It Ain't What You Know ...

In the NYTimes, How Social Networks Drive Black Unemployment.

The article describes how people overwhelmingly get hired through favoritism (that is, they get hired because of help from their social network) and this favoritism winds up discriminating against Blacks.

The great Fran Lebowitz pointed out the same phenomenon many years ago in her excellent essay about race:

... not only do white people own the playing field but they have so designated this plot of land as a playing field to begin with.  White people are the playing field.  The advantage of being white is so extreme, so overwhelming, so immense, that to use the word "advantage" at all is misleading since it implies a kind of parity that doesn't exist.

It is now common ... to see interviews with up-and-coming young movie stars whose parents or even grandparents were themselves movie stars.  And when the interviewer asks,  "Did you find it an advantage to be the child of a major motion-picture star?" the answer is invariably "Well, it gets you in the door, but after that you've got to perform, you're on your own."  This is ludicrous.  Getting in the door is pretty much the entire game ... That's how advantageous it is to be white.  It's as if all white people were the children of movie stars.  Everyone gets in the door and then all you have to do is perform at a relatively minimal level.

Rich Parents Game the System

In the NYTimes, No Rich Child Left Behind.

The article's point, that rich kids have a huge advantage in college applications, is no surprise. The author is, however, clueless as to the cause.  From the article:

The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students.

Well, no.  The academic gap goes way beyond kindergarten.  I live in an affluent area, and what I see is an entire industry geared toward coaching and packaging rich kids to produce good-looking college applications.  Rich kids spend hours with tutors to learn how to write exactly the kind of essay that will score well on the SAT essay section.  They take exactly the kinds of extracurriculars that colleges want to see.  They are coached through every step in the application process.

There's an ongoing myth that rich kids succeed because their parents read them plenty of bedtime stories, teach them a good work ethic, and demonstrate commitment through a stable marriage.   Pshaw!  I say.  Any of those factors might be important, but it's just the beginning of how rich parents push their kids to succeed.

What really toasts my biscuits is the assertion that rich kids get ahead because they're genetically superior, as shown by their high IQs.  Are you kidding me?  These kids are coached for the IQ test!  That's how the gifted program in New York City works.

From the comments (as usual, better than the article):

from AlexJr60 of New York, NY:

Interesting article, but the writer's research obviously didn't include face-to-face interviews with parents of kids in elite private schools in New York and environs. The kids are programmed from dawn to dusk with every conceivable extracurricular coaching that could help them develop the faintest wisp of a talent of any kind. "Quiet Time" is a non-starter. They are trained to compete from the time they are toddlers; they are exposed to bright highly competitive classmates in school and camp and arts courses and language courses and on and on and on. Most of the parents start them on SAT-prep in the tenth grade. The really top preparation coaches earn as much as the kids' shrinks. The $165,000 income level cited, doesn't even come close to what is spent -- closer to that pretax, is the annual tab for a single kid in a private NYC school who goes to summer camp and has the usual lineup of extra help.

from Minerva19 of Rockland:

We have had an SAT prep program open up in our community. It was not until we enrolled our son that I realized just what an advantage the wealthy have. It didn't teach more math or critical thinking. It taught him how to game the test, when to guess, when not to, how to approach each section. He was able to raise his scores 100 points.

 from Lois Kuster of Lynbrook, NY:

One critical factor that increases the standardized test results of wealthy children is outside tutoring. This is not tracked in studies. Private tutoring starts in the early years of school and continues throughout high school. 

and a reply from Eric B. of Oxnard, CA:

Your post is much too kind. "Private tutoring", which evokes images of young people sitting at home with a tutor, studying subjects in general, very often amounts to joining prep courses offered (at high fees) by groups who have discovered what questions will be on entrance tests and asked in interviews, so the three- and four-year-old children of those who can afford these prep courses can jump ahead of other children. Those of us in the lower classes call this cheating. The rich call us resentful of our betters.

 from lizzie848 of nyc:

I live in Manhattan and work with students on their college application essays. I happen to have a sliding scale and work with kids at all income levels, but the affluent students I work with all have SAT tutors, even the very very brightest of them, and their parents are willing to spend upwards of $300 an hour - and sometimes - so I have heard - $1000 an hour - for this kind of tutoring. I heard of one family whose tutor came to the Southampton summer house to work with the child, and was paid $1000 an hour for all of his time there. I heard of one family that spent $250,000 on tutoring for their child over high school.

from Sharon of Leawood, KS:

So if a wealthy family hires a tutor to ensure their child does well on the SAT, how is that demonstrative of a "love of learning and study"? It's demonstrative of an attitude that success must come at any cost. 

from dclambert in NJ:

As a teacher in an inner city school & a private SAT tutor of the wealthy, I see this phenomenon on the ground.

