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Clinton Foundation: Kids' Lack of CS Savvy Threatens the US Economy
theodp writes: As the press digs for details on Clinton Foundation donations, including a reported $26+ million from Microsoft and Bill Gates, it's probably worth noting the interest the Clintons have developed in computer science and the role they have played — and continue to play — in the national K-12 CS and tech immigration crisis that materialized after Microsoft proposed creating such a crisis to advance its 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy, which aims to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas. Next thing you know, Bill is the face of CS at the launch of Code.org. Then Hillary uses the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) conference to launch a Facebook, Microsoft, and Google initiative to boost the ranks of female and students of color in CS, and starts decrying woeful CS enrollment. Not to be left out, Chelsea keynotes the NCWIT Summit and launches Google's $50M girls-only Made With Code initiative with now-U.S. CTO Megan Smith. And last December, the Clinton Foundation touted its initiatives to engage middle school girls in CS, revamp the nation's AP CS program, and retrain out-of-work Americans as coders. At next month's CGI America 2015, the conference will kick off with a Beer Bust that CGI says "will also provide an opportunity to learn about Tech Girls Rock, a CGI Commitment to Action launched by CA Technologies in partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America that helps girls discover an interest in tech-related educational opportunities and careers." On the following days, CGI sessions will discuss tech's need for a strong and diverse talent pipeline for computer and information technology jobs, which it says is threatened by "the persistent poor performance of American students in science, technology, engineering, and math," presenting "serious implications for the long-term competitiveness of the U.S. economy." So what's the long-term solution? Expanding CS education, of course!
The possibility of a good paying job in software development when they graduate college. Maybe even with the company paying off their student loans for them.
Instead of the chance to compete against low-balling H1B applicants...
These kids should learn by running their own email server at home!
Please, we want to make wage cuts, but thats only possible if the job market leans on our side.
-Women aren't in tech because the STEM world is misogynistic
-I'll bet you are a women's studies major
-Yes I am, what has that got to do with it?
-Why didn't you study STEM?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Preparing kids for jobs that won't exist when the graduate college.
Knowing how to code is one thing, but if you can't problem solve beyond the examples in a text book, you're useless.
Attacking schools isn't always the answer either. A lot of it has to do with home life. A kid whose parents don't care and are poor makes a HUGE difference. You can make school flawless but if the kid goes back to the trailer park it will be hard for him/her to ever leave the trailer park.
Your damned H1B visa program threatens the US, as does allowing outsourcing of jobs that work with PCI data of American Citizens.
Fix those fuckups first, then you can talk..
I've got a PhD in CS, and I grew up with the U.S. education system of the 1970's and 80's. I had playground time, and little formalized national testing. I'll bet few of the Turing award winners or ACM Fellows were educated in the manner advocated by today's politicians and Plutocrats.
If they're so eager to make good computer scientists, one might ask if they're willing to reproduce the educational environments of those luminaries.
What ever it is they are on about, you can be sure it is NOT Computer Science . Maybe they're talking about programming skills, or maybe even the inability of many kids to operate an interface without instruction, not sure... I did not RTFS.
Given recent developments with the Clinton Foundation and investigations into criminal acceptance of certain money I don't think they should be worrying about tech edu, lol.
Startups that let you buy things at the press of a button? Advertising agencies that make 1984's Big Brother surveillance look tame? AI that tells the government if you're planning a rebellion? Fancier videogames?
CS isn't going to help anyone.
Does it really make sense to spend money on CS education while importing cheap H1B labor?
As long as you're spending someone else's money.
No, just no.
Also, "girls-only Made With Code initiative" sounds bad. It's fine if they want to have programs for girls but let boys join if they want, but to restrict it to girls-only crosses the line in my opinion.
http://www.universityherald.com/articles/10007/20140619/google-girls-computer-science-coding-bracelets-code.htm
Maybe we should start a program focusing on comprehension. I don't know if they know what "only" means... in reference to the above.
Why is theodp so much against CS education for children? And why does he mention H1-B's always in his articles? Is he afraid that kids and brown people are going to take his jerbs?
US businesses and multinationals who have decided to close domestic production, offshore jobs, bring in H1B Visas to do the work, and generally have decided they don't really want a free market, they want a 'free' market in which they are free to change the rules in their favor by bringing in externalities.
This whole bullshit about needing to cram kids into CS as well as making sure there are no jobs for them (or at the very least lower paying ones) isn't going to save your economy.
