School not the key to workplace success

[brendan]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/school-not-the-key-to-workplace-success/2009/01/19/1232213540916.html

[brendan]

I found this a bit a curious:

In this SMH yesterday:

    SOCIAL background ... has little to do with success at university and in the workforce, Australian research has found.

 
In The Age today:

    Yet one expects it would only confirm what is already known: that social background unduly determines school and university outcomes .

The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald are both owned by Fairfax

[bubble sunglasses]

 the title has little relevance to the article itself

[brendan]

Newspapers tend to do that with their headlines

[bubble sunglasses]

 also, "success" when qualified by "in the workplace" is rather ambiguous

[brendan]

My rebuttal of today's Age editorial:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/when-students-miss-out-australia-will-pay-the-price-20090120-7llg.html?page=-1

Suppose that left-handers or tall people were "over-represented" at university - would that therefore mean the university admissions process is "unfair"? Why would expect that they be equally represented in any aspect of life?

Likewise, why would you expect to find those from poor and rich backgrounds to be equally represented in university education? It is completely conceivable that those from richer families would still be "over-represented" and those from poorer backgrounds be "under-represented even when university admissions is based solely on academic merit.

It might be cultural, that those from poorer backgrounds come from families who do not value education as much, and hence partially explaining why they come from a poor background in the first place, and their low ENTER/TER scores. It might be the case that it is genetic, that those who are poorer tend to have lower IQs which is then passed onto their children, hence explaining their lower ENTER scores and representation at university.

[Eriny]

It might be cultural, that those from poorer backgrounds come from families who do not value education as much, and hence partially explaining why they come from a poor background in the first place, and their low ENTER/TER scores. It might be the case that it is genetic, that those who are poorer tend to have lower IQs which is then passed onto their children, hence explaining their lower ENTER scores and representation at university.

I think that point is a little stoic. Perhaps low performance is genetic, but we don't know, do we? Maybe there are people out there who could have done extremely well at uni, but grew up in a place that was too stressful for them to be able to concentrate on their schooling and that didn't encourage them to nurture their talents. Meanwhile, they think university is beyond them, having being called 'stupid' all their lives. Should we just accept the status quo if it could be unjust, or should we investigate matters further?

I think your comparison between an 'over-representation' of left-handers and an 'over-representation' of students from a rich background is valid. I wouldn't necessarily deem either as unjust straight away, merely because of emerging hierarchies. However, I would like to know why the disparity between left and right handers exists. If it so happens that the reason for it is unjust, then it's worth thinking about different actions to take to reverse the injustice. This doesn't necessarily mean lowering entry standards to right handers, it could be raising the quality of right-handers overall, so that more can meet the entry standards. The real problem comes when we want to identify under what conditions is a situation 'just' or 'unjust'.

[bubble sunglasses]

I would support government intervention to help level the playing field if the disparity was large enough. I don't regard disparity as a problem in itself, however, in this particular case, it would serve as a likely indicator that individuals are being greatly held back by their economic background. I'm aware, it's hard to ascertain whether such a disparity is caused by lack of opportunity as opposed to lack of desire on a the part of an individual, however university places are something people even many poor people strive hard to attain. A group such as "tall people" being overrepresented would be different, as the level of causation would clearly be lower than for rich people, if active at all, although I wouldn't think that if the Uni student body was 100% comprised of "tall people".

[brendan]

Perhaps low performance is genetic, but we don't know, do we?

That's why i said "might". I was rebutting the suggestion by the Age editorial team that simply observing "over-representation" by one group or another automatically qualifies as conclusive evidence of something dodgy or "unfairness" going on. It happens a lot in the US about racial quotas and asian over-representation.