50 years ago, in college, I stumbled across a bar graph, doing some reading for a sociology course which struck me as outrageous, unbelievable and heretical: What it did was to plot IQ scores across the US population in 1955 and it showed that the highest numbers of people with very high IQ scores lived in the middle class, among factory workers on assembly lines, people who owned Mom and Pop stores, mailmen, people who, for the most part, had only high school educations.
I wrote my father--this was an era before cell phones and long distance phone calls were reserved for emergencies; so I wrote him a letter--saying this struck me as preposterous and I could not believe this trash had made it into one of the most widely read textbooks of its time.
My father, whose career in the Labor Department and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, brought him into constant contact with numbers like these wrote back, amused. Of course most of the high IQ scores were distributed across the middle classes in higher absolute numbers: It was obvious this should be true, because there were so many more people in the middle class.
He went on to tweak me with another question: The real question is, how many people among the upper classes, what percentage of the upper classes, have high IQ's? Or, asked another way, are the rich, on average, more intelligent than the poor or the middle class?
I, of course, assumed the answer is yes, the rich are smarter; that's why they are rich.
Although I was attending college at one of the "second tier" colleges, not Harvard, Yale or Princeton, I had absorbed the idea throughout my three years at a highly competitive high school that "the cream rises to the top," and those top tier colleges are filled with only the very best and brightest minds and those people would go on to populate the ruling class, as it should be in a meritocracy like the United States.
My father laughed at all that. He had gone to CCNY, "The Harvard of the Proletariat," they called it. Students at CCNY worked two jobs and went to class (when they could) at that city run college in Hamilton Heights, hard by Harlem and they did not believe for a moment that kids at Harvard, Yale or Princeton were any smarter than they were.
They all knew that exchange between Hemingway and Fitzgerald:
Fitzgerald: "You know, Ernie, the rich are different."
Hemingway: "Yes, they have more money."
Even today, I cannot shake my long ago acquired prejudices and snobbery about colleges. I hear people who attended Northern Essex Community College, or Phoenix on line college or Chico Community College say they are college graduates and I smirk inwardly, much as I try not to. That's not real college I think.
But then I ask: What is college, really?
David Leonhardt writing in the NYT "The Assault on Colleges--and the American Dream" shows a graph which shows spending by states on state colleges is way down--the only two states have cut spending its university system more than New Hampshire (52% since 2008).
But then I think about what that experience of college really means. Is it transformative intellectually, personally? Does it shape character?
I think of my wife's brother, a very bright guy, likely one of those high IQ guys I had written my father about, who dropped out of New Mexico State and became a welder at a GE plant making airplane engines. Now welding at that level, air planes, is not your old fashion soldering thing, or even Rosie the Riveter. It's more like high tech physics. After 15 years on the line, he had moved up steadily and people would bring their questions to him and management called him in and told him they wanted to move him up into management, to run an big division, but he had never graduated college and GE could not put a man into management if he did not have a college degree.
"Well, what do you want me to get a degree in?"
"Anything, really. Literature, basket weaving, just get a degree."
"I think I'll stay where I am," he told them.
So they appointed some guy who had spent four years drinking beer on the fraternity porch at Chico State, who, predictably, proved to be a disaster and ultimately they made the exception for my brother-in-law and he retired 15 years later, at age 55 with a good pension. His siblings, all of whom graduated from college were still working into their 60's, unable to retire, financially.
It should be noted that when it comes to social cache, Oxford and Cambridge universities in England carry at least as much as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, but the English colleges are only 3 years.
In England, college is not considered important for medical training and their doctors go from high school to medical school.
So what really happens to a person who goes to college?
I suspect something quite different can happen to the person who goes to a residential college, away from home, away from parents, at age 17 or 18 than what happens to someone who commutes from his parents' home.
But, in either case, beyond the inevitable maturation of the brain, and neuronal connections, does the college experience make any difference to the competence of the person most concerned?
Well, if that person has taken a course in engineering, very likely.
