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Cognitive Skills

 
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 9:29 am    Post subject: Cognitive Skills Reply with quote

Chart:

http://econbrowser.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/educ_attain_prody.png

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PeakTrader:

From one study:

“The accumulated evidence from analyses of economic outcomes is that the quality of education ­measured on an outcome basis of cognitive skills ­has powerful effects.

Individual earnings are systematically related to cognitive skills. The distribution of skills in society appears closely related to the distribution of income. And, perhaps most importantly, economic growth is strongly affected by the skills of workers.

Moreover, the existing research provides strong reasons to believe that quality of education is causally related to economic outcomes. To be sure, quality may come from formal schools, from parents, or from other influences on students. But, a more skilled population, ­almost certainly including both a broadly educated population and a cadre of top performers, ­results in stronger economic performance for nations.”

Cognitive skills:

http://www.learningrx.com/define-cognitive-thinking-faq.htm

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Vivian:

Peak,

You and Menzie are avoiding the real issue—that, is, where is the correlation,, not to mention causation, running from higher spending to higher “cognitive skills”. There does not seem to me to be a very high correlation between the accelerating costs of higher education and improved outcomes. In fact, by many standards, there seems to have been an inverse correlation over the past few decades. Do you seriously think that the entire $3 billion annual budget for the U of WM is directed towards , much less effective in, “improving higher cognitive skills”? Does indiscriminate higher spending always result in higher cognitive skills? Or, particularly at current spending levels, does how the money is spent matter more than how much is spent?

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PeakTrader:

Vivian, improving the quality of education improves cognitive skills, which leads to higher income.

The American higher education system, i.e. accredited universities, is a high quality system.

Cognitive skills are very important.

For example, India can graduate all the engineers it wants, but there’s little quality:

A College Education Without Job Prospects
November 30, 2006

“The job market for Indian college graduates is split sharply in two. With a robust handshake, a placeless accent and a confident walk, you can get a $300-a-month job with Citibank or Microsoft.

With a limp handshake and a thick accent, you might peddle credit cards door to door for $2 a day.

But the chance to learn such skills is still a prerogative reserved, for the most part, for the modern equivalent of India’s upper castes — the few thousand students who graduate each year from academies like the Indian Institutes of Management and the Indian Institutes of Technology.

Their alumni, mostly engineers, walk the hallways of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and are stewards for some of the largest companies.

In the shadow of those marquee institutions, most of the 11 million students in India’s 18,000 colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, heavy on obedience and light on useful job skills.

But as graduates complain about a lack of jobs, companies across India see a lack of skilled applicants. The contradiction is explained, experts say, by the poor quality of undergraduate education.

Teaching emphasizes silent note-taking and discipline at the expense of analysis and debate.

“When we are raising our children,” said Sam Pitroda, a Chicago-based entrepreneur who is chairman of the Knowledge Commission and was an adviser to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s, “we constantly tell them: ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that. Stand here, stand there.’

It creates a feeling that if there is a boundary, you don’t cross it. You create boxes around people when we need people thinking outside the box.””

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Vivian:

Peak,

It must take a special kind of cognitive skill to avoid, within such a long “reply”, addressing a very basic question. I guess that’s what higher education is about these days.

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PeakTrader:

Vivian, I responded to your questions:

“Do you seriously think that the entire $3 billion annual budget for the U of WM is directed towards , much less effective in, “improving higher cognitive skills”? Does indiscriminate higher spending always result in higher cognitive skills? Or, particularly at current spending levels, does how the money is spent matter more than how much is spent?”

Obviously, you prefer to avoid my answer that spending on a high quality education improves cognitive skills and leads to higher income, and if money is to be spent on higher education, it should be spent on a high quality system (i.e. rather than an inferior system).

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Vivian:

Peak,

Are you incapable of distinguishing:

1. “Spending on high quality education” and
2. Increased spending (particularly from current levels) is correlated with and causes high(er) quality education.

The first formulation (yours) ducks the issue of correlation and causation and conveniently assumes that higher spending automatically results in higher quality.

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PeakTrader:

Vivian, are you incapable of distinguishing:

1. Spending more on high quality means more high quality.

2. Spending more on low quality means more low quality.

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