Paying for an Education: the University of California, Berkeley

The Campaign for Berkeley sent us alumni a marketing package in hope of obtaining donations.

Yearly tuition and expenses for in-state students living in campus housing is $32,634 (As opposed to the University of California schools, the average annual student budget is $19,700 for a California State University resident undergraduate [Source: Legislative Analyst's Office]).

About 70 percent of students receive financial aid. How could it be any other way, when the average family in California per capita income is around $43,000?

Compare this state of affairs to the cost of a University of California education for me, 1978 to 1982: around $4,000 including campus housing. I paid for my four-year Berkeley undergraduate education easily through savings, summer work, and $5,000 of loans. Why are finances so much more difficult today?

When I was an undergraduate, the state paid 52 percent of UC Berkeley's funding. Today the state pays 10 percent.  The Great Recession, starting in 2008, has crushed the California budget, especially a budget increasingly dependent on capital gains from the very rich. See below.

The Composition of Revenues Has Changed Over Time

• Over the past four decades, personal income tax revenues to the General Fund have increased dramatically—rising from 27 percent to 51 percent of General Fund revenues.
• This growth is due to growth in real incomes, the state’s progressive tax structure, and increased capital gains.
• The reduced share for the sales tax reflects in part the increase in spending on services, which generally are not taxed. Source: Legislative Analyst's Office (link here)

What to do? See my post (here) on whether California can continue on the same path, taxing itself out of austerity and, perhaps, into prosperity.

Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley

Berkeley, California inspires me to write. I spent a lot of my youth there and frequently enjoy traversing the Bay to visit. The New York Times can't quite understand the place. See my last blogs about Berkeley here and here.

However, a recent Times article about the decline of (in)famous Telegraph Avenue was more accurate. See it here.

As a late 1970s and early 1980s college student living two blocks away, Telegraph was the location of head shops, tie dye shirts and hippie culture: Berkeley as an anachronism. The street went through a yuppie-ish renaissance in the 1990s and has recently relapsed. Burned shops and vacant lots have precipitated a decline into a wasteland of homelessness, garbage and vermin at Haste Street and Telegraph, a few blocks from the University.

The Times article interviews stakeholders who want to improve the place. A longstanding bookseller in this area "thinks Berkeley should rebrand Telegraph as the place where the Free Speech Movement happened. The city could erect plaques describing the events of the 1950s and ’60s, which would attract tourists and shoppers." I don't care for this idea. Will Berkeley ever outgrow this piece of history?

The Daily Californian reports that the Berkeley city council is looking into the Telegraph problem. The council "will decide whether to pass on a proposal from the Telegraph Livability coalition to the city manager for cost analysis."

Among the [coalition] suggestions aimed at reducing crime is a proposal to establish Walk the Beat, a program that would have UCPD and Berkeley Police Department officers patrol Telegraph on foot. The recommendation also suggests increasing pedestrian lighting at night to create a safer environment for shoppers.

Other recommendations include demarcating street vendor spaces more clearly, creating a “free speech walk of fame” on the Telegraph sidewalk to commemorate the street’s history and increasing foot traffic by expanding public parking and making transit improvements (The Daily Californian, February 22, 2012).

These solutions are only band-aids. How many people will drive to Berkeley to experience the "free speech walk of fame?" Telegraph can't recover until businesses are built on the location of the vacant lots. The Times reports that the City of Berkeley is suing the owner of the vacant lots, so hopefully, the development will start soon. The University should do its part and develop the fallow "People's Park" located nearby, another magnet for filth, crime, and drugs. Get the homeless out of the mud and in shelters, and start the construction for student housing on this prime location tomorrow!

Clarence Darrow's Defense of Labor

Harvard history professor Jill Lepore has reviewed two biographies on trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and in doing so, gives us an exciting look at the man's philosophies, paying special attention to his eight-hour closing statement in an important but lesser known trial, the 1898 labor case, Wisconsin v. Kidd. (See the abstract of the May 23, 2011 New Yorker article here).

