"And who would - without necessity or accident - have children in a high-rise environment featuring fug-filled air that causes asthma, streets filled with rushing vehicles, public spaces designed for adults, and places dominated by strangers."
Um, what? Is Cooke unfamiliar with the many volumes in a whole late 19th-mid-20th century Old-Progressive literature panicking about there being not too little but far too much fertility in such dense urban circumstances, indeed, circumstances that were in many respects far worse and less wholesome for raising children? Riis is spinning in his grave. That didn't stop anybody, and no, these recent ancestors were not clueless about ways to control family size or helpless before the introduction of hormone-based birth control.
It's amusing how far people will go to concoct absurdly ahistorical stories as desperate attempts to find an alternative to having to accept politically inconvenient truths staring everyone in the face.
The present is not like the past. Constraints mattered then, but now, they don't. There were few competitive opportunities to sacrifice then, but now, there are lots. Constraints meant the difference between 5, 8, or 11 kids. Opportunity costs means the differences between 0, 1, or 2.
I don't know if you intend that as agreement, disagreement or something else but yes. ... Though one could argue daycare cost is a constraint. Maybe even argue the line between calling them constraints then and opportunity costs today is rather fuzzy.
"how far people will go to concoct absurdly ahistorical stories"...very true that. And the 'fertility crisis' does seem like a particularly seductive case in point. A smart-arsed theorist competition.
Maybe the thought would be - that was before the invention of the "suburban" (now inner-ring) alternative? And before Moses criss-crossed NYC with freeways?
Of course, but we have the best record of what happens to a city circa mid-century in "The Power Broker". And what happens is that those areas Moses reflexively called "slums" - which was pretty much everything in his view - were thriving in the view of most of their residents who even long after they had been forced to move, bridled at their homes being called "slums". ("These buildings may have been old but they were spacious, I could seat 18 people in my dining room, etc.").
Some of the slumminess was created in the act of calling them slums and the actions he took.
And even though you hear people say, my apartment may be tiny but NYC is my living room (patio might be more apt)- I think that was much more true then, if those firsthand accounts are to be believed.
This gets at "community" - a word I have grown to hate because it now references things like "the trans community" or "the Asian community" or "the black community".
There is no such thing and this is so far from being related to its original use it has destroyed the word.
I'd love to see a map of the world with the "Asian community" colored in lol.
It's barely a city by international standards. On the American curve, it's a great wealthy enclave with a gross hobo neighborhood or two attached to it. I think you have to think like the urban rich to really understand SF. The urban rich do not think about skid row, Spanish Harlem, Washington Heights, the Tenderloin, and so on. They think about the Presidio, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Greenwich Village, and so on.
The urban rich--the really rich--also do not really work. They have play time pretend jobs, sometimes. Their money works so that they can have fun. All the complaining about cities like SF come people who have to work for a living: schlubs, in other words, who do not really belong there. The busy-busy W2 tax payer is seen by the urban governing class as a wicked creature who demands more and more services while crying about paying taxes.
All of these issues that you identify are features and not bugs for the non-working rich. The hobo is like a wicked sort of gnomish creature that torments the disgusting computerized working class on behalf of the mega-wealthy for their sadistic amusement and entertainment.
I struggle a bit with the Ruxandra Teslo stats as evidence of an unusual anti-natal sentiment among young people today. I'd rather see stats about what today's 65 year olds thought forty years ago compared to today's 25 year olds. The younger you are the more you are concerned with accumulating 'stuff' versus older people who have already largely accumulated the 'stuff' they want. I will agree there is revealed preference in terms of falling birth rates but that's been happening for decades. Expecting large numbers of 18 year olds to say they place a high importance on starting a family by 23 strikes me as a bit of a stretch. I don't think my 22 year old self would have put a high importance on starting a family by the time I was 27 though that is what happened. I don't disagree with your overall sentiment but I think my experience is a good example. You aren't going to increase the birth rate with policies directed at changing people's answers to opinion surveys. You're going to change it with policies that incentivize people who are already generally favorable-to-neutral about forming a family to do it now rather than some unspecified time in the future. I will guarantee some of those policies will be unpopular in today's political climate because they will especially impact the trajectory of women's lives.
