Para que servem Universidades?. Elas não conseguem mais transformar Jovens em Adultos.

Eu costumo dizer que a minha graduação foi péssima. Eu não aprendi economia na graduação. Por vezes eu acho que eu nem sabia nem diferenciar macro de microeconomia com clareza quando me graduei. Fui aprender economia no mestrado e na vida profissional.

Richard Arum e Josipan Roksa têm estudado o que as universidades ensinam nos Estados Unidos, E têm concluído que a suniversidades falham epicamente em transformar jovens em adultos.

Eles recenmetemnete escreveram um novo livro, chamado Aspirim Adults Adrift. O site Insider Higher Ed falou sobre este livro que parece muito interessante.

Vou colocar aqui parte do texto do Insider Higher Ed.

'Aspiring Adults Adrift'

September 2, 2014

By

Jake New

In their 2011 book Academically Adrift, authors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, argued that colleges are failing to educate students. Many undergraduates, the authors wrote, are "drifting through college without a clear sense of purpose," with more than a third of students not demonstrating any significant improvement in learning over four years in college.

Now Arum and Roksa have revisited a large sampling of those same undergraduates for a new book examining how they've fared after graduation. They're no longer students, the authors write, but they are still adrift.

Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates, published today by the University of Chicago Press, is the story of a generation's difficult transition to adulthood. Based on surveys and interviews with nearly 1,000 recent college graduates from the cohort featured inAcademically Adrift, the book reports that a large number of graduates are having difficulty finding jobs, living somewhere other than a parent's house, assuming civic and financial responsibility, and even developing stable romantic relationships.

"In the world of 'emerging adulthood,' the late teens and early 20s are an age of discovery and exploration," the authors write. "A four-year residential college experience is particularly conducive to fully experiencing this stage of life, as it affords students time and opportunity to learn about themselves and others."

But now this experience extends far after graduation, and colleges, the authors argue, share a large part of the blame.

"Colleges are implicated in this," Arum, a professor of sociology and education at New York University, said in an interview. "They've legitimated this. Students are going away to college for a longer and longer time. Colleges are disinvesting in faculty and investing in amenities."

Many four-year universities attend to students' social adjustment rather than developing their characters, he said, allocating resources toward what will attract teenagers to their campuses rather than what will help them learn. Campuses cater to satisfying consumer preferences instead of providing rigorous academics and connecting what students learn to the real world, Arum and Roksa write. Like students and aspiring adults, they argue, colleges and universities are also adrift.

"Both students and the schools they attend exist in larger structural and cultural contexts that have created the conditions under which the observed learning outcomes occur," the authors write. "Widespread cultural commitment to consumer choice and individual rights, self-fulfillment and sociability, and well-being and a broader therapeutic ethic leave little room for students or schools to embrace programs that promote academic rigor."

The result: Colleges are producing graduates with happy memories of their time in college but little sense of purpose or any "clear way forward."

One in four of the students surveyed and interviewed for the book reported that they were living at home two years after graduation, a proportion that is nearly double than in the 1960s. More than half said their lives lacked direction. Seven percent reported being unemployed, 12 percent said they had part-time jobs, and 30 percent were working full-time but earning less than $30,000 a year. Half of those graduates were earning less than $20,000.

College selectivity did not significantly affect the graduates' chances of employment, the authors write, and neither did gender, race or parental education. 

Field of study had little effect on the probability of whether a graduate was working an unskilled or skilled occupation two years after graduation -- except for students who studied engineering and computer science. While the probability of graduates who studied social sciences, humanities, science, math, and communication working an unskilled job hovered between 14 and 17 percent, the probability for graduates who studied engineering and computer science was just 4 percent.

Field of study did affect the probability of unemployment, with graduates who studied business and STEM-related fields having lower unemployment rates than those who studied social sciences, liberal arts, and the humanities. Business majors had a 2 percent unemployment rate among the graduates surveyed for the book, while social work, education, and health majors were at 8 percent unemployment. Communications majors had an unemployment rate of 9 percent. 

