I started the session by elaborating on a paradox that emerged from the first session. We believe that our culture is fragmenting, while our elites are consolidating into a monoculture. To illustrate fragmentation, I suggested looking at movies in terms of nominal GDP, real GDP, and real GDP per capita. Compare the market share of hit movies in the early 2000s (before streaming) to the 1960s and 1970s. In nominal terms, the gross revenues are higher for the hits of the early 2000s. But in real terms, adjusted for ticket prices, they are not. And in real per capita terms, meaning the number of tickets sold relative to the adult population at the time, hit movies from the 1960s and 1970s were much more of a collective cultural phenomenon. Later in the seminar, it was pointed out that time-shifting further fragments the audience. If people watch the same TV show but at different times, it is less of a shared experience.
I think the point about movies cuts the other way. It's hard to socialize and signal and make maneuvers in the various social games absent shared experiences and exposures. If there are few competing alternatives and lots of people are watching the same thing, it provides "cultural currency" something to talk about and reference that one can rely on to be generally accepted as conversational tender and which need not touch on anything ideological or political. Indeed people often see the injection of those things into the subject as obnoxious and inappropriate. Sports is a good example.
The problem is when you lose movies or sports or whatever you don't necessarily lose everything and it causes a desperate crowding in and obsession with those few areas that people in our social scene so still share and experience together, which for elites is now often exposure to viral political news on legacy and social media.
So, in this sense, fragmentation in everything else causes consolidation along ideological lines.
I don't think there is as much tension between the Null Hypothesis and the observation that universities have gone down hill as you might think. There is a difference between how you teach and what you teach, and another between those and how you measure or assess that teaching. Even holding how university professors and lecturers teach constant, if they shift from teaching good things to bad things you are going to get a slide downhill. A well taught course on how to throw a tantrum to get management on your side and receive special privileges will always be worse for the student than a well taught course on basket weaving.
When it comes to assessing whether we are holding how classes are taught constant, well, I have only been involved in assessment in one university, but it was a joke. They wanted "artifacts" of learning, essentially assignments retained, but had no interest in testing students later to see if they were learning what they were supposed to, and little interest in what they were supposed to be learning.
So yea, throw in "colleges are accepting students whose only benefit will be the credential, and passing them through via inflation so the college can collect the tuition as long as possible" and you have a recipe for the same teaching producing much worse results overall.
"It was pointed out that time-shifting further fragments the audience. If people watch the same TV show but at different times, it is less of a shared experience."
To go just a little further, I think the loss of shared movie going experience in the same physical space is significant as well. My film professor in college insisted that students watch all of the required films in a theatre room on campus and provided 3-4 different showtimes. Watching Buster Keaton's "The General" in a room full of attentive people laughing and reacting to the story was a truly magical experience.
I have had snatches of this level of shared experience of popular culture at other times in my life, but it strikes me as rare, verging on non-existent. I was visiting London during Wimbledon 2012 when Andy Murray became the first British man to make the final and even without attending any of the matches I could feel the unity and excitement of that cultural moment. In 2008 I had a sense of that when the Dark Knight premiered in theaters. But now even unifying around watching the same television show with family members and friends is rare. More often we end up in different rooms with different shows, or in the same room multitasking on digital devices.
A hypercompetitive status game may also suck elites into a monoculture. It's hard to be the cleverest person in the room when the room includes superstars from around the world. Kind of a Girardian mimesis dynamic.
Not fair to compare movies to movies. Rather we need to compare "leading shared cultural experiences". This metric may be more stable. In my workplace everyone views and sees pretty much the same TV series. I didn't do any surveys but my feeling is that "Game of Thrones" was regularly seen by as high a fraction of my peers as any hit movie from the 70s.