The problem is not just material, but also cultural. We have extended adolescence to the point where the average 27-year-old doesn't *feel* like a full adult, doesn't feel fully responsible for himself and his own life, let alone prepared to take on responsibility for another's.
I think the answer to the question would have a different valence based on the time.
I could see people in the past giving the same answer (26%) because it used to be understood that if a couple had no children, it was because they weren't able to, and that was supposed to be unfortunate. But because life was considered a good thing, it would be natural to answer that "yes, it is possible to have a good life without children" - as it in fact is.
There is a deal of difference between a choice regretted (i.e. not having children or only having one or two) and something foregone for other reasons.
Especially if there is an inkling that the choice was less autonomous than one thought, that in fact you were falling in with the herd.
I was born in 1960. My parents were born in 1928 and 1934, and thus grew up in the Depression and WW II. There was a lot of pressure on getting a good education, getting a good job, saving money. (The joke in our family was that our parents taught us the value of a dollar by teaching us the value of a nickel 20 times.) There was *some* pressure, mostly from Mom, on finding a mate, but not as much.
The upshot: three of us are unmarried and childless in our 60s, whereas the eldest sibling is married with eight kids!
If by "fertility crisis" we mean the drop of the fertility rate in last few decades to levels well bellow replacement, then the answer should be no. Urbanization rates have not increased much in recent decades:
(****) The 00s did not see a decrease in Japan's fertility rate. It went from 1.359 to 1368. From the late 90s until now, Japan's fertility rate has been mostly stable.
I don't know what urbanization means, technically.
In my state it means everybody just about is living in a giant triangle in which ag and open space is yielding to houses. It has none of the putative charms of city and none of the rural either.
The other population center is the border area - again, one giant non-dense city, basically.
Ruxandra is correct about fertility & culture, with excellent graphs showing the coming reducing fertility. "demographer Lyman Stone forecasts a precipitous rise in the rate of childlessness among American women born after 1984. For women born in 1992, he projects a childlessness rate of more than 25% at the end of their reproductive span."
Most college women, especially, would rather be highly paid wage-slaves for rich shareholders rather than mothers needing to prioritize their kids. Part of the increase in mental health problems and allergies is the increasing age of mothers at their first child -- humans are biologically ready in our teens but not culturally ready until late 20s.
How to increase the status of married women with children? More support and status ... and money.
Certainly $100/month more ain't gonna do much to increase TFR. Govt is bad at incentives to do better "for society".
Maybe govt needs stronger policies:
For the top 100 colleges based on tax exempt endowments, the TFR of their student families is calculated, and that number (maybe 1.3) is subtracted from the 2.1 sustainable rate, which becomes a surtax on the endowment. (0.8 % of $50 billion is a big chunk).
For govt jobs, reserve 20% of new hires for married women with at least 3 kids, especially those over 40 and even over 55.
For married folks, they get an increasing percentage tax rate decrease for each child: 1% for 1, 2% for second (1+2=3%) ... 5% for 5th (1+2+3+4+5=15%) up to 21% (or 28%?). Which helps billionaires the most -- but society wants more kids from billionaires.
Plus $100/ month more per child for all kids (better nothing).
Plus -- a commitment to increase these or other incentives until the American citizen TFR increases to 2.1. And, if the rate gets over 2.5 (or 2.2?), that the incentives will be decreased.
Note that more kids from married couples is what society needs, but the actual kids who "need" the most help are those with single parents, and maybe especially the foster kids (like Rob H). But society giving incentives to individuals in order to act for the good of society seems to be something Democracies need to be moving towards, so that the desired fertility rate becomes an open policy goal, or not.