...

"Large numbers of students today do not apply themselves or develop academic skills in college," the authors write. "Thirty-six percent of full-time college students reported studying alone less than five hours per week."

Indeed, for every Beth, the authors interviewed several students who "were wading through their early 20s --- much as they had waded through college -- aspiring but adrift." Lucy, a biology major from a less-selective college, found work after graduation but only as a temporary receptionist. Linda, a psychology major from a selective college, was unemployed two years after graduating. Alice, a foreign language and literature graduate from a selective college, worked as a cashier at a cooperative food grocery store. Sonya, a public health major from a selective university, was living at home and working as a full-time baby sitter.

Nathan, who majored in business administration and graduated with a 3.9 grade point average, was a delivery driver for a chain of pharmacies. He found the job on Craiglist and earned less than $20,000.

"I can definitely do better," Nathan, who also moved back in with his parents, said to the authors. "I feel like I'm not using my degree at all. I put a lot of money on this thing and I feel like I'm not getting much out of it at the moment, but I think I will in the future."  

Despite their lack of success after graduation, many of these graduates -- Nathan included -- remained hopeful. The authors note a shared feeling of optimism among the adults in the study, despite some of their circumstances.

Ninety-five percent of the graduates said they expected their lives to be better than their parents'.

"They believed things would work out, even if they did not necessarily have plans for how that would happen," the authors write. "They were also convinced that their lives would be as good as those of their parents, if not better. This optimism in the face of challenges may be characteristic of the Academically Adrift cohort's generation. It may also reflect new ways of understanding adulthood that are tied more closely to subjective sentiments than to objective accomplishments, and that focus on the journey rather than the final destination."

(Agradeço o texto ao site Culture War Notes)

Por que Asiáticos ganham mais nos EUA?

Nos Estado Unidos, há muito debate racial. Tenta-se explicar por que os negros vão tão mal em muitos critérios (educação, crimes, emprego, abortos,).

Uma das explicações, especialmente vinda de esquerdistas, negros ou não, é que há um "white privilege", os brancos seriam privilegiados pela sociedade ou pelo "sistema".

Bill O'Reilly em seu programa mostrou que não é bem assim, caso contrário o que teríamos era um "Asian privlege", pois os asiáticos vão muito melhor que os brancos, nos critérios acima.

No programa, O´Reilly entrevista do Dr. Carson (foto acima), que está cotado para concorrer a presidência nos Estados Unidos, que confirma o que diz O'Reilly.

Diz O'Reilly:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for black Americans is 11.4 percent. It's just over five percent for whites, 4.5 percent for Asians. So, do we have Asian privilege in America? Because the truth is, that Asian American households earn far more money than anyone else. The median income for Asians, close to $69,000 a year; it's 57,000 for whites' $33,000 for black -- so the question becomes why? And the answer is found in stable homes and in emphasis on education; 88 percent of Asian Americans graduate from high school compared to 86 for whites and just 69 percent for blacks. That means 31 percent of African- Americans have little chance to succeed in the free marketplace because they are uneducated. They are high school dropouts.

Asian Americans also tend to keep their families intact. Just 13 percent of Asian children live in single parent homes compared to a whopping 55 percent for blacks and 21 percent for whites. So, there you go. That is why Asian Americans, who often have to overcome a language barrier, are succeeding far more than African-Americans and even more than white Americans. Their families are intact and education is paramount.

--
Repito: Apenas 13% dos asiáticos vivem em casas com mães (pais) solteiras, enquanto 55% dos negros vivem assim e 21% dos brancos.

Esta é a grande diferença (matemática e social), não é a educação!!

Guerras "Produtivas".

De vez em quando, eu encontro no sitre da Bloomberg, bons textos que não relativos ao mercado financeiro. Hoje, leio um texto muito mais próximo do que trato no meu outro blog Thyself, O Lord. O artigo trata sobre guerras "produtivas" e "não produtivas" comparando as guerras com os guerreiros nômades do passado (mongóis e hunos) com a guerra que precisa ser feita contra o ISIS.

