Science Education & Policy
It seems European countries are discovering the issue Science 2.0 has discussed about America for many years. Granting student visas and then denying them work ones after their degrees under the guise of job protectionism means educating the best people and then sending them abroad to be competitors.
The study, "Mobile Talent? The Staying Intentions of International Students in Five EU countries", published by the Research Unit of the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR), compared European frameworks for international students and investigated the…
20 years ago in America, members of Congress, armed with studies showing that a college degree meant more lifetime earnings on average than a high school diploma, decided the way to boost income for everyone was to make sure everyone got a college degree.
What changed? Very little. The best and richest students still go to the top universities while everyone else does not; but student loan debt has climbed as universities, able to charge unlimited amounts, did just that and hired more people and built more buildings.
Almost all (90 percent) of higher education leaders in a…
Hank |
There's a lot of recent talk about open access in academia - taxpayers fund the bulk of academia in modern times so there isn't much benefit to a billion-dollar corporation charging a subscription fee for science research produced there.
But the university system itself, awash in money, new buildings and new employees after two decades of 'a college education is a right' mentality propped up by unlimited student loans, needs a reboot too. There may be a Science 2.0 solution for that in the works.
Sebastian Thrun, Ph.D., Googler and teacher at Stanford (winner of the Defense Advanced Research…
University of Rajasthan, which was the only university founded in the State of Rajputana in 1946 and is now known as Rajasthan, was meant for the entire Rajasthan population of around 20 million. Its constitution was framed in 1946 based on Gurukul philosophy; the king will support education but not interfere in its functioning. Hence the highest body of the University i.e. syndicate, shall have 4 Government representative and one Director of College education and the rest will be from amongst the University system.
This worked for a long period of time and Government never…
Hank |
So a young earth creationist museum put some dinosaurs in its advertising. Ho-hum.
While the atheist panic machine lumbers into action once again - after all, kids like dinosaurs, what if they go and learn not to steal and stuff while they are there? - there really isn't much to worry about if you are not in the panic business.
I grew up in a small town with no bars and four more churches than there were stop signs and never came across a Young Earth Creationist. There were lots of creationists. Heck, the whole town may have been creationist except for my family for all I know,…
Hank |
I just wrote an article talking about how limiting choice is framed as 'leading the way' when it comes to a pet belief - and anti-science Californians who insist any genetically optimized food is dangerous are making my point while making some inroads into turning their non-reality-based beliefs into law for everyone in the state.
Advocates have collected more than half a million signatures to get a November measure in front of voters which would force special labels on virtually all foods sold in the state - outside Whole Foods, anyway. They say they are promoting transparency and…
On Monday I did something that up until a few weeks ago I would have thought nearly impossible.I met in person with Texas Governor Rick Perry.
Why might this have seemed highly unlikely until recently?
First of all, I'm a lifelong Democrat, while he's a Republican. However, I learned in the lead up to the meeting that the Governor actually was a Democrat for part of his life and his father was a lifelong Democrat so I found that interesting.Second of all, I'm a proponent of both adult and embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). Perry is a strong proponent of adult stem cell research, but…
Browsing, as I do from time to time, recent German news in thelocal.de, I came across
Schoolboy cracks age-old maths problem
Shouryya Ray, who moved to Germany from India with his family at the age of 12, has baffled scientists and mathematicians by solving two fundamental particle dynamics problems posed by Sir Isaac Newton over 350 years ago, Die Welt newspaper reported on Monday.
Following up the news, I find that there is a quite a bit of hype there, but nevertheless it is something of an achievement to have produced an analytical solution (i.e. one in the form of an equation, rather…
I started a new job this spring. After a long search in a tough market, I landed my dream job as a senior professor and administrator at a top research university – a university that did not retain a headhunter for its search.
Talks at other schools had progressed to first or second interviews before fizzling, and they fizzled due to the ineptitude of the universities’ search firms. The headhunters deserve a whipping, and this column administers ten lashes.
Capable academics want to connect with institutions where they can make a positive difference and advance the institutions’…
Hank |
More high school students are taking math and science classes - a good thing, we all want more science literacy - but the U.S. Education Department, in its quest to stop people from wondering how it still exists after 33 years of education not being a federal prerogative, cautions that scores have stagnated.
To people not trying to rationalize their jobs, and not in the scare journalism business, that simply means we had nearly 50% fewer people in 1970 but we have a lot more now and the same percentage are good at math and science. Math and science remain hard.
That's why smarter people…