You're letting a billionaire call the shots about what he thinks will work better for rich billionaires in tech companies. Now what it actually better for the country as a whole.
So, stop giving corporations tax breaks and letting them move your jobs offshore. That will do more to help your economy than anything else.
And while you're at it, stop listening to the fucking libertarians whose economic models come down to wishful thinking and fantasy. Because the lies they're telling you as if they're facts are undermining the entire core of your economy.
Douchebag capitalism is destroying your economy, not a lack of tech workers.
in the 1990's with the year 2000 approaching we had a similar panic, and lots of kids were steared into CS. We got no extra programmers but lots of support desk people.
...we are continuing to create a world in which managing one's affairs successfully requires greater intelligence than it used to.
We bend over backwards to cater to stupid customers only because they have money, which of course we take. Eventually their inability to contribute meaningfully to society will result in them having no money, and we will be able to leave them behind.
One 'institute' after another banging that drum. We need to make sure a different story gets out.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Please come and show us your CS skills so lovingly inculcated by your parents. Also, we would like to know how they helped you in your career so far? Or were there other factors in your success?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
One big problem with equating CS with "coding" is the fact that low-skill and high-skill jobs get lumped into the same bucket. Same thing in my side (IT) where systems architects and help desk guys get painted with the same brush. If you teach a student to just "code" then all they're going to know is a few web front end tricks and they'll be difficult to train for the next thing. The students coming into the profession now need to have a science background, not just a 9-week coder bootcamp. Remember MCSE bootcamps from the late 90s/early 2000s? We in IT are _still_ working with some of the products of these.
If anyone is serious about fixing the skills problem, the following needs to happen:
- Salaries need to be stabilized at a level that will attract new entrants to the field. No one is going to waste time and money studying something that doesn't pay off later on. Look at all the little private colleges that are going out of business after burning through their endowments. Lots of students know that they can no longer expect a job after graduating studying just anything.at any college. (I was one of the last graduation years where that was true.) Unfortunately, college is a trade school now for most people.
- Jobs need to be available. Companies can't cry "skill shortage" while outsourcing their IT department to the lowest bidder or throwing people away when they turn 40. I think a technical career provides a very fulfilling job if you're lucky and choose your employers well. But, if I were faced with a choice of what to study, and saw stagnant wages, mass layoffs, and a career that can end at 40, I would probably pick something else.
- A career progression needs to exist. My career progression was help desk monkey --> desktop support monkey --> data center guy --> system administrator --> the strange hybrid admin/designer/architect/integration combo I do now. Now, it doesn't exist to the same degree. Help desk is in India, desktop support is significantly reduced and the pay is much lower than it was, data center monkey jobs now consist of replacing parts in Google or Amazon or Microsoft data centers, and so on. Where are the next generation of IT people and software developers going to be trained? On the dev side, the QA and maintenance coder jobs are increasingly in India or automated. Getting rid of low level jobs means that new entrants can't grow into the better jobs.
I'm an advocate of taking the different tasks in IT and dev, and splitting them into "technician" and "licensed engineer" tracks. Licensing the top tiers of the job field might mean higher quality of systems and software, fewer major security hacks, etc. The technician track would allow people to grow into these jobs, steadily gaining responsibility and salary over time. The thing we would have to avoid is what lawyers are going through now...the Bar Association threw open the doors to the profession a while back, opened tons of law schools, and allowed the offshoring of routine legal work. Now, look online sometime -- lawyers who spent $250K on school and passed the bar exam can't find work. The only way to make money as a lawyer now is if you manage to graduate at the top of your class at Harvard, Yale or Stanford -- otherwise, don't even bother.
So yes, definitely find ways to keep students interested in STEM -- but don't be shocked if no one signs on for the long haul when they see what's coming at the end...
sure, let's do more CS education in schools. but let's also eliminate H1B visas so computer science jobs are available in the US.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
MS word and ebay skills, right?
It's because the USA schools SUCK. utterly SUCK. Most schools do not teach a lick of CS, and MOSt of the money the school has is not put into sciences and math, but the worthless sports programs.