Wealthy families spend a fortune on their children's education & support in ways that would probably shock the middle class.They have tutors for each subject, hw coaches, etc. They invest at least one year in SAT preparation.

The "meritocracy" is a scam.

Linda Hirshman and the 1%

I don't consider myself a fan of Linda Hirshman, whose screed Get to Work I confess I haven't read. I'm put off by her advice that an educated woman should have at most one child (any more will interfere with her career), and shouldn't study art because it doesn't lead to well-paid jobs.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself agreeing with much of her article, It's about the 1%. Her central point is that well-paid jobs have gotten more and more demanding over the past several decades.

(An academic woman I know told me: "[Famous Academic Bigshot] once gave me the advice that I should be careful to publish one good article a year if I wanted tenure. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it had gone up to two articles a year.")

I especially liked Hirshman's closing:

When ordinary working men got the chance to fight for a 40 hour week, they fought, in many days, to the death. The murderous police attack on labor we call the Haymarket was a response to a rally for an eight-hour day! When did this become a woman's problem? Calling it one only means it will never get addressed. Just like every other problem assigned to women.

I'm sure she's right about "women's problems", and it gives me a moment of insight into the current conversation about education. When people go on about how are kids aren't being correctly prepared for corporate jobs, what they're trying to say is, "Look! Education actually matters! It actually intersects with things we care about, like the corporate workforce!" No wonder they're nonplussed by people like me saying "shouldn't there be a point to education besides the ability to get paid?" What other point could there possibly be?

Overachiever's footnote: I also liked this article about women and work by Sandra Tsing Loh: "I Choose My Choice!"

The Future of Work, Marriage, Children

What kind of world will our kids graduate into when they're done with school? What will the economy look like? Will decent jobs be available?

On a completely anecdotal level, I've been noticing for a while that those with young-adult children report that their daughters are completely job-focused and hard-working, while their sons are drifting around finding themselves. This NYTimes article confirmed my observations: Young Women are More Career-Driven than Men.

The headline statistic was this one, comparing young men and women who said that being successful in a highly-paid career or profession is "one of the most important things" or "very important" in their lives: 59% for young men, 66% for young women.

The poll also reveals that marriage and parenthood are becoming increasingly separate goals, at the expense of marriage. Young women say these issues are "one of the most important things in their lives" at these rates: 37% for having a successful marriage and 59% for being a good parent.

What careers will be available to our kids? Some speculate that in the future there will simply be less work to do, because of advances in technology. I've been meaning to read this book about it: The End of Work, by Jeremy Rifkin. As reported in the Atlantic Monthly, in Making it in America:

There’s a joke in cotton country that a modern textile mill employs only a man and a dog. The man is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines.

I liked this article in the NYTimes: Let's Be Less Productive. Productivity is not a useful way to think about caring professions, e.g. teaching. A teacher with more students in the classroom is more "productive", but it's usually not in the best interests of the kids.

I'm also WAY in favor of a drastically shortened workweek as a way to increase the number of jobs. Of course, to make that work, we'd need universal health care, so that employers wouldn't be penalized for taking on more employees.

Readers? Thoughts? What will the future look like? What should it look like?

Grim Future for Recent College Grads

In today's NYTimes, Outlook is Bleak Even For Recent College Graduates.

I liked this comment:

Education is the next bubble to pop. Anytime you have consumption masquerading as investment (especially when it is socially encouraged as the "smart thing to do"), you have the makings of a bubble.

Compare:

"Sure, this house is a little more expensive than I can afford, but loans are cheap, and it will pay off in the end.... it's a good investment."

with:

"Sure this degree is a little more expensive than I can afford, but loans are cheap, and it will pay off in the end... it's a good investment."

Except this time, it won't be the nest egg of retirees that gets crushed... it will be the futures of the young.

More College Degrees Won't Fix the Economy

Handing out more college degrees won't guarantee jobs growth, according to the brilliant Paul Krugman in today's New York Times.

I also liked this comment:

Increasing the supply of educated workers doesn't increase the demand for them. It just makes them cheaper.