Working closely with industrialists that opposed strikes, the State of Wisconsin tried to convict union organizer Thomas Kidd, the general secretary of the Amalgamated Woodworkers International. If Kidd was convicted, there was no right to strike. Darrow successfully defended Kidd and the right to strike by appealing to the jurors' sense of importance and social justice. Darrow, in his summing up, stated, "Back of all this prosecution is the effort on the part of  [lumber company owner] George M. Paine to wipe these labor organizations out of existence, and you know it. That's all there is to it."

The Kidd trial "was a landmark in the Gilded Age debate about prosperity and equality" (P.45), a test case of the interests of the workers against wealthy industrialists and their allies in government. Lepore tries to extend this debate to current controversies over public-sector bargaining in Wisconsin. This is a bit of a stretch. Few are against unionization in the private sector. The public sector is altogether different. Public sector unions have been consistently opposed by conservatives throughout the 19th and 20th centuries--Calvin Coolidge's opposition to the Boston Police and Ronald Reagan bust of the overreaching air traffic controllers come to mind. But Franklin Roosevelt also opposed bargaining rights for public sector unions. (See NYT editorial on the subject here.) The public sector union's interests may or may not not align with the taxpayers that support it. Fortunately, the unionization of public school teachers has worked out reasonably well. (See my analysis of public school tenure here.)

Should You Go To College?

University of California, Berkeley

All parents of high school students and prospective college students themselves should read a poignant analysis in the June 6, 2011 New Yorker magazine: Live and Learn: Why We Have College (link here). The author, Louis Menand, sorts the purposes of college into two competing theories and reviews the literature about whether students actually learn anything from the college experience.

Menand states in his Theory I that college acts as a sorting mechanism and a tool for the American meritocracy. Professional schools can trust G.P.A. as a measure of intellectual capacity and productive potential (P. 74). Grades matter more than if the student actually learns anything. On average, adults with college degrees do make more money than those without.

Theory II is the opposite. Grades do not matter as much as what is learned. "College exposes future citizens to material that enlightens and empowers them, whatever careers they end up choosing" (ibid.). The trouble with Theory II is many students, especially those pursuing business degrees, don't learn much (as shown by the results on the Collegiate Learning Assessment) after three years of college. Students spend less time studying than they did fifty years ago. Lastly, the process of college is socially inefficient, since students pursuing vocational degrees don't care about classes in the liberal arts, but still have to take them to get a bachelors degree. It gets worse: "half of all Americans who enter college never finish" (P. 78).

So why force vocational students into these classes? Instead, why not track students? This is what many European countries do. Only the elite go to college. The rest go to vocational schools where they will never have to try to understand Nietzsche and Plato. The vocational schools offer work skills, not a B.A. degree. Menand hints that were we to do this, it would mark the end of our liberal arts schools. Perhaps it should be done anyway. I teach a lot of low-level students this year. Out of my 140 students, perhaps 60 will end up graduating from a four-year institution. Yet when I polled them, almost all of them want to go to college and get a bachelors degree.What a waste! Most of my students and more than half of 18-year-old American kids who enter post-secondary studies would be better served with vocational training. Most people don't want to take the time to understand Nietzsche and Plato, and only a motivated elite will get something out of the process.

Six–Year Undergraduate Completion Rates^a

• The systemwide graduation rate for University of California (UC) students is about 80 percent, compared with just under 50 percent at the California State University (CSU). Only about 30 percent of California Community College (CCC) students who endeavor to transfer or graduate with an associate’s degree or certificate actually do so. (Source, California Legislative Analyst's Office http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2011/calfacts/calfacts_010511.aspx)

Is There Really an American Theocracy?

Kevin Phillips must be puzzled. After writing American Theocracy in 2006 (NYT review here) the electorate reacted vociferously. They fainted for "change" and threw the bums out in the 2010 election, rejecting fundamentalist religion and Big Oil in politics and embracing an Obama policy of "halving the national debt."

