The example I turn to -- and I'd be interested in the hard data on this -- is the explosion of STEM education in the US after WWII. It seems to me that a massive institution of STEM education was built on the idea that we needed to "beat the soviets" in the tech race. Ample public funding made tuition cheap and expanded opportunities for huge swaths of the population. But access to these institutions is being shut out by increasing costs. Students pay a fortune in tuition and housing, and yet every intro science and technology class doesn't have enough seats.
I think it's a subtle change that has occurred. The universities don't much care about providing the best possible education. They care about signaling to the market that their graduates are the best, so that graduates can pay their loans back. This is because there is no unified mission any more. We're not engaged in a technological race with anyone, so the institutions only need to perpetuate the signal of quality--not quality itself--to maintain their existence.
We're resting on the inertia, which is slowly waning until we are not the best in the world any more. At that point, the true magnitude of the deficit will become apparent, because immigrants will look elsewhere to be educated.
The institutions that are really picking up the slack here are community colleges. Their resources are dwarfed by the scope of their mission.
I enjoyed the way you phrased this. At times I've felt like different aspects of the "college experience" would be a scam if there weren't so many disparate good-intentions.
> They care about signaling
Non-traditional students in my university used to qualify for free tutoring by specific university-approved tutors. This semester, it was deemed an inappropriate use of resources and the funding was instead redirected to hire an administrator to write a regular newsletter "designed for the nontraditional undergraduate community" to "provide more opportunities to enhance and enrich your student experience".
That's quite an ambitious goal for what I would term marketing. If there is in fact anything resembling a unified-mission at this time, it certainly does not include reducing friction of at-risk students from graduating.
It's important to note that this is both a controversial and complicated topic, since it isn't entirely accurate to say that the course material for algebra has been eliminated from 8th grade math. However, it does mean that graduates of SFUSD now have to amend their high school path (summer sessions, private classes followed by entrance exams, or doubling up on math during one or more years of high school) in order to be prepared to take calculus in their senior year of High School. This isn't the case for private schools or public schools from other Bay Area districts, which continue to teach algebra as a formal standalone course in 8th grade.
Here's one link about it, but I'd recommend reading more extensively if you're interested:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/SF-schools-mov...
It's a more nuanced issue than pure "progressive" (or what the parent poster called "woke") politics, as this decision was also made as part of a push to teach math differently and less mechanically (common core).
https://priceonomics.com/why-did-san-francisco-schools-stop-...
However, concern over the racial/ethnic composition of 8th grade algebra classes in SFUSD was a stated concern of many of the people promoting this decision.
1. The US will not be able to compete w/ India or China when it comes to population
2. Most people with high ability are born outside of the US or any country statistically.
3. Importing the best and brightest is the surest way to continue growth.
The argument for immigration is that most 1st world countries do a great job of filling the middle 80% - most jobs in other words. We struggle at the top - as the top is hard to fulfill by definition - and the bottom, as most 1st world born don't want to, say, pick fruit.
To make sure 1st world economies continue to grow maximally, we need more of the very best, and more of those willing to do the sort of menial tasks we collectively simply don't want to.
Everyone wins from that. Those born in a 1st world country get to work at better run companies, and have their menial tasks fulfilled at a rate that keeps fruit cheap, and wait times low for things like fixing a broken door / getting a house painted.
As for quality of life, China already seems to be doing better in terms of public transport. America doesn't have anything at all to brag about here, unless you're comparing to Zimbabwe or something.
How long until the west starts to immigrate into china instead of the other way around?
It was my honest opinion that this worked against India and China historically. More mouths to feed, more people to educate.
It seems to me that precisely the worst forms of that are the ones promoted most heavily. It is not difficult in the slightest to test a person's financial means, and that is the best proxy for the kind of inequality you're talking about; but American (and Canadian) schools tend to focus on imperfect, politically-charged metrics of "marginalized" (usually mainly race).
Since the current forms of this kind of policy tend to mainly attract racists (the subtle, erudite kind), they tend not to address the broader issues, and they tend to push away true progressives.
When a potentially "bright" kid has been subjected to 12 years of such deeply-flawed, even outright nonsensical cargo-cult schooling, how can we even expect her to be interested in college?
As an example of new ways of teaching math, my daughter is in public school kindergarten and they are doing less arithmetic than I did as a kid, but they're already introducing concepts like number sets and bases.
[0] https://priceonomics.com/why-did-san-francisco-schools-stop-...
1. The US will not be able to compete w/ India or China when it comes to population. 2. As low-hanging fruit in the economy is gobbled up, advanced economies will need to rely on highly skilled workers to continue growth.
Basically, America is going to have to get MUCH better at realizing the full potential of it's population in order to keep growing. That means investing in poor neighborhoods and undeserved communities, providing equal access and opportunity and removing as many barriers as possible to those who have been traditionally marginalized.
While many companies use "woke as a business strategy" the underlying economics behind the recent diversity push of major tech companies is backed by these facts.