American kids will graduate as scientifically illiterate dum dum's until this is changed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
which aims to increase K-12 CS education AND THE NUMBER OF H-1B VISAS
Emphasis added on what this is REALLY all about.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
One of the problems is that American corporations are both lazy and greedy. Too cheap and lazy to train local intelligent educated coders in their unique coding operating procedures. So, they lobby to hire foreigners that will keep costs down. Oddly, the foreigners also need training. So, claiming that American't aren't suited is a bold faced lie. They simply want to keep costs down and screw you if you are a qualified American software engineer that has a B+ average and is willing to work hard. Someday, you might become great at what you do and want more money or leave the firm. Hiring H1B applicants keeps costs down and reduces churn, which wouldn't be bad if the cheapskates paid appropriately in the first place and were honest about their hiring needs. Western education is excellent. As a side note, it seems that the Clinton's no longer feel your pain. They help cause it now.
The best idea is to tell the rethuglican representatives to quit cutting education in favor of tax breaks for big business and the rich.
Oh and there is NO shortage of tech workers, just a shortage of people willing to work for slave wages like the H1B's.
It says all you need to know about the culture of the political class that encouraging middle class girls to pursue STEM jobs is higher on their list than ensuring that boys in the inner city and the sticks are getting educational opportunities anywhere near what is accessible, but often avoided, by middle class girls. Maybe Tyrone in the hood would love to make a solid salary working with computers as a sys admin or developer? Jim Bob in bumblefuck, Nowheresville might like to have choices beyond working as a low skilled worker or working minimum wage retail.
Reminds me of a joke about a SJW approved version of Game of Thrones. Sansa Stark starts a social media campaign to highlight the difficulty of being a high lord's daughter and spends most of her day on Twitter telling peasant boys to check their privilege. That is, more or less, where are now with "equality" in America. We let the privileged put on the airs of being proletarian because heaven forbid we tell them to shut up and use their privilege for the good of society and the less fortunate.
Scam that spends more on office supplies and expenses than it gives to actual charity. Tax fraud investigation in progress....
If general population becomes smart enough to actually use computers properly, ALL tech support jobs are in jeopardy except for the really high level stuff.
I've had interviews go wrong many times, for dumb and dishonest reasons. It comes down to the fact that the employers weren't actually interested in hiring, had too many candidates to consider. So they hoke up an excuse that you don't have enough experience in a bunch of narrowly defined areas, and you're out. Deep down they know perfectly well that you could do the job. But they manufacture some desired experience that you supposedly lack, and start thinking of you as a liar for even applying. Never mind that the whole hiring process is packed with deception from start to finish. Of course you should never outright lie, but spinning and twisting the facts is fine, even encouraged. They focus on superficial skills and miss the big picture. Overqualified is another fun reason for rejection. Why would an employer ever want to reject a candidate for being too smart? Yet a PhD is typically seen as a negative. The standard excuse is that the employee will get bored and leave, as if there aren't hundreds of other more compelling reasons anyone might leave. More like, there's a good deal of prejudice against geeks and nerds and smart people in general, which has been getting worse in recent years with the upswing in anti-intellectualism. When a job application takes a turn like that, when they start hunting for excuses not to consider people, you know the employer wasn't serious.
So I'm skeptical of this push to get more people into CS. On the one hand, maybe there should be a 4th "R", 'rogramming. Maybe programming is such a fundamental skill that it should have a place in elementary school. But with all the noise over H1Bs and the demonstrated facts that many employers really don't value, like, or trust engineers as a whole, not just the individuals among them that aren't competent, it's hard to be sure. They know they have to have some engineers, but they don't have to like it, and many don't. Very tiresome having to always watch your back, be ready to defend yourself, and not give them any openings they can use to drum you out. However, this attempt to reach people when very young is such a long play, beyond what such short-sighted companies can conceive, that perhaps it is genuinely meant.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Vote Clinton 2016 for more of this if you like it. She took about $300 Million in bribes with promises from her stint at State Department and what she would do as president. This is her doing what she promised for those bribes.
Remember, she was dead broke when her husband left the White House and she needs to be able to pay for her daughter's college education. So support her so she can take in more bribes from everyone around the world.
The DNC having her as their nominee is a disgrace
I'm not talking about the Slashdot crowd. I'm talking to the politicians pushing the ludicrous idea that "not enough" kids learn CS/STEM and the nodding heads in the audience that think the problem isn't so nuanced that all "winning the future" is really going to take is pushing enough kids to do things that they weren't interested in doing to start with.
Outside of that, I'm regretfully not terribly surprised that the logical conclusion of pushing the misbegotten idea that kids need computer science (despite everyone in the conversation not knowing what it means) hasn't made its way to the mainstream press: that is, flooding the employment pool with applicants to drive down salaries, for positions that aren't filled with H1Bs anyway. It's funny how none of these talking heads talk about THAT part.