Phillips, in American Theocracy, examines the hold that Big Oil, fundamentalism, and debt has on American society and politics. Phillips predicted that American society would falter and the country would be overtaken by others, just as the Roman, Spanish, Dutch, and British empires had collapsed when buffeted by religious fundamentalism, a backward energy technology, and an economy immersed in  debt.

How far we have come! Since the Bush years, we have been led by the most secular president in 40 years (if one considers Nixon and Ford more or less non religious), a man more influenced by the liberation theology of Jeremiah Wright than the fervor of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Vice President is a Catholic who mandates anti-Catholic contraceptive policies in Catholic hospitals. The Republican front runner is a Mormon.

Obama gives lip service to green energy policy. He uses the people's money to support companies that produce clean energy, sometimes disastrously (like Solyndra) but has not led the country on a crusade for energy independence or clean energy. Even Jimmy Carter did more. Instead he has opposed the use of mainstream energy workhorses--coal and oil--threatening to make coal too expensive to use and slowing the awarding of licenses for off-shore drilling and stopping the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada. Despite Obama's policies, the nation now exports more energy products than it imports. If we could switch our transportation system to cheap natural gas, we would consider the problem almost solved.

Phillips was most prescient about our national debt, which ballooned under Bush's wars and has exploded at an even faster rate under Obama. Will politicians have the political courage to decrease the debt, supporting some tax increases but mostly imposing draconian spending cuts, especially in Medicare and Defense? That remains to be seen, but it is unlikely under the politicians that exacerbated the problem.

Is China a Political and Economic Model for the World?

China is ruled by its Communist Party elite, but China is not a purely communist country any more. Nor does China allow a free flow of information favored by free market societies. So what type of government rules China? Could China be described as a fascist form of government? The Constitutional Rights Foundation's Bill of Rights in Action (25:4) states that common characteristics of fascism  include the following underlined elements:

Absolute power of the state There is no power that challenges the supremacy of the Chinese central communist party.

Rule by a dictator President Hu Jintao holds the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. The regime, however, is not run by a "indispensable" charismatic leader, a Mao or a Stalin. Hu Jintao does not encourage a cult of personality and develops the image of being an efficient, if somewhat faceless bureaucrat. The Chinese Communist party rules as a police state and does not allow the people to vote for candidates outside their control.

Corporatism (state control of labor and capital) The state encourages a docile workforce but allows plenty of entrepreneurial talent to express itself, especially in manufacturing. The country creates incredible amounts of wealth, perhaps more than has ever been created in such a short time. On the other hand, the Party's command economy orders the construction of dams, ghost cities and assorted monstrous boondoggles to the detriment of the people. These project the economic prowess of its rule and raise reported GDP.

Extreme nationalism Jingoism is encouraged whenever Taiwan makes noises for independence or Japan fails to atone for various WWII atrocities.

Superiority of the nation's people Do Chinese think they are better than everyone else? Yes. But so do the French and Americans. The Chinese are not Nazis.

Militarism and imperialism China's military buildup is quite alarming. It seems that its purpose is to intimidate Taiwan and impress the United States and not to take over India and Russia.

China is an authoritarian, one-party dictatorship. The people have no rights outside of the demands of the Communist party. However, I do not think its government fits the description of fascism.

Is China an economic model worth emulating? China's long-term growth rate of 9.5 percent is unparalleled as underemployed farmers rush to the cities. China has become the workshop of the world. However, the Chinese government is doing the reporting, and the Shanghai stock market has recently dropped 30 percent. (See Richard C Young's Intelligence Report, February, 2012 here.) Chinese theft of American company trade secrets and manipulation of its currency have contributed to the country's success, though few would consider those ethical ways of competing in the global marketplace.

Ted Fishman's book, China Inc. reports on how female workers are exploited in the ubiquitous Chinese textile and electronics factories. "Young women, manufacturers seem to always claim, are better suited to factory jobs that require patience and small motor skills, traits men are said to lack. This enduring piece of nonsense reshapes the workforce wherever it is allowed to take hold" (P.90).

No, this is not 19th-century Manchester. It is 21st-century Shenzhen. The real reason that young women are preferred on the work floor is because they cause less trouble and are more docile than their male or older counterparts.

