Every year, a few days before the Academy Awards, CNBC reviews the movie industry. When judged on things like profits and return on investment, it underperforms because so many people like Karenna Gore or Alexandra Kerry who need to be supported.

Boring things like Supply Chain management are part of the knowledge based economy but boring, thus no one at Andover will want to work in that field.

The last thing that anyone who attend Sidwell Friends, the Dalton School, or Andover wants to do is try to make a living in the knowledge based, high tech economy. They would much prefer to produce plays, mangement not-for-profits, or write movie scripts. The elite in this country leave it to others to do the hard work of moving the economy forward.

What do you think the knowledge-based economy is? Content produces more value than hardware. One of the most successful businesses in the US — and one of our most successful exports — is the product that comes out of Hollywood. If the rest of the economy ran as well as Hollywood we’d have a staggeringly positive balance of trade. We dominate movie-making, TV, publishing, and not coincidentally, software.

Two of my CC debaters went on to straight-A performances at four-year schools. One is headed for law school right now, the other is nationally ranked top-5 in debate and is probably going to wind up in a top-10 grad program.

And some vitally important types of education programs can only be found at the CC level. I’ve seen estimates of a national shortage of plumbers and mechanics in the hundreds of thousands in the next 20 years because we have, as a society, encouraged far too many people to enter the liberal arts and social sciences rather than paying attention to our “infrastructure workers”. So when Sen. Clinton says that we need to pay more attention and greater respect to those career paths, I think she’s on to something valid regardless of whatever her motives might be.

I have mixed feelings about community colleges. They produce many of the medical technicians that I work with everyday. A certified PET/CT tech can probably make more than someone with a PhD in English who is not in a tenured track position.

However, I went to undergraduate with people who tried to do their first two years at junior college and then tried to major in Engineering, physics, and biochemistry. They almosted always failed. Taking calculus and organic chemistry at a Juco is, in my opnion, not the same as taking it at an engineering school.

I’m saying they don’t really care, and I don’t think they will until they start losing elections and/or there are riots.

Would you feel the same community colleges if you did not have a financial stake in them.

Yes. Having taught and coached debate at community college, state university, and private four-year university, I have developed a strong respect for community colleges and their students. The common assumption that community colleges are just dumping grounds for students that can’t hack “better” schools is completely wrong. I perceive that conceit lying underneath the rhetoric of those who disparage denigrate community colleges.

Also, because I competed in and coached debate, I ran across quite a few of those Ivy League students. It was fun to beat them silly, but the frequency with which that was possible proves incorrect the assumption that Ivt League schools are objectively better in any way. In fact, a lot of the evidence shows that the best undergraduate teaching is NOT found in Ivy League schools or even the big state research schools, but in the private schools and in the community colleges where administration actually CARES about teaching.

I think parents who choose to send their kids to community college first are often buying a bargain at twice the price. Students can move on to the big state university or they can get a highly lucrative certification just at the CC. Do you have any idea how much a good plumber makes these days? Compare it to an English PhD, you’ll be shocked.

But I don’t agree that the rich are incapable of providing good ideas for the poor, or the healthy can’t provide good cures for the sick. The poor and sick are just as capable of being corrupt, self-serving and just plain wrong as the rich.
It depends on the person and that person’s knowledge.

I was just glad these topics are beginning to be talked about.

Laura Says:
May 30th, 2007 at 9:03 am
I’m not sure what you are implying here Jason. You think she would pull a Hugo Chavez?

I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in for this question…for some reason I believe she’d try to pull that kind of stuff…I believe she is on a quest for power and will do what it takes to fill that apatite…but then again anyone in a position of power would try to do the same thing if given the opportunity, IMHO.

The truth is, people like Hillary and the rest of our ruling elite see society through the gates of their community and private schools. You can’t expect them to be concerned about public schools or declining quality of public services or health care.

These people have enough money to be insulated from the rest of society and I fear it’s going to have to get a lot worse for the rest of us, before it gets any better.

anyone else taking notice how the Clinton camp is playing to, or off, the timing of Obama?

She withheld her Iraq vote disclosure up to within minutes of Obama

Now, Obama makes some disclosure on healthcare and Clinton is now shifting to sweeping domestic policy disclosures.

Coincidence?

Just as interesting to me is that Ms. Hillary has seemed to try to stay slightly right of Obama on foreign policy and now this would indicate trying to go left of him on domestic.

Carville and Begala must be knee-deep in political triangulation calcs.

He’s making Kerry and Bush seem almost stubborn.

It’s too bad these issues are being discussed piecemeal: one day it’s healthcare, the next jobs, and the next educaion.
It looks to me like all of these things are tied together, and they paint a picture of a society where upward mobility has less and less influence.

This should concern the rich as well. They want the country to look the same and to function the same as it has in the past. That will become increasingly less likely if the country stagnates into a fairly rigid class system.

These problems should rifhtfully be seen as problems for all of us, not just those holding the short end of the stick. Prevention usually costs a lot less than curing a disease.

But for jobs that creating and evaluate intellectual goods, universities produce much better people than trade schools, and the top tier are much better than everyone else (a lot of this could be self selection bias as well). I would be fine with a government administrator being from a CC, but on average most of the policy creators should be from the best schools. [I do have a caveat which is that I think a lot of problems are caused because all the policy people come from the same background and think the same way. Intelligent people from all backgrounds need to work as "checks" to keep people honest with different modes of thinking. In my theoretical administration, 90% of the policy creators would be from the traditional places, but 10% would be vastly different and each have their own niche. Often times I'd care most about those 10% checking off on an idea.]

Everyone wishes we had a better and broader and more affordable health-care system.

Is that really true? I’m pretty sure our Republican friends (like Mitt Romney who thinks that every thing is A-OK in America) have long opposed any change to our health care system. It’s the best in the world damnit!

Would you feel the same community colleges if you did not have a financial stake in them. The problem with Senators Clinton and Obama is that they do not walk the walk when it comes to education. They fill their operational staffs with Ivy leaguers who all went to prep schools because they perceive them as being smarter and better. But they fill their administrative staffs with the idiot children of donors.

My guess is that in a possible Obama Administration that every high level appointee who is white will be an Ivy League (or similar type) and that only the minority appointments will have any public university graduates among them. The same will probably occur in a possible Clinton Administration but the minoritiy appointees will also be Ivy Leaguers.