Nope, it's always about how sexy these jobs are; spoken by people who have at most done little more coding than the obligatory "Hello World" script. Except, no, they really, really aren't. In the immortal words of Jonathan Coulton, in a song about this very topic: "This job fulfilling in creative way/such a load of crap."
It can be long, grueling, and irritating. It's filled with demands for certification by people who barely understand how to use Outlook. And it's a career that requires lifelong learning. Which, for the record, I find nothing wrong with, BUT if you have a life-plan that doesn't involve any severe paradigm shifts and long hours of self-teaching (fuck's sake, half the languages people use now weren't even a thing fifteen years ago), then CS, coding, or whatever the hell non-techie types are calling is isn't sexy or fun. And the people who make the big bucks doing this ARE the kind of people that are willing to put up with all the long and grueling stuff that comes with the turf.
I don't blame anyone for the life choices they make. I just get pissed when I hear politicians make a career field out to be sexier than it actually is, and trying to turn people into miserable worker-bots.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Judging by the post all these programs seem to be discriminating against the majority. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe tapping into the majority would give you more viable CS people. Has anybody thought of that?
You know, in the past, they used to equate the amount of skill and experience it took to be a good coder to being similar with a skilled surgeon. There is some truth in that. In fact, being a surgeon is easier because you don't have to worry about basic human anatomy changing every few years. In IT, however, platforms and languages evolve and your skillset has to cope with these changes all the time.
Now they would have us believe that you can take regular people, and teach them to be "skilled surgeons" in a short period of time.
The reason there is a shortage of good coders is because it takes a lot more intelligence, skill and discipline than most people realize. There are simply not enough people with the capacity it takes to meet the demand.
Proverbs 21:19
I disagree that the threat to the economy is a lack of CS education. I'd argue it's a lack of finance and business management graduates who are trained to think more than 4 quarters ahead. Short-term thinking is the problem in US businesses today. A lack of highly trained CS grads is arguably a symptom of that problem, but is not any kind of root cause.
The laundry list of shady deals is so long as this point that the organization itself has lost all credibility.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
What these people want to do is turn away from talented, creative computer scientists and create a generation of "coders" who are unoriginal and grind out code in the corporation's frameworks. They don't want talented people who think for themselves. They want an army of disposable "coders" who can be hired and disposed of when a corporation releases a new framework. Now there's a new hot skill, so crank out more "coders"! Change your programming language every few years. Change your framework every few years. No one can get 5 years experience these days because corporations churn through their tools so quickly. This is by design. If no technology lasts longer than 5 years, no one "coder" is any more valuable than any other.
Not just CS, a bigger problem is more lack of understanding about networking and more operational details.
You see it especially well in educated people in other fields in their interactions. A particular friend of mine is a chemist. He is aware enough to recognize a web browser with noscript, but his answer to that is to go to a site and based on (when discussing it after) "this site is reputable" hit "allow all temporarily" without any awareness of the actual issues involved like whether affiliate sites can be considered "reputable".... case in point, the site in question referenced doubleclick.
I of course used this as an opportunity to describe using a web browser in the most common way using my favorite analogy ever... "Imagine if we replaced hand shakes with unprotected anal sex. You get a party invite, and you go. You know youre friend is reputable but, does that mean you want to 'greet' all of his friends too? That is what web browsing is like by default, the website is a crowded diner table, and 'greetings' are going around the table"
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Red pens and *gasp* telling children they got the wrong answer! A failing grade inflicts unforgivable trauma on the psyches of our little snowflakes.
if little johnny snowflake cant handle a red mark on his paper, then compiler errors are gonna beat his ass and steal his lunch.
OMFG! The RED mark!
You've solved the gender inequality problem in STEM!
More men than women are red/green color blind!
They didn't have their souls crushed by getting red marks, they thought they were doing well, and so continued on in STEM! By the time they realized that they had actually been screwing up the whole time, they had already been writing Java and .Net code for 2 years!
The only way we're going to be able to drive wages into the ground while simultaneously getting/abusing the creme of the talent crop will be to flood the market with CS people. Doesn't matter if it's schools or immigration... just flood the damn market already!
--All Fortune 100 Tech Company CEOs.