Na oportunidade, o texto sugere o livro acima que parece bem interessante. Apesar de que definir guerra por produtiva ou não deve trazer muitos problemas.

Vou colocar aqui partes do artigo, escrito por Stephen Carter, leiam todo no site da Bloomberg.

TERRORISM

Islamic State's Centuries-Old Strategy

By Stephen L. Carter

The debate over how to think about Islamic State has mainly centered on important but abstruse questions -- is it evil or not? -- and on what combination of military and economic pressure might be necessary to prevent the establishment of a caliphate.

What the debate is lacking is a sense of history. And the historical antecedents do supply an early analogy to Islamic State -- a warrior people who came out of nowhere, defeated mightier forces in battle, accumulated wealth and, in their bloody ferocity, terrified every civilization with which they came into contact.

I refer to the steppe nomads.

The steppe nomads were fearsome horsemen of varying ethnicity who first encountered the great empires of antiquity around 700 B.C., and reappeared with regularity well into the Middle Ages. They lacked the sophisticated technology, wealth and professional bureaucracy of the great powers like Rome and China. Instead they had horses. Cavalry was something new, and the traditional empires had difficulty adjusting to the tactics of the unanticipated invaders, who although loosely organized slowly conquered vast swaths of territory.

...

The story of the battle against the steppe nomads is powerfully told in Ian Morris’s excellent if controversial book, "War! What Is It Good For?" Morris, a historian and archeologist at Stanford, argues that there are two kinds of wars: productive wars that bring about greater prosperity and safety, and unproductive ones that are destructive to both. The wars with the steppe nomads were mostly unproductive. And although the territorial empires ultimately prevailed, the wars against the nomads were long and enormously costly.

By the 13th century, when Mongols under Genghis Khan successfully invaded what is now Iran, the technological sophistication of the steppe nomads had advanced considerably. Khan “employed a permanent corps of Chinese engineers,” writes Morris, and the engineers in turn forced prisoners to “dig tunnels; divert rivers; build catapults, rams, and towers; and rain burning gunpowder onto defenders." The Mongols’ use of technology helped them take Baghdad, “Islam’s richest city,” in 1258. A few years later, following a lengthy siege, the Mongols conquered Xiangyang in central China, “possibly the greatest fortress on earth.”

All of this was possible because the Mongols -- who began as classic mounted steppe warriors -- were far-sighted enough to see the advantage of using their accumulated wealth to hire the experts they needed to defeat the cultures of the West.

The Huns, another fearsome nomadic people, had earlier learned the same lesson. For the Hunnic Empire, writes the historian Peter Heather in "Empire and Barbarians," the “path to political triumph” was to take charge “of distributing the combined profits flowing from a potent mixture of raiding, mercenary service, and diplomatic subsidy.”

...

Islamic State has also captured a lot of sophisticated military hardware from the Iraqi army. Many experts are skeptical about the group’s ability to maintain or even learn how to use the equipment. Perhaps. But Islamic State doesn’t necessarily need to do maintenance and training on its own; it need only spend some of its wealth to hire outside experts interested in making a buck. It worked for the steppe warriors for centuries. There is no reason to think it wouldn’t work for Islamic State.

The steppe warriors lost in the end, of course. It cost the traditional empires of Europe and Asia dearly in blood and treasure, but they won. How? Morris lists several reasons, and all of them have relevance to the current threat of Islamic State.

Advancing technology -- particularly the discovery of military uses for gunpowder -- helped turn the tide of battle. So did constant and often massive attacks on the nomad territory, as well as simple bribery. Most important, perhaps, was a change in attitude. Not until they finally accepted their enemy for what it was, not a crowd of mindless barbarians but a powerful military and economic force that had to be fought with all the weapons and wealth at their command, did the great empires of history defeat the warriors of the steppes.

