You can get as much postmodern gibberish as you'd like generated randomly for free here. Try re-loading several times, until you get an article you'd like to read.:)
I'm not sure, but it sounds like you are implying that I've managed to at least support part of the infinite monkey theorem.
Not really. The postmodern nonsense generators (which have been around for at least 15 years, maybe more) work with elements much more constrained than the hypothetical monkeys with typewriters producing random sequences of letters. (I speak as someone who once briefly played around with automatic computer generation of "postmodern" gibberish for fun, though in a specific discipline.)
The syntax is constrained enough to put out text in mostly grammatical sentences (with adjectives, nouns, and verbs in roughly the right order, for example). Such generators usually have a pool of vague and ambiguous words, often uncommon but "jargony" ones, that get thrown together.
The "monkeys" here are working within constraints and with objects (unlike letters) that have just enough meaning to sound like language, but are also vague enough that they can be thrown together in many randomized patterns and still look vaguely like English.
It is my firm belief that verbal bullshit should be taught in high school as a semester-long subject. It would lead to a less gullible public, a public more skeptical of their politicians -- because, as everyone knows, you can't bullshit a bullshitter.
I think it was called "rhetoric" back in the day, and it was indeed taught in schools. We need it now more than ever.
While I absolutely agree with you that rhetoric should be taught as a standard subject in schools (perhaps along with a course on "how [NOT] to lie with statistics"), equating "rhetoric" with postmodernist obfuscation is a little misguided.
The whole point of traditional rhetorical training was to teach people how to be good public speakers and debaters. Doing so required precision and clarity in language in order to persuade an audience to accept the speaker's argument. Most "rhetorical flourishes" are about taking ordinary ideas and making them sound more lofty, often to move the emotions of an audience in the right direction.
Lincoln didn't say: "Men died here for a cause, and there's little meaning we can add to that." Instead, he said: "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
The rhetoric here serves to heighten the meaning, not obfuscate it. Stereotypical postmodern language that avoids clear argument and sprinkles in jargon for the sole purpose of making meaning more vague will be almost useless in a public speech made to persuade and move the audience, which is the point of rhetoric.
Certainly there are rhetorical constructions used to obscure inconvenient counterarguments in debate, avoid difficult topics, and even mislead. But if you only used such language, you'd never actually accomplish the main goal of rhetoric, which is to successfully communicate your ideas to an audience in a persuasive fashion. Unless your model of successful public speaking is the director of the NSA trying to avoid saying anything useful at all, I don't think the comparison of "rhetoric" with stereotypical "postmodernism" is fair.
My point is that generally it would seem that the higher the IQ, the more capable an individual is of being objective.
I think this point was clear. However, there have been studies that actually show the opposite. There are lots of these surrounding political issues, in particular. Apparently (according to these studies), college-educated folks are more likely than less-educated folks to hold onto their political opinions even when confronted with detailed evidence that refutes them. They are also more likely to justify apparently contradictory or irrational perspectives, holding fast to their pre-existing beliefs. For this reason, college-educated voters are often more polarized politically than other voters, even on issues where one party goes strongly against a scientific consensus. Basically, they are just better about finding some sort of perceived "flaw" in their opponents arguments, regardless of whether those arguments are simply opinions or established scientific consensus.
So, I don't really buy your argument about what is "generally" the case. I think ability to be "objective" depends on a lot of personality factors and training, much more so than intelligence. More intelligent people often just gain more tools to use to reinforce their preconceptions... unless they learn to actively work against that tendency.
The average of 101, 101, 101, and 97 is 100, but 3/4 of the sample is above the average.
It depends on what your definition of "average" is. In standard English, the word "average" usually is used to refer to the mean, but it can refer to the median, or some other measure of central tendency. Look it up. The GP did NOT say "mean."
Regardless, most intelligence tests tend to measure things in a way that produces a normal distribution in a large sample, so this point is not particularly relevant.
Also, since it's an extremely large sample size and there's a relatively large number of people who are exactly average intelligence, the number of people below (and above) the average will be less than 50%.
This depends on the granularity of your measurement system. If you truly believe that all individuals are unique and that they could be somehow ranked in order, the median is by definition above and below 50% (or, perhaps, in a sample size of billions, some miniscule amount less than 50%).
If you don't believe that any ranking could be that precise (and I can't believe that any such meaningful ranking could be devised), then you end up with some sort of fuzzy categories where the 50th percentile has some "width." But that fuzzy category boundary is arbitrary. You could just as easily devise an IQ test that has a granularity of 2 points, but the median falls at 100, with scores of 99 and 101 being the only possible ones around there. In that case, my statement is still true.
Anyhow, all of this pedantry is just stupid. The GP made a statement that is, to a first-order approximation, tautological in most tests meant to measure what he was talking about. If the GP were actually referring to some sort of non-standard measurement of intelligence that has some sort of grossly skewed distribution, the GP should have mentioned it... because that would significantly affect the kind of argument made.
Actually, it's not a statistical tautology. A statistical tautology would be "have of us have below median intelligence."
Actually, it could be. The GP did not say "mean." The GP said AVERAGE. In standard English, the word "average" is ambiguous, and can be used to refer to other measures of central tendency, such as the median.
Thus spake Wikipedia: "the word "average" can confusingly be used to refer to the median, the mode, or some other central or typical value."
If you want, I can easily cite some stats textbooks that say the same thing.
In a large population samples used to measure IQ or other intelligence tests, the median and mean are generally fairly close. So, unless the GP was talked about some weird measure of intelligence with an abnormal distribution, my statement still is very likely to be correct, regardless of which type of "average" the GP meant.
The vast majority of ancient civilizations that led to the development of modern society were polytheistic
Yes. And then when modern civilization arose so did monotheism. Contemporaneously. Sadly, the medieval period is a period of modern civilization.
So, in other words, you define "modern civilization" (though with "sadness" in that definition process) to be the period contemporaneous with monotheism. And then you note that modern civilization arose contemporaneously with monotheism?? QED?!?
You have presented a tautological argument. Please provide some other non-arbitrary rationale for determining the beginning point of "modern civilization."
In earlier times (perhaps earlier than you refer to), people were not as expendable. In order to ensure survival of the group as a whole, only pretty extreme nonconformity could merit such punishment.
Even if that were true -- and I sincerely doubt it ever was so since even small clans of animals are happy to ostracize those who don't live well with others -- your whole argument was about large societies. Claiming that your monotheism/polytheism dichotomy now doesn't apply to paradigmatic examples of large polytheistic societies completely undermines your original argument.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
While this is a fun quotation, there is something potentially faulty in its premises.
What if the world is "unreasonable"? Or what if society is "unreasonable"?
Shaw here was presumably using "reasonable" to mean "practical" or "moderate" or "in accord with social/cultural norms." But "reasonable" can also mean "rational" or "logical" or "according to reason."