On the other hand, if he has studied almost anything else, biology, math, economics this may allow him to apply to the next level of training, but likely those courses did not really "prepare" him for the next sequence of learning.
And for those who studied English literature, sociology, Greek, Latin, history, political science, philosophy, anthropology, if they are lucky, their minds have been opened, but they are no better bets to be good staffers on Capitol Hill or advertising firm employees, or administrators than people who never went to college.
When I see a college degree on an application now, I think, well, this person is more likely to be able to show up for work on time and to complete a task assigned on deadline than the person who never went to college, but I'm often disappointed there.
Most often, the difference I see between college grads and people who have not done college is the way they fill out written forms: The college grads fill in the answers to the questions completely, thoughtfully, often interact with the written page in thorough and creative ways. The people who have not gone to college skip questions, barely answer the questions they do focus on. Looking at those pages, you might think they are barely literate.
The first allocation of government dollars for state schools was made by the United States Congress in the midst of the Civil War, around 1862, when money was set aside for land grant colleges, among them Cornell and Berkeley. In the 19th century, when access to information was highly limited, that became an engine for an education that made a real difference in what people knew, in their value as employees and their fund of knowledge. Lincoln said he hoped more people would have that experience he lacked, going to college. In Lincoln's day you did not need to go to college to go to law school and in fact you did not need to go to law school to pass the Bar. In fact, I'm not sure those requirements for college and law school today have played any useful societal role other than to separate the professional class from those who could not afford the time or money to enter it through the gauntlet of schools
I'm not sure, in the 21st century, college can play that same role, and if that is true, I'm not sure we should make college a requirement as we have in the past, and I'm not sure we should attribute the same value to that credential.
A friend married a Japanese man and lives in Tokyo. Her children's Japanese grandparents are very concerned these two girls get the highest level of education in Japan, where the scholastic hierarchy is very clear among the universities. There are only two American colleges these Japanese grandparents would consider adequate. Not Harvard. Not Yale. Not Princeton. These schools are considered insufficiently rigorous. Too touchy feely. Not tough enough.
The one school which carries heft in Japan is MIT, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That school they respect.
The other is Wellesley College.
Go figure.
I wrote my father--this was an era before cell phones and long distance phone calls were reserved for emergencies; so I wrote him a letter--saying this struck me as preposterous and I could not believe this trash had made it into one of the most widely read textbooks of its time.
He went on to tweak me with another question: The real question is, how many people among the upper classes, what percentage of the upper classes, have high IQ's? Or, asked another way, are the rich, on average, more intelligent than the poor or the middle class?
I, of course, assumed the answer is yes, the rich are smarter; that's why they are rich.
Although I was attending college at one of the "second tier" colleges, not Harvard, Yale or Princeton, I had absorbed the idea throughout my three years at a highly competitive high school that "the cream rises to the top," and those top tier colleges are filled with only the very best and brightest minds and those people would go on to populate the ruling class, as it should be in a meritocracy like the United States.
 |
| The Harvard of the Proletariat |
My father laughed at all that. He had gone to CCNY, "The Harvard of the Proletariat," they called it. Students at CCNY worked two jobs and went to class (when they could) at that city run college in Hamilton Heights, hard by Harlem and they did not believe for a moment that kids at Harvard, Yale or Princeton were any smarter than they were.
They all knew that exchange between Hemingway and Fitzgerald:
Fitzgerald: "You know, Ernie, the rich are different."
Hemingway: "Yes, they have more money."
Even today, I cannot shake my long ago acquired prejudices and snobbery about colleges. I hear people who attended Northern Essex Community College, or Phoenix on line college or Chico Community College say they are college graduates and I smirk inwardly, much as I try not to. That's not real college I think.
But then I ask: What is college, really?
David Leonhardt writing in the NYT "The Assault on Colleges--and the American Dream" shows a graph which shows spending by states on state colleges is way down--the only two states have cut spending its university system more than New Hampshire (52% since 2008).
