal Congressional leaders and President Obama, have been remarkably inept at producing crisp narratives about why education and innovation hold the key to our future. Not so on the far political right, where politicians and their consultants have become experts at producing narratives, regardless of their truth value, that resonate with too many Americans. Consequently, all reasonable initiatives to solve our K through 12 schooling and public university problems are stalled at the state level. And, at the federal level, this ineffective leadership has led us to the brink of decline of our great universities. It is no wonder that only nine percent of the American people today have any trust in the ability of Congress to pass meaningful legislation.
These educational challenges, which are interrelated, occur at the elementary and secondary school level and at the level of higher learning. They are interrelated because without a well-functioning lower school system in the United States, we don”t have the talent that we need entering universities — a paucity of trained youngsters who eventually take up positions that produce the scientific and technical discoveries, as well as medical cures for disease, that propel our society forward. In the absence of this “feeder” system, we must rely on recruiting talent from abroad. We become as dependent on a brain drain from abroad as we do on foreign oil. It is a national imperative to create an internal flow of extraordinary talent to these seats of learning.
And at the feeder level (K-12) we are doing increasingly poorly compared with small countries like Finland and large ones like China. The United States could be proud of their educational system during much of the 20th century. It was the most egalitarian and truly offered those without great means opportunities for upward social mobility — and the chance to become significant innovators. Now, one only hopes that high schools don”t sap the creativity out of their students in the process of “educating” them. The occupation of teacher used to attract exceptionally able women (in part because they were discriminated against by gatekeepers of the highly prestigious professions) and very able men — many with Ph.D.s in their subject. That has all changed. In the United States, and most other western countries that have had declining scores, the prestige of school teacher has fallen in recent decades, and those with real talent and desire to aid youngsters in schools (such as those in programs like Teach for America), tend to leave the system after only a few years — dispirited by what they have experienced. 1
In cross-national testing of mathematical and science achievement Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS), the U.S. fared poorly in 2007 among fourth and eighth grade students. Asian countries dominated the top scores; the United States was in the middle of the pack of industrialized nations. In a 2009 examination of skills of 15-year-olds on the latest PISA tests, conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations, Shanghai students scored highest in science with a 575 PISA score while their U.S. counterparts ranked 23rd out of the 33 participating nations with a score of 502.2 The average score was 500. What can one expect when in the United States only about 15% of the teachers of physics and the other sciences actually hold certificates and degrees in these fields.
Finland, however, finished second behind Shanghai with a score of 554. The same pattern of results obtained for reading scores (the United States scored 500 and was in the middle of the pack) and it fared even worse for math scores, with the United States students scoring 487 or tied for last, compared with 600 for the Shanghai, Chinese students. Why would a country like Finland, which once was among the lowest ranking nations on these tests, shoot to the top? Because it adopted a conscious policy of paying teachers much the same salaries that doctors, lawyers, and other professionals earn, and, perhaps more importantly, by consciously trying to raise the prestige of the profession. In China, where rote learning is used to excess, there is nonetheless, a quintessential value placed on educational achievement and its practical consequences for Chinese society — even to the point where grandparents are willing to forgo needed surgery to save money for their grandchildren in the hope that their grandchildren will pass the extraordinarily demanding examinations that leads to college admissions.
So what needs to be done?
First, we must abandon our magical thinking that we can get something for nothing or that quality will simply materialize out of the ether, and figure out ways, including increasing the marginal tax rates on substantial incomes, so that those who have benefited most from our nation”s prosperity carry their fair share of sacrifice in producing both access and educational opportunity for talented young people. We currently have one of the lowest marginal tax rates in the industrial world. This is a small part of the inequalities that the Occupy Wall Street movement is bringing to the consciousness of Americans. The “haves” go to outstanding private or public schools, and their families have the resources to see that they are on the track to high prestige universities and well-paying jobs; the “have-nots” are stuck in a quagmire of mediocrity that is not receiving the resources and effort needed to provide a foothold to begin the process of social online casinos mobility. The second group represents the vast majority of our youngsters and their families.
Second, we must alter the mentality of the wealthier members in the United States, who resent “paying” for other children to go to school. It won”t be easy, but they must come to understand and believe that contributing in a small way to the education of young people from poor and middle-class backgrounds actually helps them and all of the community by the increased prosperity that comes from a better-educated population. In short, we have got to raise revenues and not be embarrassed to invest in our children and in our schools.
Third, we need political leaders who are willing to risk their jobs by adhering to decent values and principles — one of which is being committed to investing in K-12 and higher education.
Fourth, the people must become active agents in demanding resources — transferred from the very rich (
The one percent still doesn”t get it. This tiny but distinct minority, who control over 40 percent of this nation”s wealth and consequently its political decision-making power, believe that it is their individual endowments, their distinctiveness and talents that have determined their wealth — that they are, in fact, “superior” individuals.
The reactions to the inspirational OWS movement — and parallel movements elsewhere in the nation and abroad — among the super rich suggest that few understand the basic concepts of culture, social systems, and opportunity structure. Moreover, they have little idea of the consequences of social structure on social outcomes. Being the beneficiaries of a culture and social system that has favored them throughout their lives, they would like us to believe that their affluence and power is a direct result of their hard work, their innovative skills, and their intelligence. Theirs are beliefs of total individualism divorced from any societal facilitators or constraints. Moreover, they wish to create the illusion that they embody the American Dream — that anyone, regardless of where they are born, their color, their gender, their socioeconomic status at birth, can achieve their level of wealth through hard work and talent — despite this being patently false.
