Interesting theories and data.
http://nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/why-are-the-highly-educated-so-liberal.html
http://nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/why-are-the-highly-educated-so-liberal.html
The party of PhDs?
- Thread starter WATU2
- Start date
Makes sense... most phd's are earned by people that got them to avoid working in the real world as long as possible... And then they stayed in that world surrounded by like minds because it sheltered them and gave them the comfort that the real world didn't offer...
I didn't think that article focused on phds, just advanced degrees? But I'd agree. I'm not working with a whole lot of phds in engineering or business or geology in the real world. Some masters, sure, but I imagine those phds are more academia than actually creating jobs or goods. Many of those masters were earned in a downturn and now they have returned to the industry. Or earned while they are also working full-time.
I think you'd see some very distinct political lines based on the types of degree. Not just lumping all post-grads together.
I think you'd see some very distinct political lines based on the types of degree. Not just lumping all post-grads together.
Doesn't surprise me a bit. Academia types tend to be very liberal as is reflected by most college campuses around the country. Suppose they could do other studies as to why most small business owners are Republican and welfare recipients are Dems but the reason are fairly self-evident imo.
Groupthink is the main problem. The lieberals always reward/award themselves with Pulitzer's, Oscars, Emmy's, Nobel's etc because it promotes everything they value - power through an ideology that allows them to be overly nice to themselves regardless of the hurt it may do to mankind in the long run. If they had all the answers, the world would be free of conflict, war, starvation and disease instead of a world living on the brink of constant catastrophe.
So you blame war on the academics? It seems to me, groupthink effects other sections of the population quite a bit more than the people who take time and study topics rather than listen to what certain news channels tell them.
I don't even claim to be one of those people, but I know that people with advance degrees are typically smarter (on average) than the general populous.
I don't even claim to be one of those people, but I know that people with advance degrees are typically smarter (on average) than the general populous.
My issue with many in the academia field is that they live in a land of rainbows and unicorns. My degrees are accounting and law. It was generally apparent from the beginning of each class which professors had "real world" experience and which professors knew only an abstract world from books and studies. Don't get me wrong, there are many fields where experiemce outside academia isn't necessarily valuable. However, I would argue that in areas such as business, law, many engineering fields, etc...that real world experience should be a prerequisite for teaching positions at our universities.
Going to college for an extra 3-4 yrs doesn't make you any smarter... I know a lot of people with phd's that can barely pump their own gas.
Ours views are all influenced by what we have experienced in life. If that were not so, it would be impossible for anyone to learn anything. That doesn't mean that one view is entirely right or wrong nor that everyone receives their views from only one part of their background. What happens is a synthesis of these views, hopefully in a balanced way.
I guess it depends on what you go for. Statistically, there's a lot fewer Masters and Doctorate holders who are incompetent than there are regular joes who are incompetent.
I've never understood the conservative war on intelligence. I think the intelligent make average people feal inferior and they look for excuses to cut them down. I had a couple chemistry professors at TU that I wouldn't trust to watch my dog, but it doesn't mean that I think they were wrong when they talked about chemistry.
It could be taken both ways considering the antecedents for the pronouns "they" and "them."
It would depend if the PhD or the average person was telling the story. I know you meant that the average person sometimes considers PhDs as people used to say to be "Eggheads." Most of the PhDs that I have known have been great people, however.
Are the well educated operating against their own interests and opposed by those who benefit from their efforts?
"While there’s ample evidence of the professional class using its economic and educational capital to preserve its advantages — think of the clustering of professionals into exclusive neighborhoods, or the early immersion of professional-class children into a world of literacy, art and science — its move left is evident even on questions of economic redistribution. My own analysis of data from the General Social Survey shows that in recent decades, as class inequality has increased, Americans who hold advanced degrees have grown more supportive of government efforts to reduce income differences, whether through changes to taxes or strengthening the welfare system.
