Corporations and Government and Education – Excellent Analysis by Frank Bruni in NY Times

Source: Corporations Will Inherit the Earth – The New York Times I posted this comment on the page. Here is Thomas Jefferson on the importance of the type of education that is critical to democracy but not to corporations.   “…Preach…a crusade against ignorance…improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know […]

Maybe We’ve Been Thinking About the Productivity Slump All Wrong – The New York Times Me: You Betcha

Source: Maybe We’ve Been Thinking About the Productivity Slump All Wrong – The New York Times Here is what I wrote To paraphrase a politician, “It’s the education, stupid.” But, don’t we have the greatest universities in the world? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that those universities are doing anything to broadly disseminate knowledge. Our […]

David Brooks See the Symptom – But Not the Disease

Source: Mis-Educating the Young – The New York Times Here is my comment. You have described the symptoms well, but you have missed the disease. The disease is letting higher education operate as a market economy – while assuming that, as a non-profit, it is altruistic. Just listen to Clark Kerr and David Riesman on […]

“Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs” (NYT) But Here is Why, and They Shouldn’t

Source: Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs – The New York Times I wrote why, at least in my opinion> The keyword is “SKILLS”, as in “If you worked in Detroit for 10 years, you don’t have the skills to go into health care..” (quoting Prof. Acemoglu) I don’t believe that […]

Making America Great Again Isn’t Just About Money and Power – The New York Times

No, it’s about education.  Here is my comment. Op-Eds like this are insightful, well thought out, and well argued, but – and it’s a gigantic “but”, with a gigantically hard solution – what proportion of today’s voters will ever hear this argument, or even understand it if they did? And why? Let’s skip the obvious […]

Just Grade, Please.

Turning college into a zero-sum game hurts their chances of succeeding after graduation. Source: Why We Should Stop Grading Students on a Curve Here’s my take. I’m a former math professor. From my experience, all of this fuss about grading is really a fuss about how students “feel”; that is, how they feel about their […]

Frank Bruni Recognizes the “Customer” Mentality

“…It’s not only at Stanford and at Ivy League and Ivy­like schools that students have gone from being competitors to clients. That’s a shift that’s occurred over recent decades and over the last decade in particular at scores if not hundreds of colleges. And I think customers is a better word for it than clients, […]

Let’s Stop Worrying About the Wrong Problem (Dropping Out) and Address the Real Problem (Not Getting An Education Even IF They Stay In)

Simple steps raise the graduation rate, especially among minority students. Source: What Can Stop Kids From Dropping Out – The New York Times#commentsContainer I wrote: Let’s stop worrying about them dropping out and start worrying about them actually getting an education. With a couple of years of REAL education they can drop out and get […]

Why Is Productivity So Weak? Three Theories That Miss The Mark. My Advice? Read Piketty.

The rate of economic output is not increasing much. Or is there work below the surface that will pay big dividends in the future? Source: Why Is Productivity So Weak? Three Theories – The New York Times The answer if obvious. Here is how to see it. First, do a search for “diffusion of knowledge” […]