"The playwright Wendy Wasserstein used to point out that her mother did not value Wendy’s successful career and instead fretted that Wendy was not married. But Wendy was born in 1950. The opposite message is being sent to Millenials."
So the big questions: why did Wendy and many of her generation not accept that message? Why did more and more people not accept it as time went on? Why do so many accept the opposite now?
Could it be one of those accidents Feyerabend references in the link?
Won't look up Wendy but picture emerging from a large extended family, there seem to be plenty of kids coming along, cousins, aunts and uncles.
I've noticed it's common down here in Mexican families that are invariably large, for one of the sisters to stay single and childless. And who could complain? She's auntie/tia. She's making money. The absence of her contribution in children is not felt, and if felt by her - surely less so in the bosom of extended family.
Whereas, now - people would hardly know what they were claiming to miss or not to miss, it is so remote from their experience.
ETA: I only feel like I caught a semblance of it, dear to me all the same, much more so than my own nuclear family dynamic - but long in the rearview mirror.
Ruxandra Teslo's piece is very, very good. As such it will get no traction. "Policy" is ridiculous in the face of this elephant (I think especially of the bleating of someone like Ross Douthat - who I think is congenial and smart - about this or that tax credit; or some or other sop to "working parents").
Motherhood is embarrassing, a state of shame, lesser to just about every other possibility. This is all you really need to know. Wife-and-motherhood is even worse. Everything our culture produces and teaches, tends to this conclusion.
The Ezra Klein podcast makes a case that the problem is that we have defined "good parent" up to levels that two humans can scarcely reach for one child and nearly impossible for more than one.
Tom: Yeah. If you could only read books or only talk to people from now on, which would you choose?
Tyler: Well, if you put aside personal relationships, I would choose speaking to people in any case. At my current margin being 62 years old and having spent a lot of time in my life reading. I don’t feel we’re in an era of incredible, wonderful books. I feel we’re in an era with a very large number of very good books, typically histories and biographies. But at the end of the day, if I’ve somehow ruled out reading books, I don’t feel I’m missing the next Leviathan by Hobbes. Or Republic by Plato, or Pascal, or Tocqueville. I feel I’m missing out on a lot of good detail. And for grasping the world, I’d rather be talking to people.
Somehow the current era doesn’t suit books well. Academics are too conformist. There are too many quality checks, which, to be clear, result in a much higher number of quite good books, but probably a fewer number of great books. Imagine writing, say, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and handing it in as a doctoral dissertation.
They wouldn’t even read it, much less approve it. So that is our current world. I think what is right now interesting is to learn how to use the internet as a kind of truth computing device where it’s not about any one person, but sort of playing the internet as one might, say, play an organ, and tinker with it and try to figure out what’s going on. That’s the thing the world has created that is truly novel and super powerful, and I find very rewarding. Much more rewarding than reading books.
My comments:
Our book reading options are better than they’ve ever been.
Tom: What do you think the purpose of a college education should be?
Tyler: So, it’s some odd mix of dating service, social acculturation, you learn some things, you signal that you’re determined, you have some fun, you get away from your parents, you avoid bad peer groups.
Tom: Do you see a need for major pivots, reforms, things that colleges are, doing especially well, other things that where they’ve really dropped the ball?
Tyler: Oh, I think it’s quite dysfunctional now. Again, it depends on where you’re talking about. But there’s not nearly enough free speech. Faculty is far too conformist. although I’m not myself religious, I think the academy has become far too secular in quite a dangerous way. There’s not enough religious opinion represented there.
My comments:
No mention of real-world skills;
No mention of critical thinking;
No mention of character education;
He does mention religion, but doesn’t say why it’s important.
One purpose of college is to “avoid bad peer groups.”
I’m curious what others think about Tyler’s response. What do you think the purpose of a college education should be? Tyler says that college is “quite dysfunctional.” He advocates for more free speech and more religion. Sounds like we should discuss this.