History is full of circumstances where rational ideas were ignored or downplayed, while irrational ones continued to hold sway long after conflicting evidence became available. In these cases, the rational -- or "reasonable" -- man is the one who makes progress.
In fact, one might argue that an underlying concept of the Scientific Revolution was about the beginning of the idea that the "reasonable man" -- who follows logic, evidence, and sound reasoning no matter where it takes him -- is the person who can make the greatest advances in society. Dreamers and unreasonable people are fun, and sometimes they happen upon something cool or distinctive or novel, but progress also depends on the continuous working of normal science, perhaps the model of a "reasonable" endeavor.
(I'm by no means downplaying the role of creativity in science, but a lot of such creativity is often "reasonable" as well. I also think history is a little more complicated than that, but it's interesting to think about what this quotation really implies.)
Monotheism arose contemporaneously with modern civilization
Huh? The vast majority of ancient civilizations that led to the development of modern society were polytheistic -- see Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome (at least Rome before the very of a degrading empire), etc.
After Christianity (monotheism) started taking over, Europe was plunged into a long medieval period. It came to dominate during this period, before "modern" civilization came to Western Europe again.
So, at least for the example of Europe, I don't see how "monotheism arose contemporaneously with modern civilization." Monotheism emerged at at a time when the most advanced societies were polytheistic, and it "took over" Europe during a time or decline or stagnation.
Meanwhile, numerous historical examples of large empires demonstrate that they were often quite successful when the leaders allowed local religions to continue their own practices in various regions within a large empire (see Persia, Rome, Monguls, etc.).
In fact, historically while religion has tended to draw together disparate societies and nations, it has often resulted in breakdowns in civilized actions when a single religion has been forced upon an entire single large society.
I'm not saying there aren't examples historically of what you're talking about, but there are probably even more counterexamples.
In a polytheistic culture every man can have his own muse without ridicule, fear or ostracism.
What the heck does that mean? Ancient polytheistic societies were experts at exiling or executing people who didn't conform to some expected social norms.
Also...It sometimes help to remember that half of us have below average intelligence.
I'm not sure what this statistical tautology has to do with anything.
It follows then that some of us are incapable of objective reasoning.
Are you claiming that anyone of "below average intelligence" is "incapable of objective reasoning"? That's a pretty strong claim. (And weird -- why exactly would the threshold of "objective reasoning" capability fall along some arbitrary statistical dividing line?) And if you're not claiming that, I don't know how it "follows" from the first statement.
Anyhow... actually, there are a number of studies that have shown that more intelligent people are often the ones with the most rigidity in their beliefs -- particularly when confronted by evidence that conflicts with them. A person of lesser intellect may simply accept new findings from a reputable source or authority, but smart people are significantly better at "explaining away" information that conflicts with their views.
Many of us who are capable of rational thought are just plain intellectually lazy.
Laziness probably has much less to do with it than egotism does. A dumb person who encounters something that conflicts with his/her beliefs may simply ignore it or avoid it, and perhaps you might call that "lazy." Smart people are much more likely to find reasons to be dismissive, particularly if they view themselves as superior to others... e.g., among the chosen few "capable of rational thought."
Where is the alliance to prevent Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Yahoo (and Amazon) from invading our privacy...
At least what companies DO is transparent. Anyone can see what the websites are sending/receiving
Yeah, I agree that it's better than the government, but I wouldn't exactly call big business tracking on the internet "transparent."
Sure, you can run all sorts of browser plug-ins to control scripts, 3rd-party requests, cookies of various types, etc., etc., but most of this is invisible to the average user. I'd say greater than 95% of internet users have no freakin' idea that a single website visit might trigger dozens of cookies, dozens of requests to various other sites, etc.
Yes, most people understand there's some tracking going on, but unless they install some browser plug-ins or something, they generally have no idea of the scale of what's going on.
Not all of this is the fault of these companies, of course. Part of the fault is in browser design, and choices browsers make for default privacy settings.
But some of it *IS* the fault of big companies, too. I've noticed an increasing dependence on cookies, unnecessary 3rd-party scripts, etc. in recent years just to get basic functionality out of some websites. Even if you're running a basic plug-in like NoScript and a cookie manager, you'll find yourself increasingly authorizing more things just to get a website to work. While some of this has to do with web design issues, I've definitely noticed more situations where websites deliberately decrease functionality periodically to force a user to enable scripts and cookies that allow tracking.
But I only see that because I actually want to see what's going on "behind the scenes" in my browser. For most people, all of this is completely invisible.
And let's not even get started on the crazy nonsense from companies like Facebook, who say they are committed to user privacy but yet periodically would change everyone's privacy defaults to have things wide open. Unless you pay attention to your Facebook notifications and privacy settings in great detail, or read blogs concerned with such things, your standard relatively private settings in your account would gradually have opened up to more and more people.
Are these companies better than secret government spying initiatives? Sure, I guess. But "transparent"? Hardly.
So, you're okay with SPAM because the stealing of services is inconsequential?
Umm, no. Let's make a reasonable analogy to this situation. Suppose I have my email address posted on a public website, perhaps as someone employed by a public institution providing public services. Someone emails me for a legitimate reason -- perhaps even offering me a service or something that would be relevant to my work or something in the context of where my email address is posted. But I don't want that service, and perhaps I'm even an inappropriate person to contact about this.
Now, is this "spam"? Perhaps. But if it was actually a specific contact meant to inform me (hypothetically a public employee) of something the sender thought was appropriate (not a random solicitation or link to some scam site or whatever), the reasonable response is to reply to the email and say: "Please do not send me any more messages like this."
Case closed.
If this person continues to actually SPAM my address, after I informed them that the initial contact was inappropriate, then yeah -- I'm in favor of levying HUGE fines and perhaps even putting them in jail. I HATE spam. But a single person targeting a single public official/resource for a reasonable reason one time? Give them a warning, and the person probably just won't do it again.
[Note I'm not getting into the debate here about whether this was a "safe" thing to do. Maybe it wasn't, and if so, maybe it justifies a ticket and fine... but not what happened.]
The problem isn't the one guy, it is the one guy, times a factor of a couple thousand others, each getting their own free $.05 charge. Pretty soon you're talking thousands of dollars.
Your math is off. A "couple thousand" times $0.05 only comes to $100, NOT "thousands of dollars." It would take huge numbers of people doing this at this outlet almost continuously to rack up "thousands of dollars" in electrical charges.
Stealing is wrong, because it takes from others that which is neither earned or deserved
Yep. But what if you don't realize it's stealing? What if you legitimately believe it's a public resource? Suppose you go to a coffee shop or something, and there's a little tray sitting out by the cash register that looks like one of those "Give a penny, Take a penny" things. You take five pennies out to help pay for your order. But it turns out that tray was actually a tip "jar". You officially stole 5 cents. Should we arrest you?