On this issue, the views of the highly educated are now similar to those of groups with much lower levels of education, who have a real material stake in reducing inequalities. Even higher-income advanced degree holders have become more redistributionist, if less so than others.
What explains the consolidation of the highly educated into a liberal bloc? The growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated women tend to be especially left-leaning. Equally important is the Republican Party’s move to the right since the 1980s — at odds with the social liberalism that has long characterized the well educated — alongside the perception that conservatives are anti-intellectual, hostile to science and at war with the university."
"While there’s ample evidence of the professional class using its economic and educational capital to preserve its advantages — think of the clustering of professionals into exclusive neighborhoods, or the early immersion of professional-class children into a world of literacy, art and science — its move left is evident even on questions of economic redistribution. My own analysis of data from the General Social Survey shows that in recent decades, as class inequality has increased, Americans who hold advanced degrees have grown more supportive of government efforts to reduce income differences, whether through changes to taxes or strengthening the welfare system.
On this issue, the views of the highly educated are now similar to those of groups with much lower levels of education, who have a real material stake in reducing inequalities. Even higher-income advanced degree holders have become more redistributionist, if less so than others.
What explains the consolidation of the highly educated into a liberal bloc? The growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated women tend to be especially left-leaning. Equally important is the Republican Party’s move to the right since the 1980s — at odds with the social liberalism that has long characterized the well educated — alongside the perception that conservatives are anti-intellectual, hostile to science and at war with the university."
I would tend to agree with you... Since there are a lot fewer Ph.D. And masters holders than there are regular joes... But percentage wise.. I would say the the masters and Ph.D. Incompetents dominate the overall batting average.
Make what you want of this data.
In 1970 about 11 percent of the population of the US had a college degree.
Today it is slightly over 30 percent. Advanced degrees 11 percent.
"Some college or Associate Degree" faired little better than a high school graduate during the worst of the Great Recession.
If a party was the "Party of the PhD", they would get 1 percent of the vote or 3 percent if you included professional degrees.
In 1970 about 11 percent of the population of the US had a college degree.
Today it is slightly over 30 percent. Advanced degrees 11 percent.
"Some college or Associate Degree" faired little better than a high school graduate during the worst of the Great Recession.
If a party was the "Party of the PhD", they would get 1 percent of the vote or 3 percent if you included professional degrees.
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The so called "war on intelligence" is a liberal's way of giving themselves a giant pat on the back.
Trump is winning the war on intelligence. Winning, winning, winning... He'll make America the greatest & hugeliest damned idiot that it has ever been.
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Yeah no conservatives dislike intelligence. Several on this board have multiple degrees. We do hate the smugness that comes with credentials that get used as a substitute for argument
If you've ever watched Fox News, you clearly know that's incorrect. I'm not speaking about everyone on this board, but the attitude of the party as a whole.
It's the same party that voted a imbecile into the whitehouse because he was a candidate you could "share a beer with". And they're about to try to do it again.
First I've heard that... You can call Trump a lot of things, but warm and charming or other such "probable good beer buddy" modifiers are not among them.
My imagination of sharing a beer with Trump consists of him droning on something like this: "This beer is DISGUSTING, you know, I once made a homebrew that was FAAABULOUS! I mean, it was beautiful! It could put any beer in this bar to shame! So sad they have to sell this swill! Why can't someone make bar beers great again!?"
Back to the topic. I live in a county that has the highest per capita number of PhDs of anywhere in the country. It's fairly purple. No mayor, but county government is evenly divided, and most every state senator election for our county is hard fought and it swaps around a bit. So I don't buy this "PhDs are all democrats" business. I think people are assuming that a liberal arts professor of 12th century french history is a reasonable stand-in for "Ph.D. recipient". Not trying to disparage history professors, but many of us learn useful skills and work at the forefront of technology.
As for us being smarter than everyone else? Noble is right. We're not. There's a reasonable correlation, because pure morons aren't going to get a Ph.D. from anyplace reputable. But you certainly don't have to be a genius. Just very driven, willing to work hard, and perhaps most importantly: willing to listen to criticism.