It's not for any of those things. It's for sucking down an endless torrent of federal money with minimal quality control. It is the PPP program that never ends. You just have to put on a show of running those things passably well to maintain access to federal liquidity hose. The colleges are succeeding, and they will only stop "succeeding" if they don't get as much free government money.
I like that podcast, but I agree, we can do better. Andreesen and Horowitz highlight many important topics, mostly about what’s wrong with college, and I get the sense they are echoing Richard Vedder’s book Restoring the Promise, which I also like. In answering this question “What do I think the purpose of a college education should be?” First, it should be said that there are many different answers to this question. Our answers will naturally differ based on various factors, namely our primary and secondary educations, our goals, our parents, our religious perspective, our hobbies, where we want to live, etc. I think this is a great and fundamental question that more people should ponder. Much of what Tyler said is accurate, but we should work out the kinks and answer for ourselves.
Given your genealogy, if you have grandchildren - "A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver" is a charming if unusual children's book (ex-married couple continue their bickering in Purgatory).
"And who would - without necessity or accident - have children in a high-rise environment featuring fug-filled air that causes asthma, streets filled with rushing vehicles, public spaces designed for adults, and places dominated by strangers."
Um, what? Is Cooke unfamiliar with the many volumes in a whole late 19th-mid-20th century Old-Progressive literature panicking about there being not too little but far too much fertility in such dense urban circumstances, indeed, circumstances that were in many respects far worse and less wholesome for raising children? Riis is spinning in his grave. That didn't stop anybody, and no, these recent ancestors were not clueless about ways to control family size or helpless before the introduction of hormone-based birth control.
It's amusing how far people will go to concoct absurdly ahistorical stories as desperate attempts to find an alternative to having to accept politically inconvenient truths staring everyone in the face.
No.
They were not talking about people in dense environments having MORE kids than rural, just having any.
Today, we still have poor urban mothers having above average numbers of kids but again, that's not what is being discussed here.
The present is not like the past. Constraints mattered then, but now, they don't. There were few competitive opportunities to sacrifice then, but now, there are lots. Constraints meant the difference between 5, 8, or 11 kids. Opportunity costs means the differences between 0, 1, or 2.
I don't know if you intend that as agreement, disagreement or something else but yes. ... Though one could argue daycare cost is a constraint. Maybe even argue the line between calling them constraints then and opportunity costs today is rather fuzzy.
"how far people will go to concoct absurdly ahistorical stories"...very true that. And the 'fertility crisis' does seem like a particularly seductive case in point. A smart-arsed theorist competition.
Maybe the thought would be - that was before the invention of the "suburban" (now inner-ring) alternative? And before Moses criss-crossed NYC with freeways?
There is a lot more world out there than NYC. Tenement slums crowded with young kids with lots of siblings were everywhere.
Of course, but we have the best record of what happens to a city circa mid-century in "The Power Broker". And what happens is that those areas Moses reflexively called "slums" - which was pretty much everything in his view - were thriving in the view of most of their residents who even long after they had been forced to move, bridled at their homes being called "slums". ("These buildings may have been old but they were spacious, I could seat 18 people in my dining room, etc.").
Some of the slumminess was created in the act of calling them slums and the actions he took.
And even though you hear people say, my apartment may be tiny but NYC is my living room (patio might be more apt)- I think that was much more true then, if those firsthand accounts are to be believed.
This gets at "community" - a word I have grown to hate because it now references things like "the trans community" or "the Asian community" or "the black community".
There is no such thing and this is so far from being related to its original use it has destroyed the word.
I'd love to see a map of the world with the "Asian community" colored in lol.
Well, yes, but SF is the poster child for bad urbanism: crime, homelessness, restrictive land use and building codes, bad public schools.
Maybe the indictment should be of "Progressivism" rather than urbanization.
