Friday, March 30, 2012

New Venues

So, I've been trying to do better about writing, at least on things other than my dissertation.  I'll be updating here more regularly, and you can also catch some of my ravings- er- musings at the Kent Patch and The Next Family.  I'll be adding other content as it gets figured out.  :)

Holy crap, it's almost April?!

Spring Cleaning

If you hadn't heard the frogs calling yet, or looked at a calendar, let me be the one to break the news to you (just a little late, but oh well)- It's SPRING!
I love this time of the year.  Trees are growing buds, flowers are blooming, frogs are calling, and the weather is warming, especially this year.  I'm an ecologist by training, and spring is just brilliant in my opinion, for all the wonder in the natural world that's going on.  The whole wide world, simply bursting with life.  It's wonderful, and I mean exactly that, full of wonder.
It's also full of work.  The winter chill drives people indoors.  We track in mud, snow, and other stuff of the great outdoors.  Doors and windows are shut, furnaces and fireplaces and woodstoves burn fuel and create dust and soot.  The air gets stale, and people get sick, passing around germs and snot and sneezes.  And then there's the holiday trees, and tinsel, and wrapping, adding to the grime.  And all that grime needs cleaning, once you can throw open the shades, let the breeze in, and fill the house with fresh air smells.  And there's the garden that needs tending, and the yard that needs care, and there's the over-indulged, under-utilized body that needs tuned up again and gotten back into shape.  Spring is hard work, mixed with beautiful beginnings.
That beauty is what makes the ugliness of some recent stories all the harder with which to deal.  The Trayvon Martin case, the Hunger Games tweets, cheating schools, and the Afghan shootings.  Among other things.  These are serious marks on our country.  Two of these have to do with some of our country's historic problems with racial equality.  We aren't the only country to deal with these issues, but that doesn't make it right.  Trying to be positive, talking about these inequalities and bringing them out into the open might actually, finally make some progress.  Like opening the shades and throwing up the window lets in the sunlight and sweeps out the stale air.  Maybe we can finally be frank, discuss difficulties like adults, and try to enter the twenty-first century like civil human beings.
Once again, the US seems to be at a crossroads.  We can take one road that forges the path ahead and let's us see new ground, or we can go around the block again, hoping to see a detail that we missed before.  Can we grow further than our past history?  Let all the little blossoms bloom to their full potential?  I promise you, the more colorful the garden, the better the display.  So hopefully, in this time of growth and beauty and cleaning, we can clean out our national dialogue and start a whole beautiful garden on its way to fruition.

The Value of an Education

There's been a lot of talk about money and education lately.  Kent State raising tuition rates.  The rising student loan debt.  Cleveland's school reform.  And that's just this week's list of topics in northeast Ohio.  And there's good reason to talk about the two subjects together; teaching people is expensive, and better educated people tend to make more money over the course of their lifetime.  For this reason, we obviously end up at the question, "What is an education worth?"
If we're talking about extrinsic worth, measured in dollars, there's a huge difference across fields, with a medical degree usually leading to a much higher salary than, say, an art history degree.  Why don't we consider the worth of an education in education, or teachers, since they have been the subject of so many discussions around money and education.  These are individuals who both have an education, and are responsible for educating future generations; if there's a monetary value to an education, we should see that reflected in teacher salaries, because of their dual role in the educational system, right?  In Ohio, teachers must have at least a bachelor's degree, and often a master's degree, depending on the school district.  The average teacher's salary in Ohio is a bit shy of $57,000 annually (wage only), although the does vary across school districts, with many of the school district average salaries being between $40-50,000 annually.
Now let's think of not having a college education.  Just like wages of people with an education, the wages available to those without an education varies quite a bit, although not as large a range.  Minimum wage jobs pay $7.70 in Ohio, and at that pay grade, you would need to work 70 hours a week, or have two people both working full time in a single home, in order to make enough to pay fair market rent in Ohio.  And Ohio is an affordable state; in other states, it can take much more.  At the high end of the scale, manufacturing jobs typically pay $40-50,000 per year, and auto industry jobs pay around $54,000 per year.  These higher pay jobs for those without a college education are the ones that we in Rust Belt want to return and worry over their loss.
That's awfully close to what an average teacher makes, but without any cost associated with education.  That college education isn't cheap, either, and has risen 827% since 1980, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  This means that one can go into not insignificant dept obtaining a college degree, possibly an advanced college degree, and make a similar wage to what one could have without the debt and degree.  Maybe the idea of the dollar value in a college degree has been oversold a bit, and a college education has less extrinsic worth than we typically tell kids, especially high school students.
Considering all this, I still advocate heavily for the value in an education.  Why?  Because all of this ignores the intrinsic value of an education.  If you want an education for the increased pay check, then be careful and choose your degree accordingly, or go an alternate route that has a lower cost and is more job related- apprenticeships, community colleges, and certificate programs are great forms of vocational education.  If you choose to go the college route, then recognize that it may or may not pay off monetarily, and remember the intrinsic value of an education.  Better yet, all of us should remember the intrinsic value of education in general.  Education is different from vocational training.  A liberal arts education is well rounded, and much of what is learned is how to think, how to critically analyze, and exposure to ideas and people that a student hasn't had before.  For society, the value of an education is in having a populous that can critique, analyse, and argue effectively.  That's something from which everyone benefits.
Can we please stop selling a college education as a job ticket, and instead support higher education and make it accessible to everyone?  Can we change the discussion of the value of an education to a more accurate description of the real value of an education?