I don't think this guy did something that reasonable. But I don't know what this outlet was generally used for. If students often plugged things like phones in to charge, perhaps this guy might have thought this would be okay. In that case, you tell the guy about his mistake, warn him if he does it again that he'll be ticketed or charged with theft, and go on with your day. Or even write him a ticket, if you want to "send a message." But wait a few days and then go arrest him and make him spend a night in jail?? That seems overkill unless there were something else the guy clearly did wrong.
It is much easier to stop it now, before it becomes a legal nightmare.
Fine. Hand out a ticket. Make the guy pay a small fine. Word will get out, and people won't do it any more. Better yet, just turn off the power to the outlet when not in official use, or even just put up a freakin' sign explaining that it's only for official use. Then there's no ambiguity.
And why are we praising someone who is being a cheap asshat, simply because it is $.05 worth?
Who is praising him? I'm not praising him. But the punishment should fit the crime. Warning? Yeah. Additional measures to prevent future abuse? Perhaps. Ticket and fine? Maybe, if the guy was a jerk about it or there was some safety issue. Arrest him and keep him in jail? Nope... that's not necessary to get your message across.
Sorry, poor choice of words. When I said "invest," I did NOT necessarily mean money. I meant that we should invest time, energy, more effort, etc. into doing whatever is necessary to help improve schools where they need it. I absolutely agree with you that attitude and culture is a much bigger issue than money here.
If in most of the rest of the world the best schools are in the cities and this is reflected in the test scores then it tells you that you need to do more about the quality of your inner city schools.
Umm, I think you're agreeing with my general point. We need to figure out exactly where and in what environments schools are performing better or worse. If they are performing worse in rural areas or inner cities or whatever, that needs to be the focus.
If demographic trends are actually well correlated with these sorts of things in other countries, it may turn out that we may not be ranking countries by educational performance, but rather by some demographic trend -- and that's important to know when judging what these rankings mean.
Or you could just whine about the test being unfair because all your better schools are in the rich feeder burbs and this should be the test standard after all its the American way.
Who is whining? Who said the test was unfair? Maybe other posts, but not mine. I was arguing that we need to try to understand the effect that demographics can have on educational statistics.
Personally, I think the U.S. educational system could use a LOT of improvement. But that's irrelevant to my argument. I don't give a crap about how the U.S. compares to other countries in this sort of test -- it could be #1, and I would still say that the U.S. system needs a LOT of improvement.
No one who is trying to learn something from a study like this should be concerned about stupidity like national pride being hurt. This is about trying to evaluate statistics in an unbiased way that allows us to learn something useful, rather than making meaningless comparisons.
Comparing non-countries (or city-states) with countries biases the results by comparing poorer, less educated rural areas with better educated cities.
And this is bad exactly why?
Because rankings can easily get messed up if there's some sort of confounding variable or factor. If education is generally poorer in rural areas worldwide (which is roughly true), then this ranking system may partially be measuring percentage of urban areas within a given country, rather than a meaningful comparison of educational performance.
Of course, it's probably more than that, but rigorous statistical comparisons need to take demographics into account to assert causality.
It's not that the results are biased. They just reflect reality. Obviously the U.S. misses a strategy to bring enough education to rural areas and less wealthy people.
No one's saying that the U.S. shouldn't invest more in rural education. But it is important to note when doing statistical rankings that countries that are 100% urban may get a "bonus" in the rankings simply for infrastructure reasons in cities, rather than overall quality of education in the entire region. There are plenty of rural regions in Asia where education is probably just as bad as it is in rural areas of the U.S.
It's not that the comparisons are completely invalid, but one can draw incorrect conclusions by misreading the data. If the lesson you take away is that the U.S. can invest more in rural education, since urban countries do better, that's a reasonable conclusion. But if you instead look at this study and said, "Gee whiz, the U.S. can't teach its kids anything, anywhere compared to Asia! The U.S. educational system as a whole must be flawed!"... well, that conclusion might be unjustified until you take into account demographic data.
Otherwise, you'll be working as an adjunct instructor, teaching 3-hour semester courses at $5K to $15K a pop. You'll find plenty of those at every school nowadays.
In what dream world do adjuncts earn $15k per 3-hour course??
Aside from some sort of special appointed lectureship, the highest adjunct pay I've ever heard of was in the $12k range, and that's only at one top-tier university that is a known outlier.
Most top-tier research universities pay $4-8k per course, with actual salary surveys showing an average of $4,750 per course.
And that's top research universities, usually in desirable disciplines like engineering and science.
Smaller schools, rural schools, satellite campuses for state universities, etc.? You're looking at more like $2-5k per course. Community colleges? Often less than $2k. A lot of adjuncts have to cobble together a teaching load of 5-10 courses PER SEMESTER at multiple colleges just to get a salary of $30k or so to live on each year (generally without benefits).
While you have a lot of insightful elements in your post, the magnitude of pay disparity between tenured professors and adjuncts is woefully underestimated. It's not at all unusual for tenured or tenure-track professors to earn over 5 times the salary for teaching the exact same course as an adjunct.
If they actually had adjunct jobs that paid $15k per course, I know loads of people who would immediately jump into such jobs. They could teach 3 courses per semester and earn $90k per year, with absolutely no research expectations? With that sort of pay, I bet you'd see a huge number of regular faculty volunteering to take adjunct jobs.
To me it's more like: a sign in a store window says "No shirt, no shoes, no service." Another sign below it says "No smoking." The "either" was added to reinforce the "no" part of the two messages. The "no"s convey slightly different meanings, but they're in different contexts.
While I understood the headline correctly on first reading, I don't think the GP's reading was necessarily less likely -- in fact, I think your logic here is strained.
The "No Google Glass, Either" is not actually in a different "sign" in this context. It's in the same headline. One could easily substitute a different word or phrase here, and change the meaning to something that clearly agrees with the GP, e.g., "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service -- and No Use of the Restrooms, Either." This statement clearly implies that you can't get service OR use the restrooms UNLESS you have a shirt and shoes. It does NOT imply that if you use the restroom, you will not receive service.
The statement is ambiguous. The ambiguity is not resolved by context, here. The ambiguity is only resolved because the alternative meaning doesn't make much sense.
most people live paycheck-to-paycheck. most people can't put away $100,000 for the cancer treatment
Absolutely true. That's why everyone should have catastrophic insurance, like they would against a fire destroying their home, against dying early and leaving their kids poor, against disability preventing work for the rest of their life, etc.
what most people do is get insurance, as this is the most financially responsible and intelligent thing to do, and your plan in your comment is bonkers and not financially responsible nor intelligent
No, the most financially responsible and intelligent thing to do would be to pay out of pocket for expected or reasonably anticipated expenses, and have insurance to cover catastrophes that cannot be anticipated or which are only likely to happen once or twice in your lifetime (or even less).