It's barely a city by international standards. On the American curve, it's a great wealthy enclave with a gross hobo neighborhood or two attached to it. I think you have to think like the urban rich to really understand SF. The urban rich do not think about skid row, Spanish Harlem, Washington Heights, the Tenderloin, and so on. They think about the Presidio, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Greenwich Village, and so on.
The urban rich--the really rich--also do not really work. They have play time pretend jobs, sometimes. Their money works so that they can have fun. All the complaining about cities like SF come people who have to work for a living: schlubs, in other words, who do not really belong there. The busy-busy W2 tax payer is seen by the urban governing class as a wicked creature who demands more and more services while crying about paying taxes.
All of these issues that you identify are features and not bugs for the non-working rich. The hobo is like a wicked sort of gnomish creature that torments the disgusting computerized working class on behalf of the mega-wealthy for their sadistic amusement and entertainment.
I struggle a bit with the Ruxandra Teslo stats as evidence of an unusual anti-natal sentiment among young people today. I'd rather see stats about what today's 65 year olds thought forty years ago compared to today's 25 year olds. The younger you are the more you are concerned with accumulating 'stuff' versus older people who have already largely accumulated the 'stuff' they want. I will agree there is revealed preference in terms of falling birth rates but that's been happening for decades. Expecting large numbers of 18 year olds to say they place a high importance on starting a family by 23 strikes me as a bit of a stretch. I don't think my 22 year old self would have put a high importance on starting a family by the time I was 27 though that is what happened. I don't disagree with your overall sentiment but I think my experience is a good example. You aren't going to increase the birth rate with policies directed at changing people's answers to opinion surveys. You're going to change it with policies that incentivize people who are already generally favorable-to-neutral about forming a family to do it now rather than some unspecified time in the future. I will guarantee some of those policies will be unpopular in today's political climate because they will especially impact the trajectory of women's lives.
The problem is not just material, but also cultural. We have extended adolescence to the point where the average 27-year-old doesn't *feel* like a full adult, doesn't feel fully responsible for himself and his own life, let alone prepared to take on responsibility for another's.
I think the answer to the question would have a different valence based on the time.
I could see people in the past giving the same answer (26%) because it used to be understood that if a couple had no children, it was because they weren't able to, and that was supposed to be unfortunate. But because life was considered a good thing, it would be natural to answer that "yes, it is possible to have a good life without children" - as it in fact is.
There is a deal of difference between a choice regretted (i.e. not having children or only having one or two) and something foregone for other reasons.
Especially if there is an inkling that the choice was less autonomous than one thought, that in fact you were falling in with the herd.
I was born in 1960. My parents were born in 1928 and 1934, and thus grew up in the Depression and WW II. There was a lot of pressure on getting a good education, getting a good job, saving money. (The joke in our family was that our parents taught us the value of a dollar by teaching us the value of a nickel 20 times.) There was *some* pressure, mostly from Mom, on finding a mate, but not as much.
The upshot: three of us are unmarried and childless in our 60s, whereas the eldest sibling is married with eight kids!
You wrote "I wonder how much of the “fertility crisis” can be traced to urbanization. '. Surely you can collect data about that.
If by "fertility crisis" we mean the drop of the fertility rate in last few decades to levels well bellow replacement, then the answer should be no. Urbanization rates have not increased much in recent decades:
- For the US (*):
1990: 78.0%
2000: 79.0%
2010: 80.7%
2020: 80.0%
- For Germany (**):
2000: 75%
2010: 77%
2020: 77.5%
- For Japan (***):
1990: 77.3%
2000: 78.7%
2010: 90.8%
2020: 91.8%
(*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States
(**) https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/DEU/germany/urban-population
(***) https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/JPN/japan/urban-population
(****) The 00s did not see a decrease in Japan's fertility rate. It went from 1.359 to 1368. From the late 90s until now, Japan's fertility rate has been mostly stable.
I don't know what urbanization means, technically.
In my state it means everybody just about is living in a giant triangle in which ag and open space is yielding to houses. It has none of the putative charms of city and none of the rural either.