But then I think about what that experience of college really means. Is it transformative intellectually, personally? Does it shape character?
I think of my wife's brother, a very bright guy, likely one of those high IQ guys I had written my father about, who dropped out of New Mexico State and became a welder at a GE plant making airplane engines. Now welding at that level, air planes, is not your old fashion soldering thing, or even Rosie the Riveter. It's more like high tech physics. After 15 years on the line, he had moved up steadily and people would bring their questions to him and management called him in and told him they wanted to move him up into management, to run an big division, but he had never graduated college and GE could not put a man into management if he did not have a college degree.
"Well, what do you want me to get a degree in?"
"Anything, really. Literature, basket weaving, just get a degree."
"I think I'll stay where I am," he told them.
So they appointed some guy who had spent four years drinking beer on the fraternity porch at Chico State, who, predictably, proved to be a disaster and ultimately they made the exception for my brother-in-law and he retired 15 years later, at age 55 with a good pension. His siblings, all of whom graduated from college were still working into their 60's, unable to retire, financially.
It should be noted that when it comes to social cache, Oxford and Cambridge universities in England carry at least as much as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, but the English colleges are only 3 years.
In England, college is not considered important for medical training and their doctors go from high school to medical school.
So what really happens to a person who goes to college?
I suspect something quite different can happen to the person who goes to a residential college, away from home, away from parents, at age 17 or 18 than what happens to someone who commutes from his parents' home.
 |
| Graduate of Wharton, Ivy League |
But, in either case, beyond the inevitable maturation of the brain, and neuronal connections, does the college experience make any difference to the competence of the person most concerned?
Well, if that person has taken a course in engineering, very likely.
On the other hand, if he has studied almost anything else, biology, math, economics this may allow him to apply to the next level of training, but likely those courses did not really "prepare" him for the next sequence of learning.
And for those who studied English literature, sociology, Greek, Latin, history, political science, philosophy, anthropology, if they are lucky, their minds have been opened, but they are no better bets to be good staffers on Capitol Hill or advertising firm employees, or administrators than people who never went to college.
When I see a college degree on an application now, I think, well, this person is more likely to be able to show up for work on time and to complete a task assigned on deadline than the person who never went to college, but I'm often disappointed there.
Most often, the difference I see between college grads and people who have not done college is the way they fill out written forms: The college grads fill in the answers to the questions completely, thoughtfully, often interact with the written page in thorough and creative ways. The people who have not gone to college skip questions, barely answer the questions they do focus on. Looking at those pages, you might think they are barely literate.
 |
| Never went to college; Hoped others could have what he did not |
The first allocation of government dollars for state schools was made by the United States Congress in the midst of the Civil War, around 1862, when money was set aside for land grant colleges, among them Cornell and Berkeley. In the 19th century, when access to information was highly limited, that became an engine for an education that made a real difference in what people knew, in their value as employees and their fund of knowledge. Lincoln said he hoped more people would have that experience he lacked, going to college. In Lincoln's day you did not need to go to college to go to law school and in fact you did not need to go to law school to pass the Bar. In fact, I'm not sure those requirements for college and law school today have played any useful societal role other than to separate the professional class from those who could not afford the time or money to enter it through the gauntlet of schools
I'm not sure, in the 21st century, college can play that same role, and if that is true, I'm not sure we should make college a requirement as we have in the past, and I'm not sure we should attribute the same value to that credential.
 |
| Thinks college is important |
A friend married a Japanese man and lives in Tokyo. Her children's Japanese grandparents are very concerned these two girls get the highest level of education in Japan, where the scholastic hierarchy is very clear among the universities. There are only two American colleges these Japanese grandparents would consider adequate. Not Harvard. Not Yale. Not Princeton. These schools are considered insufficiently rigorous. Too touchy feely. Not tough enough.
The one school which carries heft in Japan is MIT, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That school they respect.
The other is Wellesley College.
Go figure.
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