As Pessoas estão ficando mais Estúpidas. Pesquisas mostram queda no QI.

Cientistas alertam que as pessoas no mundo todo estão ficando mais estúpidas. Será? Eu, como professor, vejo meus alunos cada vez mais estúpidos e desonestos.

O problema do plágio atinge de Harvard até a pior universidade do mundo. E as pessoas hoje em dia ficam entretidas com coisas mais estúpidas, jogos de computador, facebook. Olhem a música que se ouve hoje em dia...

O site Zero Hedge também fala da disseminação de questões escolares de múltipla escolhas. As pessoas não pensam mais, escolhem a opção mais provável. Antigamente, as questões escolares eram abertas, ou você usava a cabeça para lembrar da resposta ou não respondia.

É claro que medir inteligência por QI é controverso e muitas vezes relaciona o estúpido (cultualmente, socialmente, etc.) como inteligente. Mas serve como um parâmetro.

Vejamos o artigo do Daily Mail.

Are we becoming more STUPID? IQ scores are decreasing

Technology may be getting smarter, but humans are getting dumber, scientists have warned.

Evidence suggests that the IQs of people in the UK, Denmark and Australia have declined in the last decade.

Opinion is divided as to whether the trend is long-term, but some researchers believe that humans have already reached intellectual peak.

An IQ test used to determine whether Danish men are fit to serve in the military has revealed scores have fallen by 1.5 points since 1998. 

And standard tests issued in the UK and Australia echo the results, according to journalist Bob Holmes, writing in New Scientist.

The most pessimistic explanation as to why humans seem to be becoming less intelligent is that we have effectively reached our intellectual peak. 

Between the 1930s and 1980s, the average IQ score in the US rose by three points and in post-war Japan and Denmark, test scores also increased significantly - a trend known as the ‘Flynn effect’.

This increase in intelligence was due to improved nutrition and living conditions - as well as better education - says James Flynn of the University of Otago, after whom the effect is named. 

Now some experts believe we are starting to see the end of the Flynn effect in developed countries – and that IQ scores are not just levelling out, but declining. 

Scientists including Dr Flynn think better education can reverse the trend and point out  the perceived decline could just be a blip. However, other scientists are not so optimistic.

Some believe the Flynn effect has masked a decline in the genetic basis for intelligence, so that while more people have been reaching their full potential, that potential itself has been declining.

Some have even contentiously said this could be because educated people are deciding to have fewer children, so that subsequent generations are largely made up of less intelligent people.

Richard Lynn, a psychologist at the University of Ulster, calculated the decline in humans’ genetic potential.

He used data on average IQs around the world in 1950 and 2000 to discover that our collective intelligence has dropped by one IQ point.

Dr Lynn predicts that if this trend continues, we could lose another 1.3 IQ points by 2050.

Michael Woodley, of the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, claims people’s reactions are slower than in Victorian times, and has linked it to a decline in our genetic potential.

It has previously been claimed that quick-witted people have fast reactions and Dr Woodley’s study showed people’s reaction times have slowed over the century – the equivalent to one IQ point per decade.

Jan te Nijenhuis, a psychology professor at the University of Amsterdam, says Westerners have lost an average of 14 IQ points since the Victoria Era.

He believes this is due to more intelligent women have fewer children than those who are less clever,The Huffington Post reported.

Dr Woodley and others think humans will gradually become less and less intelligent.

But Dr Flynn says if the decline in IQ scores is the end of the Flynn effect, scores should stabilise.

He thinks that even if humans do become more stupid, better healthcare and technology will mean that all people will have fewer children and the ‘problem’ will regulate itself.

(Agradeço a informação ao site Zero Hedge)

A Pior Recuperação Econômica da História dos EUA, para trabalhadores.

Eu já vi várias gráficos comparativos das recuperações econômicas americanas depois de uma recessão, mostrando, por exemplo, ganhos em termos do PIB. E estes gráficos mostram e eu costumo dizer que Obama administra a pior recuperação econômica da história dos EUA. Hoje vi mais um gráfico sobre isso que mostra que a recuperação econômica da crise de 2008/2009 é a pior em termos de ganhos salariais para o trabalhadores.