One of the main reasons why the U.S. healthcare system is so messed up is because prices from providers are artificially inflated to drain the maximum money out of insurance companies, and the bigger the company, the better "discount" it can usually gain. Meanwhile, patients have little incentive to shop around for a reasonable price on care, since all that money is changing hands without any consumer input. And it makes it next to impossible for people who actually want to economize to get a straight answer about how much care actually costs. (Try to get a price quote on a medical procedure beyond a shot or a checkup sometime.)
Would you pay "car maintenance" insurance to avoid paying out for an oil change every few months? Do you pay for an "extended warranty" on some $50 piece of electronics you pick up? Some people apparently do, and they are usually overcharged. If you want some sort of extended warranty, you want something that covers catastrophic unexpected repairs, disasters, and situations that are on the order of 1/4 of your annual salary or more... not your normal maintenance.
I guarantee that if everyone put a portion of the thousands of dollars spent per year in premiums into the bank instead, keeping only a premium for catastrophic health insurance, they could easily pay for "maintenance" costs for check-ups, minor procedures, etc.
The $100,000 for the cancer treatment doesn't magically appear when you create the insurance industry. And neither do the hundreds or thousands of dollars the insurance company probably pays out every year for your checkups, routine tests, etc. You are paying for it in the higher premiums you put out every month.
But having the middle-man skimming off 10% or so for "insurance administration costs" plus the 10% or more you're paying extra to your hospitals and doctors to pay someone to deal with all the paperwork, negotiation, etc. with insurance companies... well, it would be a lot cheaper for everyone if everyone paid for their own "routine maintenance."
Personally, I think socialized medicine is much better, because it could standardize costs and stop all this ridiculous negotiation and skimming off the top to give to for-profit companies. The government is inefficient, but at least it's not out to make money off of your illnesses... unlike insurance companies. And it would be one "price" for everyone.
So, yes, without socialized medicine, the most intelligent choice would be to have catastrophic health insurance, and save to pay your routine costs out of pocket. But no one tends to talk about that option, even if it's a reasonable choice. And in that sense, I agree with the GP, because even if people aren't wealthy enough to self-insure, anyone who can actually afford to pay a health insurance premium would be better off financially if they saved their money to pay for the normal annual expenses and only paid for a catastrophic plan. (Of course, this is assuming an ideal world where individuals could actually pay actual cost-of-care prices, rather than being stuck with high fake prices while big businesses get back-door deals.)
So in academia you work half your life to make as much as someone who can be trusted not to steal from the cash, and that's pretty much where you're almost certain to top out.
It is rather sobering to note that median salaries for grocery store managers in the U.S. are roughly $70,000. The median salaries for the lowest paid fields with tenured professors (generally in the humanities) are around that.
But it really depends on your field. Median salaries for professors in the sciences or engineering are higher than that. And if you look at salaries for faculty at professional schools (law schools, business schools, medical, etc.), the median salary is roughly double that, though still less than what those professional faculty would likely make in private industry/practice.
So, yes, if you work in the humanities, you'll probably top out at the level of a grocery store manager or so in terms of salary. But keep in mind that humanities academic careers don't tend to have semi-required post-doc phases, as in many scientific fields. So, those extra years spent in post-docs in the sciences may be rewarded with a slightly higher ultimate salary (quite a bit higher if you land a job at a prestigious top-tier research school).
For many people, time flexibility de facto means working essentially around the clock.
It doesn't usually mean that in academia. You need to be present to teach your classes, hold office hours, and attend various meetings. For many people (particularly senior professors), this may add up to less than 10 hours/week where your schedule is actually set. If you have a research lab in the sciences or something, you need to negotiate times to deal with your grad students and lab assistants that are reasonable for everybody, but most senior faculty have a lot of power in choosing their own schedules.
Tenure-track faculty may feel like they need to "work around the clock" to ensure that they will receive tenure. After tenure, however, the expectations are more flexible.
Also, in many places this time flexibility is just an illusion. When there is a problem then it turns out that by constantly arriving late you weren't fulfilling your duties, no matter that you stayed until 2:00 AM.
Again, this isn't really relevant to academia. There is really no "arriving late," except arriving late for a class or meeting or something, which is obviously bad. But if you teach your classes at 4pm and arrive by that time, no one is usually going to care how you structure the rest of your day.
The main "duty" of most non-tenured professors is to produce research. If you do that best by working regular 9am-5pm hours or by only coming in in the middle of the night, nobody's going to care much. Aside from that, you need to attend occasional meetings and turn your grades in at the end of the semester. Once you have tenure, the obligation to produce continuous research is lessened a bit, and most of the schedule on which you "fulfill your duties" is really up to you.
It's not exactly an "easy" life, because you still have significant responsibilities to fulfill outside of the few meeting times each week that are set. But the schedule you choose to fulfill those other responsibilities is truly rather free.
Interesting; I wonder if that includes Psy.D. and Ed.D. students of whom there are a large number and who frequently pay their own way I believe.
As the post you replied to said:
If we restrict this to Ph.D. students only (and exclude the field of education), that number rises to 91%.
Yes, Ed.D. students, Ph.D. students in education, and a few other fields tend to have lower rates of funding. For the rest of Ph.D. degree programs, it is rather rare (9%) to have to pay the full rate.
PhD and masters students, in STEM fields or otherwise, should not be grouped together as you have done here repeatedly.
Huh? Please re-read this thread. It originally started about arguments concerning "graduate students." I'm reasonably certain that everyone in the U.S. higher-ed "biz" understands the word "graduate student" to mean: someone in the process of getting a degree past a bachelor's degree. That includes master's, Ph.D., various professional degrees, etc.
From my very first post in this thread I have made clear that place where it is most common for graduate students to pay for degrees is in master's programs, instead of a Ph.D. The very post you were replying to said EXACTLY the same thing.
If the various people in this thread want to talk exclusively about doctoral students, by all means, let them. But I was responding to claims made about "graduate" students and "graduate" school, which, by definition, happens to "group together" the very students you describe into a single category (for better or for worse).
Do that many people pay for their PhDs? I'm not paying for mine; I wouldn't do it if I had to (racked up enough debt from law school).
Well, not that many pay FULL-PRICE. According to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), about 86% of doctoral students received some form of financial aid, grant, assistantship, stipend, etc. in 2007-08. If we restrict this to Ph.D. students only (and exclude the field of education), that number rises to 91%.
I'm sure buried in all the statistics on that website, you might be able to find numbers that tell what percentage of tuition, etc. students actually ended up paying. But at least 9% of Ph.D. students in the U.S. apparently are paying for their degrees without ANY financial assistance whatsoever.
I don't know how many students have to pay at least some tuition, or don't get adequate stipends or pay from assistanceships to live on. I imagine it must be at least double that figure, and maybe a lot more.
So, it's not the majority of Ph.D. students, but there is a not insignificant number of such people out there. And among other graduate students (especially master's degrees), the numbers are much higher.