The other population center is the border area - again, one giant non-dense city, basically.
Ruxandra is correct about fertility & culture, with excellent graphs showing the coming reducing fertility. "demographer Lyman Stone forecasts a precipitous rise in the rate of childlessness among American women born after 1984. For women born in 1992, he projects a childlessness rate of more than 25% at the end of their reproductive span."
Most college women, especially, would rather be highly paid wage-slaves for rich shareholders rather than mothers needing to prioritize their kids. Part of the increase in mental health problems and allergies is the increasing age of mothers at their first child -- humans are biologically ready in our teens but not culturally ready until late 20s.
How to increase the status of married women with children? More support and status ... and money.
Certainly $100/month more ain't gonna do much to increase TFR. Govt is bad at incentives to do better "for society".
Maybe govt needs stronger policies:
For the top 100 colleges based on tax exempt endowments, the TFR of their student families is calculated, and that number (maybe 1.3) is subtracted from the 2.1 sustainable rate, which becomes a surtax on the endowment. (0.8 % of $50 billion is a big chunk).
For govt jobs, reserve 20% of new hires for married women with at least 3 kids, especially those over 40 and even over 55.
For married folks, they get an increasing percentage tax rate decrease for each child: 1% for 1, 2% for second (1+2=3%) ... 5% for 5th (1+2+3+4+5=15%) up to 21% (or 28%?). Which helps billionaires the most -- but society wants more kids from billionaires.
Plus $100/ month more per child for all kids (better nothing).
Plus -- a commitment to increase these or other incentives until the American citizen TFR increases to 2.1. And, if the rate gets over 2.5 (or 2.2?), that the incentives will be decreased.
Note that more kids from married couples is what society needs, but the actual kids who "need" the most help are those with single parents, and maybe especially the foster kids (like Rob H). But society giving incentives to individuals in order to act for the good of society seems to be something Democracies need to be moving towards, so that the desired fertility rate becomes an open policy goal, or not.
One fact about Romania that sticks in the old sieve, is that Nicolae Ceausescu shot more than a thousand bears.
I picture the bears saying, can we get the aristocrats back?
A pro-natalism "policy" without a feeling for life generally is bound to be hollow.
"The playwright Wendy Wasserstein used to point out that her mother did not value Wendy’s successful career and instead fretted that Wendy was not married. But Wendy was born in 1950. The opposite message is being sent to Millenials."
So the big questions: why did Wendy and many of her generation not accept that message? Why did more and more people not accept it as time went on? Why do so many accept the opposite now?
Could it be one of those accidents Feyerabend references in the link?
Won't look up Wendy but picture emerging from a large extended family, there seem to be plenty of kids coming along, cousins, aunts and uncles.
I've noticed it's common down here in Mexican families that are invariably large, for one of the sisters to stay single and childless. And who could complain? She's auntie/tia. She's making money. The absence of her contribution in children is not felt, and if felt by her - surely less so in the bosom of extended family.
Whereas, now - people would hardly know what they were claiming to miss or not to miss, it is so remote from their experience.
ETA: I only feel like I caught a semblance of it, dear to me all the same, much more so than my own nuclear family dynamic - but long in the rearview mirror.
Ruxandra Teslo's piece is very, very good. As such it will get no traction. "Policy" is ridiculous in the face of this elephant (I think especially of the bleating of someone like Ross Douthat - who I think is congenial and smart - about this or that tax credit; or some or other sop to "working parents").
Motherhood is embarrassing, a state of shame, lesser to just about every other possibility. This is all you really need to know. Wife-and-motherhood is even worse. Everything our culture produces and teaches, tends to this conclusion.
"I wonder how much of the “fertility crisis” can be traced to urbanization."
Yes. Is there anyone who has researched this? I've never even heard it stated before.
The Ezra Klein podcast makes a case that the problem is that we have defined "good parent" up to levels that two humans can scarcely reach for one child and nearly impossible for more than one.