IMO, the "bigger picture" problem is simply that America has jettisoned most of its decent paying jobs in favor of automation and/or outsourcing. What do we really produce here in significant quantities, that we can actually export to the rest of the world? Entertainment and software. (And both of those keep hitting limitations because many parts of the world don't respect the whole concept of intellectual property as something you give heavy legal protection to.)
Furthermore, the music industry is struggling in America today with the shift towards "all I can listen to via streaming for a cheap monthly rate", vs. actually buying the albums or songs individually. Expect the same to happen with movies, post initial theater release, as broadband becomes more commonplace and less expensive.
In a word, we're pretty screwed. As someone pointed out last week on Slashdot, self-driving trucks are on the way. Whenever that becomes acceptable on our roadways, you're going to see all of the middle class "truck driver" jobs vaporize, ALONG with all of the business they used to bring the hotels, truck stops, diners and restaurants along the highways that served them.
There are still some good paying jobs in the medical field, since humans haven't really found a way to stop getting injured, catching various illnesses or diseases, or aging. But even there, the healthcare system (whether you think "Obamacare" was a net positive or negative) is slowly imploding. People don't earn enough money doing OTHER jobs to afford the cost of the healthcare, and insurance can't keep covering it without A) taxing the heck out of you, or B) extracting it on the front end from your employer so you salary diminishes.
IMO, this big push for STEM and software coding is just a way to try to mask the reality as much as possible that we don't produce enough jobs anymore for all the people who want to work. To an extent, automation will increase the need for these folks. (Self driving cars and trucks, for example, will need software and software code updates on a regular basis, as well as engineers and mechanics to keep them going.) Fast food places going to automated touch-screen ordering systems or food processing/vending systems will need them too. So do farms that go to robotics for harvesting crops. But the very *reason* these technologies add value for the people implementing them is the REDUCTION in labor they bring. You're talking 1 person taking care of one of these systems for at least 4 or 5 people they put out of a (lower paying) job.
In the long run, I can't really see a scenario that doesn't result in a whole bunch of unemployed people and a relative few with decent paying jobs taking care of the machines that keep the rest unemployed. I *hope* I'm wrong and has been the case in previous history, new things will emerge that create jobs I'm not even thinking of right now. But it looks to me like it's got to get pretty bad before it gets better.
The Clinton Corrupt Slush Fund for Easy Policy Change..
Need some weapons deals pushed through? Donate millions to the foundation! http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton...
And who really cares where the money goes.. Charity Navigator won't even rank them due to their "atypical business model." It's a slush fund for the Clintons to doll out favors to their political toadies. Nevermind Hillary's absurd "I can't carry two devices" excuse for hosting a private mail server in her house to conduct State Department business.
The fucks behind the CDA?
The thing we had to paint the goddamned web black over?
Just another reason to keep those dynastic whores out of the white house.
After reading a interview with Randall Munroe (XKCD) i find myself wondering if what is needed is a computer engineering course alongside existing computer science courses.
http://www.maa.org/publication...
"And there's another distinction: There's coding, and then there is computer science. The best explanation I've ever heard of that is that coding is writing programs, and computer science is the study of computers only in the sense that astronomy is the study of telescopes. I think that's a really concise summation, because computer science isn't the study of computers, it's the study of what you can do with a computer and what stuff you can explore with a computer."
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Wait, why aren't there initiatives to determine why STEM in general is experiencing "poor performance"?
I know! Not enough women!!
But if there's a problem with the US falling behind and not doing well, could it be a problem with teaching methods? If we don't have enough people in STEM but the ones in STEM are doing well, then it's a problem with not enough people in STEM. But if the people in STEM are doing poorly, is it a problem with the teachers? Why add more people if the teaching methods are not working?
[John]
Shit better not happen!
This seemingly contradictory policy - asking for more H1B visas while promoting more CS education at home - has a sinister end game.
Either way, big business wins. More H1B's means an endless supply of cheap labor. More CS grads at home means that the market gets flooded with CS grads, thereby driving down the labor rate.
The real goal here is not to get more women into CS or get more people of color into CS. The goal is to provide a steady stream of cheap labor that places like Microsoft and Facebook and Google and the rest of them can exploit. It is nothing less than a sinister ploy to drive up profits.
The Clintons are already taking money from every tinpot dictator with a checkbook. Big business is more than willing to drop a few million here and there to make sure that favorable policies are enacted.
CS != Programming. That is all.
Just a thought. It might be a new good term.
