Educating for Oblivion, Surviving on the Dole and Cheap Spirits

If you want to make an enterprise antiquated, unresponsive to real world needs, make it a part of the government. Perpetuate the institution regardless of any actual success in real world terms. Do that for enough of society, and before long people have forgotten that other means exist besides government, for solving real world problems. By then, it is too late. Oblivion of the mind has set in. Russia is slightly farther along that road than the US, but the new US government is making great strides to catch up.

In 2008, 35.7 percent of the country’s GDP came from manufacturing, natural resource mining, agriculture, construction and housing and utilities. But only 14 percent of today’s students will major in engineering, 3.2 percent in geology and 2.9 percent in agriculture science. At the same time, 45 percent of students will choose business, management and law as their major focus of study. The problem is that Russia’s financial and legal sectors account for only about 8 percent of GDP. Clearly, there are not enough jobs for all of these students dreaming of becoming wealthy — or even middle-class — bankers and lawyers.

Moreover, higher education has lost much of its value. In Moscow in 2007 and 2008, 10 percent of university graduates — 90 percent of them women — did not work at all after graduating, and another 24 percent took jobs that did not require a higher education. Fewer than 50 percent started careers in their area of study. The situation is the reverse in the United States, where 94 percent of graduates holding degrees in business administration found jobs in their profession, 86 percent of engineers did likewise, as did 76 percent of those specializing in agriculture. What’s more, the percentages were the same for the first three years after graduation. If these statistics apply to Moscow — where an excessively high percentage of the country’s business activity and wealth are concentrated — just imagine how worse the situation is in the regions.

Thus, Russia is churning out far more graduates than it needs..... _MT_via_LaRussophobe

Russia's population has an average IQ just below 100, like the United States. With that IQ distribution, it is likely that over half of Russia's college student population do not actually belong in a challenging university course of study. Just as in the US, college is seen as the way to succeed for everyone, when quite obviously that cannot be true. Not everyone can be above average -- particularly at least 1 standard deviation or more above average, which is required for success in a demanding college degree.

Russia cannot modernize its economy without first modernizing its entire educational system — and its universities, in particular. Russia needs to move away from the goal of “higher education for the masses” and restructure the system to train specialists who can help the country gain a strategic global position in manufacturing and innovation-driven sectors. One place to start is for colleges and universities to make their admissions requirements stricter, which will lower the number of students admitted. This is the best way to move from high quantity to high quality. _MT

But rather than create a society where opportunities for success abound, Russia continues as a corrupt oligarchy of insider power. Recent assassinations of journalists who were outspoken critics of Russia's Dear Leader, proclaim a lack of openness seen only in countries like North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, or China.

But the US could easily trend in that direction. Its educational system is already well along the path. The journalism community of the US has largely adopted a subservient position to the current governmental regime, without needing to be threatened. Of course, the US needs a national medical system like Russia's -- where bureaucrats can forget to order critical TB drugs and doom hundreds of thousands to needless deaths.

Russia's population is shrinking steadily, and will be only 1/3 the population of the US in a few decades. Its medical system is crap, its journalistic media is crap, its educational system is crap, and its military is crap. Russia cannot man its own vast mineral resources infrastructure, and is letting many billions of resource dollars slip away each year from crumbling machinery due to neglect.

Psychologically and spiritually, Russia is engaged in a slow but sure suicide. Its educational system is playing a crucial role in maintaining the downward course. Its journalistic media are keeping quiet, staying subservient. Its bureaucratic health care system is likely killing more people than it is saving.

Meanwhile, everyone praises Dear Leader.