A communist government looking the other way as masses of workers slave long hard hours for $2 per day is not the only irony of China. While China's 300 million indigent and transient workforce is still looking for factory labor, the wage gap has shrunk. Investment professional Chris Mayer writes:

Wages in China and other overseas markets have gone up a bunch while U.S. wages have stagnated. Cheap fuel has long since expired as a reality. Oil is the big factor and crude oil averaged north of $100 a barrel last year for the first time ever. But natural gas is another lure to come back to the U.S. In China, for example, natural gas prices are twice what they are here.

There is more: The U.S. dollar has lost a quarter of its purchasing power since 2002 against a basket of 20 major currencies. That makes U.S. assets and talent cheaper compared with similar assets and talent overseas.

The raw costs are only part of the equation. There is the soft stuff to consider as well, things like intellectual property risks and the fragility of supply chains. The Japanese tsunami and floods in Thailand caused major disruptions for manufacturers. And the U.S. itself is still the world's largest market. Therefore, the thinking goes, it could be better to make things closer to the customers that buy them.

Researchers at Gartner predict that 20% of the goods made in Asia for the U.S. will shift back to the U.S. by 2014. Surveys of manufacturers show many are considering moving operations back to the U.S. (Capital and Crisis Email, Comeback, USA -- Notes from the Road, Feb10, 2012)

So China, an increasingly powerful economic juggernaut, is not as attractive a lure for overseas manufacturing as it once was. China is neither a good political nor economic model for the United States. Instead, we should take lessons from successful free countries--the Swiss, Germans and Japanese--great exporters with labor and energy costs equal to or greater than our own.

Postscript, July, 2012: Will China's communist rulers be able to maintain their hold on power as their economy descends into a sharp slowdown?

Teaching Freud in One Lesson

High school sophomores are not mature enough to learn Freudian theory without anxiety and joking. Actually, they are rarely mature enough to learn anything without joking about it, but the Oedipal Complex is particularly difficult. Thus, as part of the high school World History curriculum (California Standard 10.64), I recommend simplifying to the following psychodynamic and philosophical concepts:

Structural theory of the mind:. Teach the relative power and functions of the id, superego, and ego, and how pressure on the ego leads to defense mechanisms.Teach what is unconscious and what is not. Don't bother talking much about dreams or free association.

Psychosocial stages: Teach the stages of development, oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital, including the potential for psychopathology when things go wrong in the satisfaction of  different stages. Don't bother going into detail about how the Oedipal drama leads to development of morality.

Determinism: Explain how Freud is a determinist and compare to a humanist such as Carl Rogers (link here) or an existentialist. (See my comparison to existentialist Nietzsche here.)

These concepts can be taught with one lesson. If sophomores understand the above, you have done well!

In order to help you along, here is a two-minute overview video explanation of much of the above. A fun skit is here.

I Speak Coyote

The coyotes are killing and eating the neighborhood cats :-(
on my hillside. It's mating season, and they howl through the night. It's a good thing that I understand their language and can interpret their conversations for you.

Male coyote: Come here, baby. I have Thai food!
Female coyote: Really? Curry with chicken?
Male coyote: No. Siamese cat. We can enjoy it together under the moonlight.
Female coyote: Cat, cat, always cat! Do you eat anything besides cat? This is Marin county! I expect better.
Male coyote: What do you mean, babe?
Female coyote: The coyote on the other side of the hill just got a rat. He said it was special imported food, Norwegian rat, all the rage now in Albuquerque.
Male coyote: All the rats here are Norwegian rats!
Female coyote: Well, I expect better than cat wolfed down in  30 seconds followed by a quick sprint away from the Humane Society guy.
Male coyote: OK, OK.
Female coyote: And another thing. The coyote on the other side of the hill has a nicer territory. He says he has a pool.
Male coyote: The Corte Madera Creek?
Female coyote: Whatever. He says he filled it with game.
Male coyote: It's got geese in it that flew south for the winter.
Female coyote: I take my goose served rare.
Male coyote: You got it or my goose is cooked.