Slashdot Mirror
You can get as much postmodern gibberish as you'd like generated randomly for free here. Try re-loading several times, until you get an article you'd like to read. :)
Argh -- sorry. I have to admit I didn't follow the link you gave in your other post. I assumed you had used a postmodernism generator, like this one.
I'm not sure, but it sounds like you are implying that I've managed to at least support part of the infinite monkey theorem.
Not really. The postmodern nonsense generators (which have been around for at least 15 years, maybe more) work with elements much more constrained than the hypothetical monkeys with typewriters producing random sequences of letters. (I speak as someone who once briefly played around with automatic computer generation of "postmodern" gibberish for fun, though in a specific discipline.)
The syntax is constrained enough to put out text in mostly grammatical sentences (with adjectives, nouns, and verbs in roughly the right order, for example). Such generators usually have a pool of vague and ambiguous words, often uncommon but "jargony" ones, that get thrown together.
The "monkeys" here are working within constraints and with objects (unlike letters) that have just enough meaning to sound like language, but are also vague enough that they can be thrown together in many randomized patterns and still look vaguely like English.
It is my firm belief that verbal bullshit should be taught in high school as a semester-long subject. It would lead to a less gullible public, a public more skeptical of their politicians -- because, as everyone knows, you can't bullshit a bullshitter.
I think it was called "rhetoric" back in the day, and it was indeed taught in schools. We need it now more than ever.
While I absolutely agree with you that rhetoric should be taught as a standard subject in schools (perhaps along with a course on "how [NOT] to lie with statistics"), equating "rhetoric" with postmodernist obfuscation is a little misguided.
The whole point of traditional rhetorical training was to teach people how to be good public speakers and debaters. Doing so required precision and clarity in language in order to persuade an audience to accept the speaker's argument. Most "rhetorical flourishes" are about taking ordinary ideas and making them sound more lofty, often to move the emotions of an audience in the right direction.
Lincoln didn't say: "Men died here for a cause, and there's little meaning we can add to that." Instead, he said: "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
The rhetoric here serves to heighten the meaning, not obfuscate it. Stereotypical postmodern language that avoids clear argument and sprinkles in jargon for the sole purpose of making meaning more vague will be almost useless in a public speech made to persuade and move the audience, which is the point of rhetoric.
Certainly there are rhetorical constructions used to obscure inconvenient counterarguments in debate, avoid difficult topics, and even mislead. But if you only used such language, you'd never actually accomplish the main goal of rhetoric, which is to successfully communicate your ideas to an audience in a persuasive fashion. Unless your model of successful public speaking is the director of the NSA trying to avoid saying anything useful at all, I don't think the comparison of "rhetoric" with stereotypical "postmodernism" is fair.
My point is that generally it would seem that the higher the IQ, the more capable an individual is of being objective.
I think this point was clear. However, there have been studies that actually show the opposite. There are lots of these surrounding political issues, in particular. Apparently (according to these studies), college-educated folks are more likely than less-educated folks to hold onto their political opinions even when confronted with detailed evidence that refutes them. They are also more likely to justify apparently contradictory or irrational perspectives, holding fast to their pre-existing beliefs. For this reason, college-educated voters are often more polarized politically than other voters, even on issues where one party goes strongly against a scientific consensus. Basically, they are just better about finding some sort of perceived "flaw" in their opponents arguments, regardless of whether those arguments are simply opinions or established scientific consensus.
So, I don't really buy your argument about what is "generally" the case. I think ability to be "objective" depends on a lot of personality factors and training, much more so than intelligence. More intelligent people often just gain more tools to use to reinforce their preconceptions... unless they learn to actively work against that tendency.
The average of 101, 101, 101, and 97 is 100, but 3/4 of the sample is above the average.
It depends on what your definition of "average" is. In standard English, the word "average" usually is used to refer to the mean, but it can refer to the median, or some other measure of central tendency. Look it up. The GP did NOT say "mean."
Regardless, most intelligence tests tend to measure things in a way that produces a normal distribution in a large sample, so this point is not particularly relevant.
Also, since it's an extremely large sample size and there's a relatively large number of people who are exactly average intelligence, the number of people below (and above) the average will be less than 50%.
This depends on the granularity of your measurement system. If you truly believe that all individuals are unique and that they could be somehow ranked in order, the median is by definition above and below 50% (or, perhaps, in a sample size of billions, some miniscule amount less than 50%).
If you don't believe that any ranking could be that precise (and I can't believe that any such meaningful ranking could be devised), then you end up with some sort of fuzzy categories where the 50th percentile has some "width." But that fuzzy category boundary is arbitrary. You could just as easily devise an IQ test that has a granularity of 2 points, but the median falls at 100, with scores of 99 and 101 being the only possible ones around there. In that case, my statement is still true.
Anyhow, all of this pedantry is just stupid. The GP made a statement that is, to a first-order approximation, tautological in most tests meant to measure what he was talking about. If the GP were actually referring to some sort of non-standard measurement of intelligence that has some sort of grossly skewed distribution, the GP should have mentioned it... because that would significantly affect the kind of argument made.
Actually, it's not a statistical tautology. A statistical tautology would be "have of us have below median intelligence."
Actually, it could be. The GP did not say "mean." The GP said AVERAGE. In standard English, the word "average" is ambiguous, and can be used to refer to other measures of central tendency, such as the median.
Thus spake Wikipedia: "the word "average" can confusingly be used to refer to the median, the mode, or some other central or typical value."
If you want, I can easily cite some stats textbooks that say the same thing.
In a large population samples used to measure IQ or other intelligence tests, the median and mean are generally fairly close. So, unless the GP was talked about some weird measure of intelligence with an abnormal distribution, my statement still is very likely to be correct, regardless of which type of "average" the GP meant.
The vast majority of ancient civilizations that led to the development of modern society were polytheistic
Yes. And then when modern civilization arose so did monotheism. Contemporaneously. Sadly, the medieval period is a period of modern civilization.
So, in other words, you define "modern civilization" (though with "sadness" in that definition process) to be the period contemporaneous with monotheism. And then you note that modern civilization arose contemporaneously with monotheism?? QED?!?
You have presented a tautological argument. Please provide some other non-arbitrary rationale for determining the beginning point of "modern civilization."
In earlier times (perhaps earlier than you refer to), people were not as expendable. In order to ensure survival of the group as a whole, only pretty extreme nonconformity could merit such punishment.
Even if that were true -- and I sincerely doubt it ever was so since even small clans of animals are happy to ostracize those who don't live well with others -- your whole argument was about large societies. Claiming that your monotheism/polytheism dichotomy now doesn't apply to paradigmatic examples of large polytheistic societies completely undermines your original argument.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
While this is a fun quotation, there is something potentially faulty in its premises.
What if the world is "unreasonable"? Or what if society is "unreasonable"?
Shaw here was presumably using "reasonable" to mean "practical" or "moderate" or "in accord with social/cultural norms." But "reasonable" can also mean "rational" or "logical" or "according to reason."