I really doubt I'd have a career as a web application developer if I had programming classes in school, at any level.
Peace, or Not?
How about this: Clintons' lack of CS savvy in setting up an email server threatens US national security.
I thought the Clinton Foundation was to help Africa, and other developing areas, do better, by coming up with anti-HIV, anti-malaria programs. Develop wells and toilets. Why does the Clinton Foundation care about minorities doing computer programming in the United States?
The systematic brain-drain conducted by the U.S for several decades have worked so well. Immigrants are basically running your entire tech-sector, and things are going great. With fresh stock coming every year, you can just put Americans on welfare instead.
Why would anyone take CS if they're going to be unemployed thanks to our government's policies that say all IT jobs go to H1B visa holders?
In our country it's not about the kids, but the lack of CS and programming skills among IT specialists that is threatening the economy, along with the lack of basic IT understanding in the government (esp. those who lead complex IT projects).
Problem: Kids don't program.
Feminazi Solution: Stop teaching boys to program.
Girls are given advantages at all stages of education, which I will now bear in mind when hiring - have that, sexists sows !
Intro computer programming courses: write hello world, do some basic math, maybe write a few methods to throw things to.
Next level courses; algorithms, data types, all kinds of wonky internal stuff to the languages
Next level courses: database programming and advanced algorithms, maybe directX
But what about how to write a simple app they can use to do something they want to do? How about teaching them how to write something they can double click on a desktop or click on their phone, toss some stuff into it and get other stuff out? Basic GUI work, basic forms, basic visual output? That would cause skyrocketing interest compared to anything I was taught learning computer science. As is I can write all sorts of advanced programs, but they will all only work inside the command prompt, shelled into a Unix server.
If you teach kids how to make something they can use, they will use the everloving shit out of it to make their lives easier. Then we wouldn't be having this conversation because virtually everybody would have some standard grasp of computer programming
Seriously, rather than pushing CS exclusively, they should push STEM in high schools, esp so that those going to college enter decently, and those going into blue collar, can make things.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...I really hate the high salaries that software developers pull. That is my money, and I want to keep it! We need a whole lot more software developers (competent ones, mind you!) in the industry, to pull salaries down to reasonable levels.
They are just low-level functionaries, they should not be paid like executives!
Rote teaching of CS to students not interested in CS will just turn people off to it. Teach children critical thinking, teach them about all the cognitive biases that we suffer from. Teach them to think and how to figure shit out. Use puzzles and games to promote exercising these abilities.
Or continue to crank out students that know how to take a test. Which is a surprisingly useless skill once you're out of school.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
If you are using them for any credible source forget it.
I've had the opposite experience. My first encounter with computer programming was on my own with an old copy of turbo pascal during middle school, but it wasn't until I took classes in high school that I had any interest in pursuing it as a career.
On the other hand, if the class had been mandatory and taught by someone without a passion and/or good grasp of the subject I suppose I could have easily found it discouraging.
The same Clinton Foundation that received millions from Canadian Uranium mining company for inking the deal with a dicator.
The same one that got miliions in securing arms dealing.
etc...
"Free" tuition would not fix it because there is already lots of ways of getting tuition paid for without running up any debt.
From government programs that are under utilized where they will pay your tuition if you work, and get paid, in places they want you to and in position related to your degree for a few years.
I thought the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed indentured servitude. And even if these programs are structured not to qualify constitutionally as indentured servitude, how do they handle a graduate who faces structural unemployment in positions related to his degree?
If you are talking something like teachers the ones I know that have done this fulfill their obligations with completing the school year as opposed to the physical year.
Structural unemployment means the labor surplus associated with widespread layoffs in an industry. You're referring to seasonal unemployment, which is generally excluded from structural unemployment. Structural unemployment happens on cycles far longer than a year or is permanent. How is someone supposed to work off student loan debt if he comes to find that nobody is hiring in his location and field?
Kids' Lack of Creativity Threatens the US Economy
FTFY, Mr. Clinton... What threatens the economy are kids that are not allowed to have the time to think and be creative. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as replacing a school's art and music department... or giving kids time to rest and play from learning, thus allowing them to mentally-chew on what they were just taught. Creative people are in every profession, but to be creative means they were exposed to many different concepts of thinking, rather than just rote presentations of 'STEM' subjects. I think the jury's out regarding how damaging to kids' focus technology is... like tablets and mobile devices.
No sig for you! Come back one year!