Texto da Bloomberg de hoje. Vejam abaixo:

Only Rich Know Wage Gains With No Raises for U.S Workers

By Aki Ito, Ian Katz and Ilan Kolet

Call it the no-raises recovery: Five years of economic expansion have done almost nothing to boost paychecks for typical American workers while the rich have gotten richer.

Meager improvements since 2009 have barely kept up with a similarly tepid pace of inflation, raising the real value of compensation per hour by only 0.5 percent. That marks the weakest growth since World War II, with increases averaging 9.2 percent at a similar point in past expansions, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by Bloomberg.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has zeroed in on faster wage growth as an important milestone for declaring the job market healed and ready to withstand policy tightening, even as other labor measures improve. Stagnant earnings also explain an economy that’s having trouble sustaining a rebound in housing and consumer spending, according to David Blanchflower, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

“The bottom line is, we’re a million miles from full employment,” said Blanchflower, a Bank of England policy maker from 2006 to 2009. “Workers are struggling, and they don’t see signs that things are suddenly going to change.”

.

Households in the top 20 percent of U.S. socioeconomic groups saw their incomes grow by an average of $8,358 a year from 2008 to 2012, compared with a $275 annual decline for the lowest 20 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Global Inequality

The discrepancy gained visibility after publication of French economist Thomas Piketty’s bestseller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” It catalogs the widening global inequality between the rich and everyone else, and has sparked worldwide debate about imbalances in wealth and income.

In the U.S., stagnant wages are linked to a question puzzling economists and policy makers alike: How many able and willing workers still are waiting on the sidelines? The issue may be among topics Yellen and other central bankers discuss this week at their annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the focus will be on the labor market. Until the economy burns through this excess capacity, employers have little incentive to give raises to attract and maintain employees.

Recoveries in the past exhausted that supply far faster than the current rebound, generating broad-based compensation increases that outpaced the speed of inflation and encouraged consumers to spend. If the economy had followed the historical relationship between joblessness and earnings, real wages would have been 3.6 percentage points higher by mid-2014, given how much unemployment has declined, according to a Chicago Fed study released last week.

Lower Unemployment

The jobless rate was 6.2 percent in July, down from a post-recession high of 10 percent in October 2009.

“We’re sort of in uncharted territory,” said Guy Berger, a U.S. economist at RBS Securities Inc. “This isn’t fully behaving like prior cycles.”

The abnormality reflects the depth of the 18-month contraction. It displaced millions of Americans who, even with a recent pickup in hiring, still are making their way back to gainful employment. The lack of wage increases also helps explain why U.S. consumers don’t seem to be on stronger footing this far into the expansion.

The National Association of Realtors projects a 3 percent decline in purchases of existing homes this year to about 4.9 million from 5.1 million in 2013, while retail sales stalled last month.

Limited Scope

“The scope for improvement is limited,” Berger said. “But real wage growth could make a difference. If we go up a percentage point from where we are now” in inflation-adjusted wage gains, “that allows consumer spending to accelerate as well.”

Lackluster pay has contributed to headaches for President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats, with fewer than three months left until the midterm elections. In daily Gallup tracking polls taken from Aug. 12 through Aug. 14, 51 percent of respondents disapproved of how he has handled the presidency, compared with 42 percent who approved. That pattern has persisted for more than a year.

Respondents in a Pew Research Center survey conducted July 8-14 were even less positive about his handling of the economy, with 56 percent saying they disapprove compared with 40 percent who approve.

Blame, Credit

“Right or wrong, the president gets credit and blame for what’s going on,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America Corp. in New York. “The fact that people just don’t feel good about the economy is partly due to the lack of job growth, partly due to the lack of wage growth.”

Yellen referenced this in July 15 testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, saying the recovery still isn’t complete and the “slow pace of growth” in measures of hourly compensation are a sign of “significant slack” in labor markets.

This slack is one reason the Fed has kept its benchmark federal funds rate near zero; the last time policy makers raised the rate on overnight loans among banks was 2006.

The risk of leaving the rate so low for too long is that the economy may overheat. While inflation still tracks below the Fed’s 2 percent target -- and the yield on 10-year Treasuries was 2.39 percentyesterday, compared with 3.94 percent on Nov. 30, 2007, just before the recession began -- prices are starting to accelerate. The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred gauge, increased 1.6 percent in June from a year earlier, compared with an annual pace of 0.9 percent in October.

Weak Response

“We are facing a problem of rising inflation,” Martin Feldstein, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said June 4 in a “Bloomberg Surveillance” interview. “They’re probably going to respond too weakly, too slowly.”

Yellen’s counter: Nominal average hourly pay, which increased about 2 percent in June from a year earlier, is still about half the 3 percent to 4 percent pace she has said she considers “normal.”

“There is some room there for faster growth in wages and for real wage gains before we need to worry” about this “creating overall inflationary pressure for the economy,” she told the Senate committee July 15.

So for now, Dartmouth’s Blanchflower will keep waiting for the jump in inflation hawks have been forecasting for years.

“We’ll worry about it when we see it,” he said.

Bloomberg: Retorno Decrescente do Federal Reserve

Bom, hoje há um interessante texto na newsletter da Bloomberg (Bloomberg Brief). É sobre o efeito do "quantitative easing" do Federal Reserve. O autor mostra que é preciso cada vez mais uma montanha maior de dinheiro do Banco Central dos Estados Unidos para se gerar 1 emprego. Em termos econômicos, chamaríamos de retorno marginal decrescente dos estímulos financeiros. E olha que de toda a imensidão do dinheiro gasto (recorde em todos os sentidos), os Estados Unidos estão na pior recuperação econômica da história do país.

Vou descrever aqui o que diz o economista.

Segundo o economista Chase Rhoer, hoje para cada 1 dólar de estímulo do Fed há $4 de capitalização na S&P. Esta relação é estável desde o inícios dos quantitative easings, mas que no auge da crise em agosto de 2008 para $1 gerava-se $12.

E também mostra que hoje é preciso $37.403 no balanço do Fed para estimular a criação de um emprego formal, em agosto de 2008 este valor era $7.600.

O maior contraste está na análise de custo-benefício do crédito onde  é preciso $41 bilhões de estímulos para que haja queda de 1 ponto base no CDS dos EUA.

Vejam os dois gráficos do artigo de Rhoer.

Black Blocs nos Estados Unidos

As imagens acima são muito corriqueiras no Brasil. Mas ocorrem nos Estados Unidos na cidade de Ferguson, no Missouri, porque a polícia atirou em um jovem negro que estava desarmado (história também comum no Brasil).

A diferença nos EUA é que o problema racial é mais acentuado. Por exemplo, a maioria dos negros são mortos por outros negros nos EUA, mas se um branco mata um negro pode virar manchete de jornal. Outra diferença é que este tipo de conflito contra policiais não é nada comum nos Estados Unidos.

Obama chegou ao poder com um discurso de superação do conflito racial, mas desde que assumiu a presidência já estimulou o conflito inúmeras vezes,  e às vezes teve de se retratar. Por exemplo, certa vez um professor negro resolveu fazer muito barulho na porta de casa. A polícia foi chamada. Como ele desacatou os policiais, foi preso. O Obama atacou os policiais. E Depois que a verdade apareceu, ele teve que chamar o policial para tomar um chop na Casa Branca, para acalmar as críticas de sua atitude impensada (foto abaixo). Depois teve o caso Trayvon, um jovem que foi morto por um vigia noturna branco (meio latino). Obama e seu partido transformaram Trayvon em mártir, mesmo sabendo da ficha suja do jovem. O vigia foi inocentado pela justiça.