Genius., bleeding heart liberal, can't pump their own gas, living a bit more of a liesurely life, all of those things are generalizations. How much of a percentage of phd holders that each holds true for is up for debate.(and is likely a minority for all of them, albeit a large minority, otherwise those generalizations would probably not exist)
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Would love to see George W & Trump go at it in an academic contest.. Not sure who would win, but i'd lay a few quid down on Trump coming home with The Biggest Loser Trophy.
so following the flow on this topic, the people here think that Einstein or Stephen Hawking would make good presidents.
Your background is only one thing among many effects whether or not you would make a good president. General Eisenhower made a good president, General Grant did not. Einstein was born in Germany and therefore not eligible. Hawkins was born in England. Einstein is further disqualified on the grounds that he is dead.
I think a lot of it has to do with personality. There's been some good presidents who were more brash (a-la Trump) but they all proved to be majorly reform oriented. Guys like the Roosevelts - Teddy & Franklin, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Their problem was they also tended to escalate foreign military tensions which I could see Trump doing as well.
I have seen Fox News. Not a channel I watch much these days, but you mistake criticism of character flaws and attitude for criticism of intelligence. I like smart people. I don't like people who are smart and think it makes them a better person than someone without a degree. It doesn't. In fact, a lot of times it seems like the opposite is true.
By most measures Bush was pretty smart(I know this will be controversial to some of you) and a part of "the elite." But, for all his flaws, he didn't try to make people feel inferior for not being rich or having gone to Harvard business school.
I disagree completely that he was by any means smart. He got into an Ivy League school as a legacy admission then was a middling student during his tenure there. He joined Deke which is the filter fraternity for Skull and Bones at Yale where he met more incredibly influential people.
He dodges Vietnam by going into the air national guard where he had average to below-average scores to be admitted as a pilot. All because his dad was a US politician.
He got into the oil game after a failed attempt at political office where he pretty much failed to raise capital in a time (roughly 1978) when people were throwing tons of money at energy projects before the busts of the 80's. Somehow, he managed to get $800,000 to put into the Rangers... even though his oil businesses tanked in the bust and that was the only smart thing he ever did on his own. (I say on his own rather loosely as I'm sure he was advised by others to do it)
And we haven't even got into his presidency...
Lol well now I know what kind of literature you like to read. Bush was likely not among the smartest presidents, but he was likely in the 90-95th percentile in terms of IQ against the general population. He's probably smarter than all but a couple on this board, including those that consider him an "imbecile." It's really pretty humorous.
This is to say nothing of his performance as president, which wasn't the topic.
I agree that he is probably smarter than people generally give him credit for. His manner of speech was folksy and didn't convey much intellectual gravitas, and I think he was kind of in over his head after 9/11, foreign policy never having been his strong suit, and he ended up taking a lot of bad advice from his cabinet. That is still on him, but none of that makes him dumb.
Intelligence is difficult to quantify imo. I've known some highly educated and intelligent (if measured by test taking ability) who were some of the dumbest people I've ever one across when it came to making basic real life decision making. Conversely, I'm friends with several people who were awful test takers (mid teens ACT) but are borderline brilliant when it comes to analytical thinking and business decisions. So....whose more intelligent of the two and should test taking be the sole criteria for such an evaluation?
Bernie Sanders was an absolute disaster in practically every job he's held (other than politics) or trade he's attempted. Does he lack intelligence? Did he lack drive? I would ask about ambition but being a socialist that question sort of answers itself
Bernie Sanders was an absolute disaster in practically every job he's held (other than politics) or trade he's attempted. Does he lack intelligence? Did he lack drive? I would ask about ambition but being a socialist that question sort of answers itself
A good president needs to be a good manager and possess leadership skills.
He can't know everything about everything so He assembles a quality team of advisors.
He can't know everything about everything so He assembles a quality team of advisors.
