Thursday, July 20, 2006

The challenge of India and the irrelevancy of the left

I want to point out that I have nothing but admiration for India and the Indian people.However the flood of H1b workers underscores a basic challenge. India produces top flight graduates who are solid citizens. We produce lazy students spoon fed self esteem and useless victims studies classes.

David Horowitz is fighting the wrong battle. The question should be has the far left
turned Ameican dipolomas into toilet paper? I have spent days looking at foreign degrees and it is beyond India. Even degrees from Costa Rica and Poland are superior to American degrees.

The solution is simple lets compette or become irrelevant.

1 Universities are not jobs programs for commies. Who would hire Norm Finklestein or Ward Churchill in the private sector.

2 Students must spend more time in their major

3 No more money for social science or liberal arts degrees. No money for research and no loans for social science classes.

4 If colleges will not meet the challenge in the USA lets outsource the students. Lets send our best and brightest to India and it will probably be more cost effective.

We either meet the challenge or get relegated to the dustbin of history. Do not blame India for aspiring to excellence. Do blame Marxist hacks for hijacking our universities.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

The best change would be for NO DIRECT subsidies for schools.

Picture this, school a is going to charge the parent $10,000 for a course in marxist basket weaving.

School b is going to charge $10,000 for an electronics engineering course.

School c is going to charge $10,000 for a course in comparative lesbian studies.

Now remember, the PARENT must WRITE THE CHECK for the full amount!! Except for a few LEFTIES I think we would agree on what class the kid would be taking!!

The Merry Widow said...

Hear!Hear! After being a victim of leftista professors, even when I was in college! We were required to take a class from each college at UCF, some were so obviously puff classes that taught radical things totally out of context with my major. How a course on "Women and Men" was supposed to help me pass Cell Physiology is still beyond me! It's funny that the Engineering and Business colleges didn't have puff courses, in the Business class you at least learned some basic business principles and it was taught by a non-radical professor. So I actually learned something! Most research is overrated, maybe by having seperate facilities for research and a cutting of the "publish or perish" philosophy might help. Along with booting out nonproductive drones!
Good morning and G*D bless!

tmw
P.S. Maybe by having ALL high school grads actually work for a living for 2 yrs. would reduce the patience and naitivity of freshmen?

Always On Watch said...

Students must spend more time in their major

And, at the same time, not dumb down the courses.

Reclaiming Beauty said...

Beak,

Could you specify what you mean by foreign educated scientists, technicians etc…are better educated than Americans?

For example, even considering all the liberal arts courses engineering and other technical and science students have to take, is their education/knowledge better or worse, overall, than the Indians et al.?

I agree social science degrees, especially those MA and PhD ones, are a complete waste of time. But I'm talking about technical and science ones here.

Jason Pappas said...

It’s time to pull the plug. Let’s stop all federal loans and grants. They were supposed to make college affordable but all they did was to enable the colleges to increase tuition and saddle grads with massive loans. And the increase in tuition funds the leftist propaganda mill. It’s time to pull the plug. Let these institutions die ... as real educational institutions come into being to replace them. They can’t be reformed; it’s too late.

A quick killer would be to end all federal aid (student loans and faculty research grants) to institutions that don’t have a ROTC program. And require the states to do the same.

Brooke said...

Kev, I can't even imagine how mad I would be if I had written a tuition check for that garbage!

nanc said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Always On Watch said...

Kev,
One of my kids goes to Temple University, and I'm amazed at some of the papers she's required to do.

I've heard the same about other universities from many other parents.

At least your daughter got an "A." Many professors give lower grades to papers with which they don't agree.

beakerkin said...

Kidst

I have spent the last month looking at US and foreign degrees mainly in engineering and business. The Indian Students take way more classes in their majors and there are no joke classes. The far left has killed higher ed by making US degrees a joke.

Our students take sociology and theirs take thermo dynamics and this is comparing the same major.

Reclaiming Beauty said...

Beak, sorry to be such a bore.

But, overall, is there a way to measure who is more educated and knowledgeable? For example, a standardized test? Just because they take more classes doesn't necessarily mean they're useful classes (repetitive, maybe?). In fact it may also mean that they're "slower" students.

Just some thoughts, since these are the same arguments the Canadian conservatives are putting across to increase the Indian and Chinese immigrant levels. And, I'm not yet totally convinced.

How's the heat wave, thunderstorms, etc... out there by the way? I think we're over ours for now!!

beakerkin said...

