Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> The study, from the National Center for Public Policy and
> Higher Education, found that although the United States
> still leads the world in the proportion of 35- to
> 64-year-olds with college degrees, it ranks seventh among
> developed nations for 25- to 34-year-olds. On rates of
> college completion, the United States is in the lower half
> of developed nations.
>
> More evidence that our ruling class is decadent, short sighted,
> venal, and stupid.
I do not see that this follows necessarily. What about the fact is evidence of ruling-class stupidity, etc. Note that the argument seems _also_ to assume that the Ruling Class has some way of making simple collective decisions on complex social processes. I doubt it. The shortfall (if it is a shortfall*) is not the result of any particular decision by anyone or any group but the result of the interaction of a number of ocial processes that in themselves are not even directly linked to educational institutions. And some of those processes and the decisions that initiated them may (this is only one of a large number of possible alternatives) be of far greater importance to the strength of u.s. capital than maintaining parity in college graduates with other nations.
But further. What difference does it make that the rate of college completion in the u.s. has fallen? How do you know that that is not in fact a positive rather than a negative? What are the various impacts of a high rate of college completion? Are they all positive (from the viewpoint of capital)?
Carrol