i don't know why you think you touched a nerve. you read hostility where there is none. i was, however, annoyed that you referred to what i had written as a call for a means test. i was speaking specifically TO lbo'ers who seemed to be suggesting that it was somehow acceptable to bail on their studloan or that we should encourage people like us to do so. i find that, given our current circumstances, rather obnoxious! no one here has any excuse for not being able to pay it back. the claim that you can never defer your loan or that you can't renegotiate the terms to something manageable is wholly false. the terms are quite generous -- if you're doing work as a paid volunteer you can defer. if you are unemployed. on family leave. etc.
and IF we had public educations that extended through graduate school, then i see those as wholly universal. BUT, the illustration i provided was one in which the person participating pisses on that public good. it's universal until someone proves that they are uninterested in the gift that they've been given. i don't mean people who can't do the work because of a disability or other hardships. i mean that there are people out there NOW who piss all over the educations that their own parents pay dearly for. now, of course, gordon happens to think that this is because of schooling itself, because of alientation, etc. i don't disagree with that, for the most part. which is why i said i don't happen to think that, under conditions of a socialist society,it will be a problem. but, who knows.
in china people are funneled into certain disciplines based on their test scores. some of these folks ended up in my dept at the Maxwell School. The woman that they're holding in China right now, Gao Zhan, is from my dept. about half of the students that come to our dept (not the maxwell school) turn out to be doing so because they want to pursue graduate work either in another dept at the uni (usually computer science, but also engineering and math, sometimes they transfer to another social science.). now, i don't really care about wanting to get into another dept and using our depts' focus on political sociology and our heavy recruitment in China in order to do so. we, as a dept, benefit from the diversity.
it's better that this happens (the transfers), on my view, than have some ridiculously punitive measures (a kind of means test, if you will) meant to weed out those who do plan on finishing from those who don't plan on finishing in our dpet and end up making our "numbahs" look bad. we already have a kind of english means test that has gotten more stringent over the years. when i was on the committee to select grad studs, we had to engage in tests of their english ability because we had a hard time coming up with the money to support their english training. we did phone interviews, for example. we also took the recommends of the sociologist who specialized in china--he interviewed them while there--or our chair, who's son is working there--would do same. anyway, we figured that we could afford a year of acclimation and ESL, but after that our budget was so tight that it was a drain if we couldn't use students as teaching assistants and teaching associates. i.e., our concern for achieving diversity and attaining the ideals of a "university" were hampered by the administrative demands of the cost/benefit analysis. that sucks, imnsho
at any rate, it makes one wonder exactly what the Chinese think about all this. are they happy that the students they've cultivated for work as sociologists are, instead, coming back with degrees in computer science? clearly, people who've been plucked for efforts at training as sociologists are flipping the bird at the chinese educational system and pursuing degrees in math and engineering and computer science instead.
>Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
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>Kelley Walker wrote: