I'm not sure whether this proves that kids are more shallow or not, but the average age of first marriage for Americans has risen by 5 years in the last 20 years. That is definitely a big change.   

Am I not allowed to have an opinion X?  Sometimes personal anecdotes and observation can be useful, but if you need academic studies this is close to what I am getting at:

 

"Another cause may be changing expectations about success. Since the 1980s, there has been a steady trend in people feeling more stressed about trying to "get ahead," Konrath says.  "With so much time and effort devoted to yourself so you can succeed, who has time for others?" O'Brian says."

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-06-08-empathyresearch08_st_N.htm

 

"But the authors speculate a millennial mixture of video games, social media, reality TV and hyper-competition have left young people self-involved, shallow and unfettered in their individualism and ambition."

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/fashion/27StudiedEmpathy.html

 

You certainly are allowed your own opinions, Mikel.  I wasn't directing my comments at you specifically, but at the board in general.  I've just noticed a page and a half or so of unsubstantiated claims and opinions shorn of anything that might resemble a fact posted in a short period, so I called it out.

 

As for your articles, they occasionally flirt with something like facts, though all it really relies on is survey data of people's self perceptions.  Is there a less reliable thing that can be considered a fact?  So less college students agree with the statement that "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me".  It's possible that equates with lower social empathy as the articles posit in a number of ways, it's equally possible that college students are more open or honest about themselves, even when it risks making them look bad.  That statement is just my pet theory, but it's no less substantiated than the speculation that makes up the rest of those articles. 

 

Nearly the rest of the article is fact free opinion- though there is this one other fact-

 

"Claire Raines, author of The Art of Connecting and an expert on generations, says such a study focusing on college students leads to stereotypes of the Millennial generation — people born between 1980 and 2000 — as more narcissistic and materialistic, which Raines says isn't necessarily true. She notes that the Millennial generation volunteers more than twice as often as Generation X, or people born roughly between 1960 and 1980. They also have better relationships with their parents, she says."

 

Hmmm....I'll let that stand on its own, except to say that actions speak louder than words to me.

The current state of the literature on the decline of American civilization is: the sky is falling, the sky has always been falling, but this time it is falling faster and without any safety in place.

actually people's self perceptions can be measured quite validly and reliably, so according that study people likely are less empathetic. it's the discussion of the results section of research that is of course speculative. that 'why' question is a real bugger.

 

also, younger people volunteer more than people in the prime of their working years, so no doubt gen x volunteers less than gen y (aka millenials?). anyway, i'd imagine that trend again reverses itself when people retire, seems to me retired folks volunteer a lot too like at polling stations and stuff, but i suppose thats grist for another study or book.

The rise in community service is an easy one.  Students have to do hundreds of hours of community service for graduation requirements for high school and college.  I remember my high school doubled the number of hours required about 6 years ago.  Facts for this issue are hard to come by because it is such a complicated issue.  What exactly can we measure to look at this?  I don't even quite know what I am trying to get at with this so that doesn't help the conversation but I think my basic argument is that the current generation is just so busy and stressed out from trying to do better than their parents that they don't have time to sit back and think about the larger world around them.  It is by no means a guarantee these days that we will do better than our parents and the stress from that problem is difficult to deal with. 

 

I try not to idealize the past because older generations did a lot of not so great things that we have tried to reduce in the present day and because I am still a youngster I don't have as much experience with the past as some on this board so I am open to being corrected.  This issue also may be more of an American thing that i just noticed when i lived in Scotland.  I am not trying to say that today's young people are stupid or careless, I just think a certain skillset is being replaced with a new one that has some positives but also some drawbacks for the future. To connect this to UrbanOhio, I think growing up in far-flung suburbs has made young people less empathetic and less understanding of problems that plague cities.  Anyway I'll let it go at this because this is really an education thread and should probably move more that way.

One point about Europeans, I do believe that Europeans are more tuned into the world because the basically the world, well European world, is right on top of them and there is far more international interaction. We are a huge, for the most part isolated country and even our cities are far apart compared to Europe.

 

I think it's more of a cultural change, and the older generation which just as consumed by thier cell phones and movies on demand are looking back unfairly and comparing their college years with these kids. There are knocks against every generations. The WWII/Greatest generation bombed the hell out of the rest of the world and then spent the 50s and 60s drinking Pabst, mowing the lawn and working 40 hours weeks while having 3 martini lunchs, The Boomers, were strictly motivated politically because they had huge numbers of their generation killed in Viet Nam, then spent the rest of the 70s and early 80s partying and being greedy. These are gross generalizations, but the nostaligic notion of the previous generation being unselfish are generally unfounded.

In my experience, Europeans are more in tune to Europe, and to hear them tell it, that's the world.  Nothing more.

This is a bit more about what I mentioned earlier in this thread.  It applies to Business school but the lessons from it may apply to some other fields as well.

 

The Default Major: Skating Through B-School

By DAVID GLENN

Published: April 14, 2011

 

This article is a collaboration between The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education, a daily source of news, opinion and commentary for professors, administrators and others interested in academe. David Glenn is a senior writer at The Chronicle covering teaching and curriculum.

PAUL M. MASON does not give his business students the same exams he gave 10 or 15 years ago. “Not many of them would pass,” he says.

 

Dr. Mason, who teaches economics at the University of North Florida, believes his students are just as intelligent as they’ve always been. But many of them don’t read their textbooks, or do much of anything else that their parents would have called studying. “We used to complain that K-12 schools didn’t hold students to high standards,” he says with a sigh. “And here we are doing the same thing ourselves.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/education/edlife/edl-17business-t.html?pagewanted=1

 

Thanks for the article.  I think the stuff about the group projects is obvious -- I never learned a damn thing from a group project.  I can only imagine what the small group meetings are like now, with everyone checking smart phones every 90 seconds. 

^

I did take some graduate courses a few years ago (at WSU) and it was all around group work.  I HATED group projects.  The entire concept was anathama to me. 

 

We did sort of work in a group in architecture studio, but the studio enviroment wasnt a real group project, we worked on our own projects for the same design problem, and critiqued each others solutions over the course of the term.  It was a different kind of learning than these impromptu forced group things that they had us work on.  It added this whole social dimension to the class that complicated things. 

mikels article was really enlightening as to whats going on in college these days.  Or I guess B-school.  Interesting.

When I was in undergraduate "general business" school 10 years ago, I sure had a lot of free time as compared to a lot of the other majors.

When I was in undergraduate "general business" school 10 years ago, I sure had a lot of free time as compared to a lot of the other majors.

 

The engineering students certainly noticed this too. One of the issues I had at OU was the biz undergrads week basically ended on Thursday, their four per week classes were  all M-T-W-Th while for whatever reason the Engineering schools were M-T-Th-F. And our "off" day was Wed.

Biz undergrads need time for networking. That's how we 'got things done' ;-)

"got things done"

 

sure, whatever you tell yourself AJ to justify what you paid in tution to beer bong Gennese...  ;)

 

Alex Bag - Untitled "Fall '95" [7th Semester segment]

Well, that was about as '90s as it gets.

There were a lot of girls like that.  Where are all of them now?

A prime example of what's wrong with passion majors.

There were a lot of girls like that.  Where are all of them now?

 

Her wiki page (if it's real) sounds pretty legit. She hit it big. I have to admit that video hits most of the major points about college. I just found it hilarious when she said "the job market is terrible." In 1995 in New York City? That must be a joke. I think she could use a taste of Detroit or Toledo in 2008 (or really any time after 2006). So many of these New York art kids are completely out of touch with the Rust Belt and real Americans. They have no clue what is going on. Most people I know would kill someone to have a job at Starbucks. Where I'm from, Starbucks is a dream job. It gets you out of hard manual labor or lower end retail/food service. Starbucks is high class and can be more desirable than many entry-level professional jobs in this city. Starbucks is lgendary for its health insurance.

There were a lot of girls like that.  Where are all of them now?

 

Married, no more nose ring, living in a bedroom community in Westchester, driving an Odyssey to piano lessons, bitching to the other PTA moms about how she's "so 'over' cupcakes, you know?"

 

Oh, and she's blond now and wears mom jeans.

 

Edit: Ok, so C-Dawg's post would indicate I was incorrect, but I maintain that she's fabricated that wiki page

This was a satire, btw.  This lady was already a fairly famous artist when she made these.  I saw these first I think in 1998, pretty soon after they were made, but they are funnier now.  Here is the first one, when she arrives at school:

 

Alex Bag - Untitled "Fall '95" [iNTRO - First Semester Segment]

Edit: Ok, so C-Dawg's post would indicate I was incorrect, but I maintain that she's fabricated that wiki page

 

She's big time:

http://www.elizabethdeegallery.com/artists/view/alex-bag

 

Wow, someone I went to high school with is in that gallery. Small world.

 

This was a satire, btw.  This lady was already a fairly famous artist when she made these.  I saw these first I think in 1998, pretty soon after they were made, but they are funnier now.  Here is the first one, when she arrives at school:

 

She nails it. I know some kids exactly like that character, and have had the "pleasure" of working with them too.

This was a satire, btw.  This lady was already a fairly famous artist when she made these.  I saw these first I think in 1998, pretty soon after they were made, but they are funnier now.  Here is the first one, when she arrives at school:

 

Alex Bag - Untitled "Fall '95" [iNTRO - First Semester Segment]

 

I figured that out after reading her wiki page. That said, she did a dead on impression of quite a few people I knew at that time (I wouldn't say they were friends, but I was aware of them...I was much too busy working toward becoming a corporate drone...which, BTW...Mission Accomplished!) .

Edit: Ok, so C-Dawg's post would indicate I was incorrect, but I maintain that she's fabricated that wiki page

 

She's big time:

http://www.elizabethdeegallery.com/artists/view/alex-bag

 

Wow, someone I went to high school with is in that gallery. Small world.

 

 

BTW, I was right about her being blonde!!

:-D

 

 

Haha! :-D Gold.

It definitely tapped into a particular moment. I will note that the first half of the 90s was still quite rough economically - it isn't really until 96/97 that the real boom takes off. That the era of downsizing as a dominant word in the economic vocabulary. Also the rust belt collapse was a lot more recent then. UT had just come off a peak enrollment era related to the factory closures of the 80s and early 90s.

Also, New York was still pretty rough.  The Times Square Disneyfication started right around 1995 from what I remember. 

Lots of interesting stats in this:

 

20 Most Useless College Degrees

http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2843/1/

 

Journalism looked worst by far. The numbers are gut-wrenching. Under 70,000 total people are currently employed nationwide, that number is plummeting, and 78,000 kids graduate every year with degrees in this field. Imagine how much bigger the industry would have to be to even start to absorb new entrants. The supply and demand issue raises every red flag under the sun. What makes this Daily Beast article so great is that they break down every major by number of yearly graduates and total employment base in the field (just divide change in number of jobs by percentage change- for journalism it's 4,400/.0632). It's very easy to see what the competition is like in fields like journalism.

 

Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -4,400

 

Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -6.32

 

Undergraduate field of study: Communications

 

Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009:: 78,009

 

I think every kid should look at these numbers before declaring a major. Public universities should be required by law to disclose these numbers to prospective students. Kids would make much more informed decisions if they knew this stuff before declaring a major. In my experience, most of the advice given by high schools and universities is along the lines of, "just go to college," or "it doesn't matter what major you pick as long as you're passionate about it."

So, according to this article, is everyone supposed to be a management major, pre med or pre law? I'd argue we need more science majors, along with math and engineering, so that we can actually innovate and create things, which we're seriously starting to lag in.

I have degrees in management and law... and while I've rarely been unemployed, I wouldn't call these lucrative fields for 2011.  But most people I know who are in healthcare, like nursing or therapy, get regular calls from recruiters.

So, according to this article, is everyone supposed to be a management major, pre med or pre law? I'd argue we need more science majors, along with math and engineering, so that we can actually innovate and create things, which we're seriously starting to lag in.

 

The pure natural sciences (e.g., chemistry, as opposed to chemical engineering) really are different animals than the applied fields like engineering, and the weakness in the market for chemists should not be taken as a sign of weakness in the market for chemical engineers, for example.  However, there really is more weakness in the market for chemists than you might think.  "Degrees in math and science" is a buzzphrase that I hear a lot, but a degree in pure mathematics doesn't open too many doors (unless you're a quant of hedge fund caliber), either, and not all scientific fields are created equal.

 

I have a legal degree and I'm an attorney in private practice now, but I would never recommend law as a career for everyone.  On the diametrically opposite side, I admittedly suck at working with my hands, but have definitely suggested the skilled trades for others who are less cerebral and more hands-on.  A good plumber or electrician or mechanic can make a lot more than a lot of white collar occupations, though obviously the work environment won't be consistently air-conditioned and carpeted.

Let me rephrase that I think we need to direct undergrads today to majors that apply math and/or science. A solid grasp of higher mathematical concepts can be applied to any number of fields, engineering, financial principals (not just limited to quants...who in many cases are physics majors these days), medicine, etc.

Thanks Calvin for the link.  I saw that a week or so ago when the forum was down so didn't post it. 

 

Some of the numbers are a little suspect.  They list both "art" and "fine arts" as each producing 89,000 graduates per year.  I'm not sure quite what their stated difference is between an art degree and a fine arts degree is, although I do recall my school offering both BA (Bachelor of Arts) and BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) degrees, which meant pretty much that a declared major in the art school and so took a few more of those classes. 

 

I think most of the jobs that are out there for art, theater, and music majors are as teachers in grade schools and high schools.  If you want to do those things, then great.  But the really cruel thing about the arts, generally, seems to be that a lot of the people in the administrative roles in the non-teaching jobs don't even have a background in their particular art (ballet, art museum, whatever). 

 

Obviously, some young people are passionately drawn to theater or music or whatever.  I just think that we should be very cautious in allowing people to borrow tons of money to pursue these things, especially since in my experience I've seen the non-majors often get the jobs in the arts. 

 

 

Found this photo from I think 1997 today...this is the exact kind of girl being parodied in that earlier video:

 

Thu Jun 16, 3:00 pm ET

The more debt college students have, the higher their self esteem

By Liz Goodwin

 

It turns out there is an upside to mounting college debt: self confidence! A new study shows that the higher a young person's debt, the more self-esteem he or she has. Ohio State University researchers surveyed more than 3,000 adults aged 18 to 34 for the study, which is published in Social Science Research. Their study found that the more debt from college loans and credit cards individuals had in their name, the more control they felt over their lives. There is, however, a catch: People over the age of 28 started to show signs of stress and worry about their debt. The downshift in debtors' moods stems from the ongoing growth of their debt obligations over time--though it is of course also true that adults have a general propensity to worry more as they age.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110616/us_yblog_thelookout/the-more-debt-college-students-have-the-higher-their-self-esteem

 

Thu Jun 16, 3:00 pm ET

The more debt college students have, the higher their self esteem

By Liz Goodwin

 

It turns out there is an upside to mounting college debt: self confidence! A new study shows that the higher a young person's debt, the more self-esteem he or she has. Ohio State University researchers surveyed more than 3,000 adults aged 18 to 34 for the study, which is published in Social Science Research. Their study found that the more debt from college loans and credit cards individuals had in their name, the more control they felt over their lives. There is, however, a catch: People over the age of 28 started to show signs of stress and worry about their debt. The downshift in debtors' moods stems from the ongoing growth of their debt obligations over time--though it is of course also true that adults have a general propensity to worry more as they age.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110616/us_yblog_thelookout/the-more-debt-college-students-have-the-higher-their-self-esteem

 

 

That is some crazy shit!  Thank goodness I had no debt after college!

$23,000 is not a lot of debt, relatively speaking.  A monthly payment of say $250 is manageable in most situations.  When a monthly payment approaches $1,000, that's when you're in trouble.  With such a payment it is hard to build up an emergency fund that would allow you to keep making those payments for any length of time.  Someone with $50K in debt is typically not going to have $10K in cash reserves. 

Well, the critical missing piece of information is just what level of income that level of debt enabled the graduate to secure.  Someone with $50k in debt and a degree or certificate in law, accounting, engineering, etc. is not in the same position as someone with $50k in debt and a degree in art history or women's studies (as a general rule, of course).

 

The interest rate on the debt is also important, but not quite as important as the income question.

 

The findings of that study that children from lower-income households have a high level of confidence associated with a high level of debt could make perfect sense to me if we're talking about children who are the first member of their family to go to college and got a good degree and are using it well.  Even with $50k in debt (leave aside law and medicine since those require postgraduate degrees), an accountant or engineer is still probably achieving a respectable standard of living, and if they came from a poor household, then they may also have achieved many a dream of generational progress: not just to have the next generation finish ahead of where the previous one finished, but to have the next generation basically *start* ahead of where the previous one finished.

 

If it's just that children from poorer families have so little experience with debt (since people weren't lending to them or their parents before they reached college age and entered the cheery world of student loans) and haven't gotten the cold shock of reality with respect to those debts yet, then that's a slightly different message.

I think it's difficult for most people to pay off $50K in 10 years with a middle class income.  There are too many pressures to buy new clothes, go to restaurants, go on trips, etc.  Dave Ramsey, the personal finance guru, always tells people if you cut back on these things that "people are going to say you're nuts".  I have lived in a cheap apartment in a "bad" part of town for four years and have saved, by my estimation, at least $10,000 by doing so.  Most people have too much ego to live in a cheap place. 

Thu Jun 16, 3:00 pm ET

The more debt college students have, the higher their self esteem

By Liz Goodwin

 

It turns out there is an upside to mounting college debt: self confidence! A new study shows that the higher a young person's debt, the more self-esteem he or she has. Ohio State University researchers surveyed more than 3,000 adults aged 18 to 34 for the study, which is published in Social Science Research. Their study found that the more debt from college loans and credit cards individuals had in their name, the more control they felt over their lives. There is, however, a catch: People over the age of 28 started to show signs of stress and worry about their debt. The downshift in debtors' moods stems from the ongoing growth of their debt obligations over time--though it is of course also true that adults have a general propensity to worry more as they age.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110616/us_yblog_thelookout/the-more-debt-college-students-have-the-higher-their-self-esteem

 

 

I remember reading that article last week. I would surely love to know how they came to the conclusions they did. Luckily I received pretty good scholarships from UConn and the state of Connecticut. If it were not for the scholarships and grants, I probably would not have been able to go to college being that my parents are not wealthy by any means. Even with the scholarships, grants, and whatever aid my parents could give me when they had it, I still had to take out loans to cover remaining tuition costs and living expenses I had.

 

I sometimes loathe the fact that I have student loans that I will have to pay back after I finish grad school, but my debt will be very, very minimal compared to others I know (around $16,000). I have instructors in their 50s still paying off student loans - unfathomable! I also know Xavier alumni who are well over 100k in student loan debt!

 

IMO, if I had to break into the debt range above 60k-ish, I would really start questioning as to whether the investment is really worth it, especially if I were majoring in History, Philosophy, Communications, Organizational Leadership, etc. I'm a huge advocate of education, but ultimately, some people end up relinquishing their quaility of life for the rest of their life to obtain a degree. On the flipside, I know too many people who go to college for the sole purpose of "getting a job" and because it's primarily what's expected after high school.

I think it's difficult for most people to pay off $50K in 10 years with a middle class income.  There are too many pressures to buy new clothes, go to restaurants, go on trips, etc.  Dave Ramsey, the personal finance guru, always tells people if you cut back on these things that "people are going to say you're nuts".  I have lived in a cheap apartment in a "bad" part of town for four years and have saved, by my estimation, at least $10,000 by doing so.  Most people have too much ego to live in a cheap place.

 

This may very well be true.  However, to the extent that it's true, I find that the diagnosis of the problem is sliding a little way away from "peak education."

>If it's just that children from poorer families have so little experience with debt

 

Great point.  But then again, with graduate school at least, you don't need a cosigner for the loans.  So a lot of people from middle class upbringings are getting $50K in debt thinking it will be a cinch to pay off. 

 

The bright side of student loan debt is that people are learning the danger of debt early in life and will be much more likely to avoid it entirely for the rest of their lives. 

May 19, 2011

Economic Troubles Reduce Pay for Recent Graduates

By Lauren Sieben

 

It's common knowledge that the recession has hurt job prospects for college graduates. But a new study has found that when graduates do find work, their jobs often have little to do with their college studies, or don't require degrees at all.

 

A report by Rutgers University, "Unfulfilled Expectations: Recent College Graduates Struggle in a Troubled Economy," says that 53 percent of college graduates from 2006 to 2010 have full-time jobs, while 21 percent are in graduate school, 12 percent are working part time, and 9 percent are unemployed. Of 517 respondents to a Rutgers survey, 90 percent of 2006-7 graduates said they had held at least one job since graduating. Around 80 percent of 2008-9 graduates said the same. But only 56 percent of 2010 graduates said they'd had at least one job since graduation.

 

Among those who did find work, 44 percent said their jobs were very closely related to their academic work, but 30 percent said their jobs were not very closely related or were not related at all to what they had studied in college. For 27 percent, the first job was "just a job to get you by." And 40 percent said their first jobs didn't require a college degree. Respondents who graduated into the down economy faced more challenges landing jobs and were paid less than those who graduated earlier. Graduates entering in job market in 2006-7 earned a median salary of $30,000, compared with $27,000 for those who entered the market in 2009-10.

 

https://chronicle.com/article/Economic-Troubles-Reduce-Pay/127597/

 

Original Rutgers study

http://www.heldrich.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/content/Work_Trends_May_2011.pdf

 

Teen entrepreneur asks: College? Who needs it?

 

By LAUREL ROSENHALL

McClatchy Newspapers

Published: Monday, Jun. 13, 2011 - 5:13 am

Last Modified: Monday, Jun. 13, 2011 - 6:13 pm

 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- He calls it the UnCollege movement.

 

Nineteen-year-old Dale Stephens is urging his peers to rethink the need for college, arguing that they can get more out of pursuing real-world skills than completing homework assignments and studying for exams. "I want to change the notion that a college degree is the only path to professional success," said Stephens, who grew up in Winters and now lives in San Francisco, where he is building the UnCollege movement and developing a Web-based company.

 

Stephens is part of a small but growing chorus of entrepreneurs, free thinkers and former students who are questioning the value of higher education. The attack is coming from multiple directions: those who say college costs far more than it should; those who say students learn far less than they should; and those who argue the graduation rates are abysmal.

 

With tuition rising much faster than inflation, borrowing for college has reached record heights. Two-thirds of graduates now leave school with debt, with the typical borrower owing more than $34,000, according to FinAid.org, an authority on student lending. Nationwide, student debt is likely to top $1 trillion this year signaling to some that education is the next mortgage bubble.

 

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/13/3696460/teen-entrepreneur-asks-college.html#ixzz1PqnaJJAX

UnCollege. I like it.

 

 

Clearly all but a few schools are reforming themselves as luxury summer camps -- rebuilding themselves quite literally as advertisements for a product that doesn't really exist and can't exist when tons of non-college material is attending college.  I remember in the mid-90's, a campus tour often started with a walk through the school's newest computer lab and there wasn't a fixation on dorms and "lifestyle".  Simply having dorms wired for the internet was a huge deal up until around 2002.  Now that everyone's parents buy them a computer, the whole emphasis seems to be fitness centers, new dorms, and chain restaurants on campus.

 

Let's face facts.

 

In 1980 an IBM 3033 mainframe cost $3,000,000.  How many schools could afford that back then?

 

That mainframe was about equivalent to a 300 MHz Pentium.  Everybody can get cheap computers and give them to grade school kids.  Colleges can't impress parents with computers anymore.  But if the concern is really EDUCATION the question is, "What to do with the computers in grade school?"

 

In ten years college could be obsolete.

 

The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase

 

Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics, by Stan Gibilisco

http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0071459332

 

The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill

http://books.sharedaa.com/2010/01/the-art-of-electronics-horowitz-hill.html

 

Celestia: space simulation of the universe in 3D

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

 

GeoGebra: Interactive graphics, algebra and spreadsheet

http://www.geogebra.org/cms/

 

Solve Elec: draw and analyze electrical circuits

http://www.physicsbox.com/indexsolveelec2en.html

 

Logisim: Digital logic circuit simulator

http://sourceforge.net/projects/circuit/

 

Cost of Living by Sheckley Robert

http://www.onread.com/book/Cost-of-Living-20266/

 

Subversive  by Reynolds Mack

http://www.onread.com/book/Subversive-13972/

 

The Space Merchants  Frederick Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth

http://www.zone-sf.com/spacemerch.html

 

Educators could have created a National Recommended Reading List decades ago.  It ain't about education.  It's about making money off education and using the schools to maintain the class structure.

 

psik

^The class structure fails when the college educated are less apt to earn a higher income than those without a higher education. A lot of my buddies didn't go straight through school, instead becoming things like elevator techs, parts managers, cops, and car salesmen. They all make, on average, more (sometimes much more) than my college educated friends, except for the ones that went into the medical field or became military officers.