See [https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/population-fear-of-falling]
Tom: Yeah. If you could only read books or only talk to people from now on, which would you choose?
Tyler: Well, if you put aside personal relationships, I would choose speaking to people in any case. At my current margin being 62 years old and having spent a lot of time in my life reading. I don’t feel we’re in an era of incredible, wonderful books. I feel we’re in an era with a very large number of very good books, typically histories and biographies. But at the end of the day, if I’ve somehow ruled out reading books, I don’t feel I’m missing the next Leviathan by Hobbes. Or Republic by Plato, or Pascal, or Tocqueville. I feel I’m missing out on a lot of good detail. And for grasping the world, I’d rather be talking to people.
Somehow the current era doesn’t suit books well. Academics are too conformist. There are too many quality checks, which, to be clear, result in a much higher number of quite good books, but probably a fewer number of great books. Imagine writing, say, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and handing it in as a doctoral dissertation.
They wouldn’t even read it, much less approve it. So that is our current world. I think what is right now interesting is to learn how to use the internet as a kind of truth computing device where it’s not about any one person, but sort of playing the internet as one might, say, play an organ, and tinker with it and try to figure out what’s going on. That’s the thing the world has created that is truly novel and super powerful, and I find very rewarding. Much more rewarding than reading books.
My comments:
Our book reading options are better than they’ve ever been.
How do we get better books?
https://jeanmtwenge.substack.com/p/are-books-dead-why-gen-z-doesnt-read/comment/51025976?r=nb3bl&utm_medium=ios
Tom: What do you think the purpose of a college education should be?
Tyler: So, it’s some odd mix of dating service, social acculturation, you learn some things, you signal that you’re determined, you have some fun, you get away from your parents, you avoid bad peer groups.
Tom: Do you see a need for major pivots, reforms, things that colleges are, doing especially well, other things that where they’ve really dropped the ball?
Tyler: Oh, I think it’s quite dysfunctional now. Again, it depends on where you’re talking about. But there’s not nearly enough free speech. Faculty is far too conformist. although I’m not myself religious, I think the academy has become far too secular in quite a dangerous way. There’s not enough religious opinion represented there.
My comments:
No mention of real-world skills;
No mention of critical thinking;
No mention of character education;
He does mention religion, but doesn’t say why it’s important.
One purpose of college is to “avoid bad peer groups.”
I’m curious what others think about Tyler’s response. What do you think the purpose of a college education should be? Tyler says that college is “quite dysfunctional.” He advocates for more free speech and more religion. Sounds like we should discuss this.
It's not for any of those things. It's for sucking down an endless torrent of federal money with minimal quality control. It is the PPP program that never ends. You just have to put on a show of running those things passably well to maintain access to federal liquidity hose. The colleges are succeeding, and they will only stop "succeeding" if they don't get as much free government money.
Well said. I agree that it’s this simple. Fortunately, another crisis will come; my goal is to be ready for it.
Tyler's "So, it's some odd mix of..." phrase is echoing a podcast by Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz: https://a16z.com/podcast/crisis-in-higher-ed-why-universities-still-matter-with-marc-ben/. They do a much deeper dive, but still not quite satisfying
I like that podcast, but I agree, we can do better. Andreesen and Horowitz highlight many important topics, mostly about what’s wrong with college, and I get the sense they are echoing Richard Vedder’s book Restoring the Promise, which I also like. In answering this question “What do I think the purpose of a college education should be?” First, it should be said that there are many different answers to this question. Our answers will naturally differ based on various factors, namely our primary and secondary educations, our goals, our parents, our religious perspective, our hobbies, where we want to live, etc. I think this is a great and fundamental question that more people should ponder. Much of what Tyler said is accurate, but we should work out the kinks and answer for ourselves.
Given your genealogy, if you have grandchildren - "A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver" is a charming if unusual children's book (ex-married couple continue their bickering in Purgatory).