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Value Being Evaluated

There's been a lot of talk about money and education lately.  Kent State raising tuition rates.  The rising student loan debt.  Cleveland's school reform.  And that's just this week's list of topics in northeast Ohio.  And there's good reason to talk about the two subjects together; teaching people is expensive, and better educated people tend to make more money over the course of their lifetime.  For this reason, we obviously end up at the question, "What is an education worth?"
If we're talking about extrinsic worth, measured in dollars, there's a huge difference across fields, with a medical degree usually leading to a much higher salary than, say, an art history degree.  Why don't we consider the worth of an education in education, or teachers, since they have been the subject of so many discussions around money and education.  These are individuals who both have an education, and are responsible for educating future generations; if there's a monetary value to an education, we should see that reflected in teacher salaries, because of their dual role in the educational system, right?  In Ohio, teachers must have at least a bachelor's degree, and often a master's degree, depending on the school district.  The average teacher's salary in Ohio is a bit shy of $57,000 annually (wage only), although the does vary across school districts, with many of the school district average salaries being between $40-50,000 annually.
Now let's think of not having a college education.  Just like wages of people with an education, the wages available to those without an education varies quite a bit, although not as large a range.  Minimum wage jobs pay $7.70 in Ohio, and at that pay grade, you would need to work 70 hours a week, or have two people both working full time in a single home, in order to make enough to pay fair market rent in Ohio.  And Ohio is an affordable state; in other states, it can take much more.  At the high end of the scale, manufacturing jobs typically pay $40-50,000 per year, and auto industry jobs pay around $54,000 per year.  These higher pay jobs for those without a college education are the ones that we in Rust Belt want to return and worry over their loss.
That's awfully close to what an average teacher makes, but without any cost associated with education.  That college education isn't cheap, either, and has risen 827% since 1980, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  This means that one can go into not insignificant dept obtaining a college degree, possibly an advanced college degree, and make a similar wage to what one could have without the debt and degree.  Maybe the idea of the dollar value in a college degree has been oversold a bit, and a college education has less extrinsic worth than we typically tell kids, especially high school students.
Considering all this, I still advocate heavily for the value in an education.  Why?  Because all of this ignores the intrinsic value of an education.  If you want an education for the increased pay check, then be careful and choose your degree accordingly, or go an alternate route that has a lower cost and is more job related- apprenticeships, community colleges, and certificate programs are great forms of vocational education.  If you choose to go the college route, then recognize that it may or may not pay off monetarily, and remember the intrinsic value of an education.  Better yet, all of us should remember the intrinsic value of education in general.  Education is different from vocational training.  A liberal arts education is well rounded, and much of what is learned is how to think, how to critically analyze, and exposure to ideas and people that a student hasn't had before.  For society, the value of an education is in having a populous that can critique, analyse, and argue effectively.  That's something from which everyone benefits.
Can we please stop selling a college education as a job ticket, and instead support higher education and make it accessible to everyone?  Can we change the discussion of the value of an education to a more accurate description of the real value of an education?