History is full of circumstances where rational ideas were ignored or downplayed, while irrational ones continued to hold sway long after conflicting evidence became available. In these cases, the rational -- or "reasonable" -- man is the one who makes progress.
In fact, one might argue that an underlying concept of the Scientific Revolution was about the beginning of the idea that the "reasonable man" -- who follows logic, evidence, and sound reasoning no matter where it takes him -- is the person who can make the greatest advances in society. Dreamers and unreasonable people are fun, and sometimes they happen upon something cool or distinctive or novel, but progress also depends on the continuous working of normal science, perhaps the model of a "reasonable" endeavor.
(I'm by no means downplaying the role of creativity in science, but a lot of such creativity is often "reasonable" as well. I also think history is a little more complicated than that, but it's interesting to think about what this quotation really implies.)
Monotheism arose contemporaneously with modern civilization
Huh? The vast majority of ancient civilizations that led to the development of modern society were polytheistic -- see Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome (at least Rome before the very of a degrading empire), etc.
After Christianity (monotheism) started taking over, Europe was plunged into a long medieval period. It came to dominate during this period, before "modern" civilization came to Western Europe again.
So, at least for the example of Europe, I don't see how "monotheism arose contemporaneously with modern civilization." Monotheism emerged at at a time when the most advanced societies were polytheistic, and it "took over" Europe during a time or decline or stagnation.
Meanwhile, numerous historical examples of large empires demonstrate that they were often quite successful when the leaders allowed local religions to continue their own practices in various regions within a large empire (see Persia, Rome, Monguls, etc.).
In fact, historically while religion has tended to draw together disparate societies and nations, it has often resulted in breakdowns in civilized actions when a single religion has been forced upon an entire single large society.
I'm not saying there aren't examples historically of what you're talking about, but there are probably even more counterexamples.
In a polytheistic culture every man can have his own muse without ridicule, fear or ostracism.
What the heck does that mean? Ancient polytheistic societies were experts at exiling or executing people who didn't conform to some expected social norms.
Also...It sometimes help to remember that half of us have below average intelligence.
I'm not sure what this statistical tautology has to do with anything.
It follows then that some of us are incapable of objective reasoning.
Are you claiming that anyone of "below average intelligence" is "incapable of objective reasoning"? That's a pretty strong claim. (And weird -- why exactly would the threshold of "objective reasoning" capability fall along some arbitrary statistical dividing line?) And if you're not claiming that, I don't know how it "follows" from the first statement.
Anyhow... actually, there are a number of studies that have shown that more intelligent people are often the ones with the most rigidity in their beliefs -- particularly when confronted by evidence that conflicts with them. A person of lesser intellect may simply accept new findings from a reputable source or authority, but smart people are significantly better at "explaining away" information that conflicts with their views.
Many of us who are capable of rational thought are just plain intellectually lazy.
Laziness probably has much less to do with it than egotism does. A dumb person who encounters something that conflicts with his/her beliefs may simply ignore it or avoid it, and perhaps you might call that "lazy." Smart people are much more likely to find reasons to be dismissive, particularly if they view themselves as superior to others... e.g., among the chosen few "capable of rational thought."
but how on earth do you work out the age?
Umm, the same way you work it out on other planets??
[ducks]
Where is the alliance to prevent Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Yahoo (and Amazon) from invading our privacy...
At least what companies DO is transparent. Anyone can see what the websites are sending/receiving
Yeah, I agree that it's better than the government, but I wouldn't exactly call big business tracking on the internet "transparent."
Sure, you can run all sorts of browser plug-ins to control scripts, 3rd-party requests, cookies of various types, etc., etc., but most of this is invisible to the average user. I'd say greater than 95% of internet users have no freakin' idea that a single website visit might trigger dozens of cookies, dozens of requests to various other sites, etc.
Yes, most people understand there's some tracking going on, but unless they install some browser plug-ins or something, they generally have no idea of the scale of what's going on.
Not all of this is the fault of these companies, of course. Part of the fault is in browser design, and choices browsers make for default privacy settings.
But some of it *IS* the fault of big companies, too. I've noticed an increasing dependence on cookies, unnecessary 3rd-party scripts, etc. in recent years just to get basic functionality out of some websites. Even if you're running a basic plug-in like NoScript and a cookie manager, you'll find yourself increasingly authorizing more things just to get a website to work. While some of this has to do with web design issues, I've definitely noticed more situations where websites deliberately decrease functionality periodically to force a user to enable scripts and cookies that allow tracking.
But I only see that because I actually want to see what's going on "behind the scenes" in my browser. For most people, all of this is completely invisible.
And let's not even get started on the crazy nonsense from companies like Facebook, who say they are committed to user privacy but yet periodically would change everyone's privacy defaults to have things wide open. Unless you pay attention to your Facebook notifications and privacy settings in great detail, or read blogs concerned with such things, your standard relatively private settings in your account would gradually have opened up to more and more people.
Are these companies better than secret government spying initiatives? Sure, I guess. But "transparent"? Hardly.
So, you're okay with SPAM because the stealing of services is inconsequential?
Umm, no. Let's make a reasonable analogy to this situation. Suppose I have my email address posted on a public website, perhaps as someone employed by a public institution providing public services. Someone emails me for a legitimate reason -- perhaps even offering me a service or something that would be relevant to my work or something in the context of where my email address is posted. But I don't want that service, and perhaps I'm even an inappropriate person to contact about this.
Now, is this "spam"? Perhaps. But if it was actually a specific contact meant to inform me (hypothetically a public employee) of something the sender thought was appropriate (not a random solicitation or link to some scam site or whatever), the reasonable response is to reply to the email and say: "Please do not send me any more messages like this."
Case closed.
If this person continues to actually SPAM my address, after I informed them that the initial contact was inappropriate, then yeah -- I'm in favor of levying HUGE fines and perhaps even putting them in jail. I HATE spam. But a single person targeting a single public official/resource for a reasonable reason one time? Give them a warning, and the person probably just won't do it again.
[Note I'm not getting into the debate here about whether this was a "safe" thing to do. Maybe it wasn't, and if so, maybe it justifies a ticket and fine... but not what happened.]
The problem isn't the one guy, it is the one guy, times a factor of a couple thousand others, each getting their own free $.05 charge. Pretty soon you're talking thousands of dollars.
Your math is off. A "couple thousand" times $0.05 only comes to $100, NOT "thousands of dollars." It would take huge numbers of people doing this at this outlet almost continuously to rack up "thousands of dollars" in electrical charges.
Stealing is wrong, because it takes from others that which is neither earned or deserved
Yep. But what if you don't realize it's stealing? What if you legitimately believe it's a public resource? Suppose you go to a coffee shop or something, and there's a little tray sitting out by the cash register that looks like one of those "Give a penny, Take a penny" things. You take five pennies out to help pay for your order. But it turns out that tray was actually a tip "jar". You officially stole 5 cents. Should we arrest you?