Kidst

American employers seem to agree with my view. Why take a probable lazy trouble maker who has been spoon fed Chomsky and Marx? The Indian Students are used to intense competition, are more educated and have a better work ethic. They do not worry about self esteem, social justice and are
probably more patriotic.

I wouldn't even look at a US diploma and HR personel are placing their reputation on these hires. It is time for our colleges to compette and get out of political activism. Business majors need accounting classes and reading Noam Chomsky is of zero use in a real job.

The weather is somewhat better here
but the bugs are huge. I just saw a housefly the size of a quarter.
The nasty part is that if it is hot and dry the local dairy farms pollute the local air. I will gladly take industrial pollution before a dairy farm.

The Merry Widow said...

Feedlots are worse, Beaker. Pig farms are downright nauseating! We escaped the heat wave, it only got up to about 89 yesterday. Do you get those very vicious deer flies? Smaller than a horse fly, but the bite is twice as bad! Oh, paper mills make a whole new definition of gross! Be careful, so tat when you go to swipe at a fly you don't get a hummingbird instead!
As for degrees, unless it's a private college, I would question the degree also! Hillsborough College, in Michigan, I believe is one that doesn't have puff classes. What used to be Fla. Institute of Technology is still fairly reliable. It just has a huge mohammahdin presence, with shops, a worship center, etc. nearby!
Morning Camera, saw you over at BadEagle the other day, good to see you out and about!
Good morning and G*D bless all!

tmw

Always On Watch said...

Beak,
I just saw a housefly the size of a quarter.

Ye gods! Sounds like Texas.

Reclaiming Beauty said...

Here I go again Beak - I'm really not being a troll :) but genuinely interested.

One of the reasons US employees may like these Asian interlopers so much is because, like you say, they're undemanding.

But, in many cases that I've read about, that translates to "will accommodate to lower wages, lower office standards, lower benefits."

In fact, it is the same argument that sweat-shops use to rationalize their choice of workers and work conditions.

I still think that US and Canadian science and technical graduates are better educated, more creative and inventive, and more likely to allow a company to grow.

Whereas the Asian immigrants bring with them some knowledge, but a mentality not conducive to growth and development.

beakerkin said...

Kidst

You are never a troll and a blog where everyone agrees would be a bore. There is great validity to the low wage argument. However, the bottom line is that if these students were incompetant there would not be such a demand.

However, I do not think that classes like rational thought and urban psychology have anything to do with IT work.

We will have to agree to disagree but friends do this all the time.

Reclaiming Beauty said...

TMW,

Sorry, I was so engrossed in this Asian Invasian [sic], that I didn't fully read your comment.

Yes, oot and aboot really means that in Canada. Five minutes driving and you're in the boonies - well almost.

I love it!

(But, high levels of construction to accomodate you-know-whos is changing that.)

Jason Pappas said...

Most of the younger people who enter my field are from India with a few from China. When it comes to technical skills, there are hardworking well-educated people from these countries who focus on the job and are not in a rush to use it as a stepping stone for other opportunities. Many of the Americans go into sales, a higher paying area, where the foreign born don’t always have the cultural skills to give them an edge with American customers.

I don’t know if this means that the education is better in these countries or that we get the very motivated who will seek out their fortune in America. I tend to think that as opportunities open-up in their countries we’ll see less coming here. In the meantime we get some excellent talent. And as they gain American people skills they are moving into more lucrative areas.

In all cases, they are very happy to be here. This is especially true with the Chinese. I also find that most of the foreign born don’t buy the anti-American crap in the universities. They know the score.

Purple Avenger said...

Whereas the Asian immigrants bring with them some knowledge, but a mentality not conducive to growth and development.

Some of this is cultural. There is a saying in Japan - "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down". To this end you'll not find a lot of renegades and oddballs flashing breakthrough brilliance because that sort of thing is discouraged by the culture.

OTOH, it generates a lot of highly competent people, but ones who often think along traditional lines.

A friend of mine spent some years in Japan a while ago and remarked that their software industry was decades behind the US because of their outlook on it.

"Productivity" for programmers was being measured by keystroke counters wired to keyboards, and the programmers sat shoulder to shoulder in long lines wearing white lab coats. It was a system no American programmer would accept and certainly not one conducive to creative approaches. When productivity of a fundamentally creative act is measured by shear volume, well...you're going to get a lot of volume every time ;->