… “‘learning transfer’ (students taking what they learn in one situation and successfully applying it in a different situation) does not take place among college students.” Many students have learned the arts of intimidation in universities and have successfully transferred those skills to the corporate and political worlds. As for University of Austin, I think it’s a mistake to try to emulate the existing all-purpose university structure. The world needs new forms of training that are more effective at much lower cost, and less susceptible to ideological capture. You can be sure that U of Austin will eventually attract a Trojan horse full of students and administrators eager to overthrow its founding mission.
I think the point about movies cuts the other way. It's hard to socialize and signal and make maneuvers in the various social games absent shared experiences and exposures. If there are few competing alternatives and lots of people are watching the same thing, it provides "cultural currency" something to talk about and reference that one can rely on to be generally accepted as conversational tender and which need not touch on anything ideological or political. Indeed people often see the injection of those things into the subject as obnoxious and inappropriate. Sports is a good example.
The problem is when you lose movies or sports or whatever you don't necessarily lose everything and it causes a desperate crowding in and obsession with those few areas that people in our social scene so still share and experience together, which for elites is now often exposure to viral political news on legacy and social media.
So, in this sense, fragmentation in everything else causes consolidation along ideological lines.
I don't think there is as much tension between the Null Hypothesis and the observation that universities have gone down hill as you might think. There is a difference between how you teach and what you teach, and another between those and how you measure or assess that teaching. Even holding how university professors and lecturers teach constant, if they shift from teaching good things to bad things you are going to get a slide downhill. A well taught course on how to throw a tantrum to get management on your side and receive special privileges will always be worse for the student than a well taught course on basket weaving.
When it comes to assessing whether we are holding how classes are taught constant, well, I have only been involved in assessment in one university, but it was a joke. They wanted "artifacts" of learning, essentially assignments retained, but had no interest in testing students later to see if they were learning what they were supposed to, and little interest in what they were supposed to be learning.
So yea, throw in "colleges are accepting students whose only benefit will be the credential, and passing them through via inflation so the college can collect the tuition as long as possible" and you have a recipe for the same teaching producing much worse results overall.
"It was pointed out that time-shifting further fragments the audience. If people watch the same TV show but at different times, it is less of a shared experience."
To go just a little further, I think the loss of shared movie going experience in the same physical space is significant as well. My film professor in college insisted that students watch all of the required films in a theatre room on campus and provided 3-4 different showtimes. Watching Buster Keaton's "The General" in a room full of attentive people laughing and reacting to the story was a truly magical experience.
I have had snatches of this level of shared experience of popular culture at other times in my life, but it strikes me as rare, verging on non-existent. I was visiting London during Wimbledon 2012 when Andy Murray became the first British man to make the final and even without attending any of the matches I could feel the unity and excitement of that cultural moment. In 2008 I had a sense of that when the Dark Knight premiered in theaters. But now even unifying around watching the same television show with family members and friends is rare. More often we end up in different rooms with different shows, or in the same room multitasking on digital devices.
A hypercompetitive status game may also suck elites into a monoculture. It's hard to be the cleverest person in the room when the room includes superstars from around the world. Kind of a Girardian mimesis dynamic.
Not fair to compare movies to movies. Rather we need to compare "leading shared cultural experiences". This metric may be more stable. In my workplace everyone views and sees pretty much the same TV series. I didn't do any surveys but my feeling is that "Game of Thrones" was regularly seen by as high a fraction of my peers as any hit movie from the 70s.
… “‘learning transfer’ (students taking what they learn in one situation and successfully applying it in a different situation) does not take place among college students.” Many students have learned the arts of intimidation in universities and have successfully transferred those skills to the corporate and political worlds. As for University of Austin, I think it’s a mistake to try to emulate the existing all-purpose university structure. The world needs new forms of training that are more effective at much lower cost, and less susceptible to ideological capture. You can be sure that U of Austin will eventually attract a Trojan horse full of students and administrators eager to overthrow its founding mission.
Wait if IQ is over 50 percent heritable wouldn’t that mean that the majority of children of smart parents would also be smart?