I don't think this guy did something that reasonable. But I don't know what this outlet was generally used for. If students often plugged things like phones in to charge, perhaps this guy might have thought this would be okay. In that case, you tell the guy about his mistake, warn him if he does it again that he'll be ticketed or charged with theft, and go on with your day. Or even write him a ticket, if you want to "send a message." But wait a few days and then go arrest him and make him spend a night in jail?? That seems overkill unless there were something else the guy clearly did wrong.
It is much easier to stop it now, before it becomes a legal nightmare.
Fine. Hand out a ticket. Make the guy pay a small fine. Word will get out, and people won't do it any more. Better yet, just turn off the power to the outlet when not in official use, or even just put up a freakin' sign explaining that it's only for official use. Then there's no ambiguity.
And why are we praising someone who is being a cheap asshat, simply because it is $.05 worth?
Who is praising him? I'm not praising him. But the punishment should fit the crime. Warning? Yeah. Additional measures to prevent future abuse? Perhaps. Ticket and fine? Maybe, if the guy was a jerk about it or there was some safety issue. Arrest him and keep him in jail? Nope... that's not necessary to get your message across.
Sorry, poor choice of words. When I said "invest," I did NOT necessarily mean money. I meant that we should invest time, energy, more effort, etc. into doing whatever is necessary to help improve schools where they need it. I absolutely agree with you that attitude and culture is a much bigger issue than money here.
If in most of the rest of the world the best schools are in the cities and this is reflected in the test scores then it tells you that you need to do more about the quality of your inner city schools.
Umm, I think you're agreeing with my general point. We need to figure out exactly where and in what environments schools are performing better or worse. If they are performing worse in rural areas or inner cities or whatever, that needs to be the focus.
If demographic trends are actually well correlated with these sorts of things in other countries, it may turn out that we may not be ranking countries by educational performance, but rather by some demographic trend -- and that's important to know when judging what these rankings mean.
Or you could just whine about the test being unfair because all your better schools are in the rich feeder burbs and this should be the test standard after all its the American way.
Who is whining? Who said the test was unfair? Maybe other posts, but not mine. I was arguing that we need to try to understand the effect that demographics can have on educational statistics.
Personally, I think the U.S. educational system could use a LOT of improvement. But that's irrelevant to my argument. I don't give a crap about how the U.S. compares to other countries in this sort of test -- it could be #1, and I would still say that the U.S. system needs a LOT of improvement.
No one who is trying to learn something from a study like this should be concerned about stupidity like national pride being hurt. This is about trying to evaluate statistics in an unbiased way that allows us to learn something useful, rather than making meaningless comparisons.
Comparing non-countries (or city-states) with countries biases the results by comparing poorer, less educated rural areas with better educated cities.
And this is bad exactly why?
Because rankings can easily get messed up if there's some sort of confounding variable or factor. If education is generally poorer in rural areas worldwide (which is roughly true), then this ranking system may partially be measuring percentage of urban areas within a given country, rather than a meaningful comparison of educational performance.
Of course, it's probably more than that, but rigorous statistical comparisons need to take demographics into account to assert causality.
It's not that the results are biased. They just reflect reality. Obviously the U.S. misses a strategy to bring enough education to rural areas and less wealthy people.
No one's saying that the U.S. shouldn't invest more in rural education. But it is important to note when doing statistical rankings that countries that are 100% urban may get a "bonus" in the rankings simply for infrastructure reasons in cities, rather than overall quality of education in the entire region. There are plenty of rural regions in Asia where education is probably just as bad as it is in rural areas of the U.S.
It's not that the comparisons are completely invalid, but one can draw incorrect conclusions by misreading the data. If the lesson you take away is that the U.S. can invest more in rural education, since urban countries do better, that's a reasonable conclusion. But if you instead look at this study and said, "Gee whiz, the U.S. can't teach its kids anything, anywhere compared to Asia! The U.S. educational system as a whole must be flawed!"... well, that conclusion might be unjustified until you take into account demographic data.
Otherwise, you'll be working as an adjunct instructor, teaching 3-hour semester courses at $5K to $15K a pop. You'll find plenty of those at every school nowadays.
In what dream world do adjuncts earn $15k per 3-hour course??
Aside from some sort of special appointed lectureship, the highest adjunct pay I've ever heard of was in the $12k range, and that's only at one top-tier university that is a known outlier.
Most top-tier research universities pay $4-8k per course, with actual salary surveys showing an average of $4,750 per course.
And that's top research universities, usually in desirable disciplines like engineering and science.
Smaller schools, rural schools, satellite campuses for state universities, etc.? You're looking at more like $2-5k per course. Community colleges? Often less than $2k. A lot of adjuncts have to cobble together a teaching load of 5-10 courses PER SEMESTER at multiple colleges just to get a salary of $30k or so to live on each year (generally without benefits).
While you have a lot of insightful elements in your post, the magnitude of pay disparity between tenured professors and adjuncts is woefully underestimated. It's not at all unusual for tenured or tenure-track professors to earn over 5 times the salary for teaching the exact same course as an adjunct.
If they actually had adjunct jobs that paid $15k per course, I know loads of people who would immediately jump into such jobs. They could teach 3 courses per semester and earn $90k per year, with absolutely no research expectations? With that sort of pay, I bet you'd see a huge number of regular faculty volunteering to take adjunct jobs.
To me it's more like: a sign in a store window says "No shirt, no shoes, no service." Another sign below it says "No smoking." The "either" was added to reinforce the "no" part of the two messages. The "no"s convey slightly different meanings, but they're in different contexts.
While I understood the headline correctly on first reading, I don't think the GP's reading was necessarily less likely -- in fact, I think your logic here is strained.
The "No Google Glass, Either" is not actually in a different "sign" in this context. It's in the same headline. One could easily substitute a different word or phrase here, and change the meaning to something that clearly agrees with the GP, e.g., "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service -- and No Use of the Restrooms, Either." This statement clearly implies that you can't get service OR use the restrooms UNLESS you have a shirt and shoes. It does NOT imply that if you use the restroom, you will not receive service.
The statement is ambiguous. The ambiguity is not resolved by context, here. The ambiguity is only resolved because the alternative meaning doesn't make much sense.
most people live paycheck-to-paycheck. most people can't put away $100,000 for the cancer treatment
Absolutely true. That's why everyone should have catastrophic insurance, like they would against a fire destroying their home, against dying early and leaving their kids poor, against disability preventing work for the rest of their life, etc.
what most people do is get insurance, as this is the most financially responsible and intelligent thing to do, and your plan in your comment is bonkers and not financially responsible nor intelligent
No, the most financially responsible and intelligent thing to do would be to pay out of pocket for expected or reasonably anticipated expenses, and have insurance to cover catastrophes that cannot be anticipated or which are only likely to happen once or twice in your lifetime (or even less).