What basic understanding is lacking among these new gilded few? Social and behavioral scientists have studied social stratification for over 100 years. Since the 1960s there is a large and growing body of literature that attempts to predict quantitatively who will and who won”t succeed in American society. What are the most important factors that determine success? In many ways the results are unsurprising, yet under-appreciated by those who are the “winners.” Let”s put to one side the arrogance of those who have inherited their wealth and look only at those who supposedly begin the race at the same starting line. The facts of social life betray this idea that there is a single starting line.
First, family background makes a huge difference. The educational achievements of your father and mother have a very significant effect on a child”s achievement, independent of other factors. If you happen to be born into a family that lives in the Hollywood Hills and go to the Harvard-Westlake school, your life chances, from birth, are vastly greater than if you are born into a poor, poverty level family in Kansas City and go to one of the local public schools — even if these two children who were born into different worlds actually have equal ability. Both of these youngsters are born into a culture and subcultures — into positions in an existing social system — that are constraining. These subcultures have different values, norms, obligations, and attached to them are opportunities. The luck of birth gives these two children highly different chances of ultimately becoming part of the 1 percent. The simple fact is that the kid born into the home of a welfare mom in Kansas City is running life”s race with a different weight on his back — a kid who is apt to go to a subpar or failing school compared with the kid whose parents have his future mapped out from the elite preschool to the Harvard-Westlake school to an Ivy League institution — and has the money to pay for it all, as well as to contribute millions to the school”s fundraising efforts. Simply put, the educational achievement of parents is transferred from one generation to the next through the educational opportunities given their children, with all of the attending advantages that they gain in the process.
Second, the quality and prestige and income of the jobs held by parents are also very good predictors of the success of their offspring. Many of these factors are correlated with each other. They work in concert to differentiate the life chances of children from different backgrounds. And of course, being a woman, being a member of a minority group, being from an impoverished uneducated family, determine life chances that are vastly inferior to those of the sons and daughters of Wall Street bankers whose children attend the best private and public schools from age 3 to 30. They are the ones who are tutored in any subject that they seem to be doing poorly at so that they will have a crack at Ivy League schools or their equivalents. They have the funds to take SAT tutorial or tutorials of any kind in order to give them a leg up on those who can”t afford such questionable practices. And this is all planned out from the time these kids are weaned.
Third, because of where they are located in the social system, these privileged youngsters of the 1 percent have further cumulating advantages in the people that they meet and the social networks they form. If you go to Harvard, Yale, or Columbia, you establish friendships with people who provide you with opportunities through their connections. It is, as the Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter has put it: “The strength of weak ties.” Friendship patterns, which are often the result of a family being well placed in the social system and an individual”s attending elite schools, influence the ability of an individual to get a foot in the door of the major corporations, banks, industries, and academia, and alter the probability of them obtaining jobs at the top rungs in the stratification ladder – giving them still greater cumulating advantages compared with others with equal or more talent.
Finally, let”s not forget the element of “luck” in the process that leads to success. While social scientists rarely study “luck” as a concrete phenomena, we know from personal story after story that many of those who have achieved great success speak of having been lucky by being in “the right place at the right time.” There but for fortune go I.
So who are those among the 1 percent — these new captains of industry? Many of them are extremely talented and have worked very hard to achieve their current positions. They believe that a What is a credit report agencies Score? credit report agencies scores are important, but what is a credit score? A credit score is a number that says something about you and your borrowing history. market system unencumbered by a government that acts to distribute wealth more equitably is antithetical to national welfare. They believe that thanks to their achievements a significant portion of the nation”s wealth will trickle down to the 99 percent – despite their being no evidence to support this theory. Even the wealth that the 1 percent has garnered would not be so objectionable if they were willing to share it with those less fortunate than they are – and support their larger contributions through higher marginal tax rates – to help the general welfare of the society. As Elizabeth Warren, who does understand the idea of social structure, suggested recently in a stump speech, this 1 percent doesn”t seem to recognize that the roads that they drive to work on or the workers who are skilled enough to get jobs in their businesses are products of the 99 percent”s tax dollars and are the products of government programs. The resistance of the 1 percent to a higher marginal tax rate or other forms of economic redistribution is testimony to the erosion over the past 30 or 40 years of the ideas of contributions to “the common” and of civic virtue. It would not be a bad idea if they came to define greater equality of income and wealth as part of their civic responsibility. After all, most of them have had opportunities to achieve, independently of their IQ, or their other intelligences, that few others in American society have had.
There is a continuing motif among the critics of the OWS movement that the protesters are against a market economy. While some may be, it is a mistake to characterize them this way. The OWS is not opposed to market principles, but like the vast majority of our most prominent economists, they do not believe in uncontrolled laissez-faire market mechanisms. There is a role and responsibility of government to intervene when it comes to determining that there is more economic justice in our society. That greater economic equality — that basic sense of justice — is what OWS wants and is protesting for. Let markets work to produce certain efficiencies, but let us all support the idea that while some people can earn great sums of money, some of that money and wealth ought to be returned to the rest of society to improve social and economic condition of the 99 percent. The inequalities cannot be sustained.
Remarkably, many among the 99 percent, including large numbers of Tea Party supporters, match the lack of understanding among the one percent of these key aspects of our society. A remarkable feature of the United States today is that a high percentage of the less fortunate, whose income has not changed much for 20 years, who have lost their jobs and who have been forced to foreclose on their homes, suffer from false consciousness, believing that they actually have a chance of becoming part of the one percent if the government would just get off their backs. How little they understand, unfortunately, about the realities of opportunity structure.
The super-rich, one percent, needs to acknowledge to themselves that the social system of American society has enabled them to use their talents and the talents of others in ways that payoff. Now it is time for them to recognize that a more just society includes a wider distribution of wealth and power. Until the 1970s, this was the working assumption of those who made millions. Now that value of civic virtue has been lost. The OWS movement is trying to bring those older civic virtues back to the consciousness of the American people.
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