One of the main reasons why the U.S. healthcare system is so messed up is because prices from providers are artificially inflated to drain the maximum money out of insurance companies, and the bigger the company, the better "discount" it can usually gain. Meanwhile, patients have little incentive to shop around for a reasonable price on care, since all that money is changing hands without any consumer input. And it makes it next to impossible for people who actually want to economize to get a straight answer about how much care actually costs. (Try to get a price quote on a medical procedure beyond a shot or a checkup sometime.)
Would you pay "car maintenance" insurance to avoid paying out for an oil change every few months? Do you pay for an "extended warranty" on some $50 piece of electronics you pick up? Some people apparently do, and they are usually overcharged. If you want some sort of extended warranty, you want something that covers catastrophic unexpected repairs, disasters, and situations that are on the order of 1/4 of your annual salary or more... not your normal maintenance.
I guarantee that if everyone put a portion of the thousands of dollars spent per year in premiums into the bank instead, keeping only a premium for catastrophic health insurance, they could easily pay for "maintenance" costs for check-ups, minor procedures, etc.
The $100,000 for the cancer treatment doesn't magically appear when you create the insurance industry. And neither do the hundreds or thousands of dollars the insurance company probably pays out every year for your checkups, routine tests, etc. You are paying for it in the higher premiums you put out every month.
But having the middle-man skimming off 10% or so for "insurance administration costs" plus the 10% or more you're paying extra to your hospitals and doctors to pay someone to deal with all the paperwork, negotiation, etc. with insurance companies... well, it would be a lot cheaper for everyone if everyone paid for their own "routine maintenance."
Personally, I think socialized medicine is much better, because it could standardize costs and stop all this ridiculous negotiation and skimming off the top to give to for-profit companies. The government is inefficient, but at least it's not out to make money off of your illnesses... unlike insurance companies. And it would be one "price" for everyone.
So, yes, without socialized medicine, the most intelligent choice would be to have catastrophic health insurance, and save to pay your routine costs out of pocket. But no one tends to talk about that option, even if it's a reasonable choice. And in that sense, I agree with the GP, because even if people aren't wealthy enough to self-insure, anyone who can actually afford to pay a health insurance premium would be better off financially if they saved their money to pay for the normal annual expenses and only paid for a catastrophic plan. (Of course, this is assuming an ideal world where individuals could actually pay actual cost-of-care prices, rather than being stuck with high fake prices while big businesses get back-door deals.)
So in academia you work half your life to make as much as someone who can be trusted not to steal from the cash, and that's pretty much where you're almost certain to top out.
It is rather sobering to note that median salaries for grocery store managers in the U.S. are roughly $70,000. The median salaries for the lowest paid fields with tenured professors (generally in the humanities) are around that.
But it really depends on your field. Median salaries for professors in the sciences or engineering are higher than that. And if you look at salaries for faculty at professional schools (law schools, business schools, medical, etc.), the median salary is roughly double that, though still less than what those professional faculty would likely make in private industry/practice.
So, yes, if you work in the humanities, you'll probably top out at the level of a grocery store manager or so in terms of salary. But keep in mind that humanities academic careers don't tend to have semi-required post-doc phases, as in many scientific fields. So, those extra years spent in post-docs in the sciences may be rewarded with a slightly higher ultimate salary (quite a bit higher if you land a job at a prestigious top-tier research school).
For many people, time flexibility de facto means working essentially around the clock.
It doesn't usually mean that in academia. You need to be present to teach your classes, hold office hours, and attend various meetings. For many people (particularly senior professors), this may add up to less than 10 hours/week where your schedule is actually set. If you have a research lab in the sciences or something, you need to negotiate times to deal with your grad students and lab assistants that are reasonable for everybody, but most senior faculty have a lot of power in choosing their own schedules.
Tenure-track faculty may feel like they need to "work around the clock" to ensure that they will receive tenure. After tenure, however, the expectations are more flexible.
Also, in many places this time flexibility is just an illusion. When there is a problem then it turns out that by constantly arriving late you weren't fulfilling your duties, no matter that you stayed until 2:00 AM.
Again, this isn't really relevant to academia. There is really no "arriving late," except arriving late for a class or meeting or something, which is obviously bad. But if you teach your classes at 4pm and arrive by that time, no one is usually going to care how you structure the rest of your day.
The main "duty" of most non-tenured professors is to produce research. If you do that best by working regular 9am-5pm hours or by only coming in in the middle of the night, nobody's going to care much. Aside from that, you need to attend occasional meetings and turn your grades in at the end of the semester. Once you have tenure, the obligation to produce continuous research is lessened a bit, and most of the schedule on which you "fulfill your duties" is really up to you.
It's not exactly an "easy" life, because you still have significant responsibilities to fulfill outside of the few meeting times each week that are set. But the schedule you choose to fulfill those other responsibilities is truly rather free.
Interesting; I wonder if that includes Psy.D. and Ed.D. students of whom there are a large number and who frequently pay their own way I believe.
As the post you replied to said:
If we restrict this to Ph.D. students only (and exclude the field of education), that number rises to 91%.
Yes, Ed.D. students, Ph.D. students in education, and a few other fields tend to have lower rates of funding. For the rest of Ph.D. degree programs, it is rather rare (9%) to have to pay the full rate.
PhD and masters students, in STEM fields or otherwise, should not be grouped together as you have done here repeatedly.
Huh? Please re-read this thread. It originally started about arguments concerning "graduate students." I'm reasonably certain that everyone in the U.S. higher-ed "biz" understands the word "graduate student" to mean: someone in the process of getting a degree past a bachelor's degree. That includes master's, Ph.D., various professional degrees, etc.
From my very first post in this thread I have made clear that place where it is most common for graduate students to pay for degrees is in master's programs, instead of a Ph.D. The very post you were replying to said EXACTLY the same thing.
If the various people in this thread want to talk exclusively about doctoral students, by all means, let them. But I was responding to claims made about "graduate" students and "graduate" school, which, by definition, happens to "group together" the very students you describe into a single category (for better or for worse).
Do that many people pay for their PhDs? I'm not paying for mine; I wouldn't do it if I had to (racked up enough debt from law school).
Well, not that many pay FULL-PRICE. According to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), about 86% of doctoral students received some form of financial aid, grant, assistantship, stipend, etc. in 2007-08. If we restrict this to Ph.D. students only (and exclude the field of education), that number rises to 91%.
I'm sure buried in all the statistics on that website, you might be able to find numbers that tell what percentage of tuition, etc. students actually ended up paying. But at least 9% of Ph.D. students in the U.S. apparently are paying for their degrees without ANY financial assistance whatsoever.
I don't know how many students have to pay at least some tuition, or don't get adequate stipends or pay from assistanceships to live on. I imagine it must be at least double that figure, and maybe a lot more.
So, it's not the majority of Ph.D. students, but there is a not insignificant number of such people out there. And among other graduate students (especially master's degrees), the numbers are much higher.