Our Cheating Credentialed Society

From all the articles and cases, there’s clearly a problem in U.S. schools with cheating, and another one with grade inflation. There’s also a problem with too many students not mastering skills. All three problems are linked to a single societal perceptual problem — the false equation of credentials with skills.

In music, for example, mastery of an instrument or the voice is not demonstrated by how fast a musician can get through the piece, nor how many works can be quickly learned, nor by a piece of paper that says the student has a B.M., M.M., or D.M.A. Mastery is singing or playing on key, in tempo, with flawless tone and/or diction, and precise emotional expression.

In recent years, time after time, various studies have trotted out statistics to show that people with degrees make more money than those without degrees. Seldom, if ever, has anyone addressed first, what the studies actually show, and second, their actual applicability to life. The initial studies reflected the difference in earnings between those with a college degree and those without one. And the key term remains “degree.” Once upon a time, a degree signified a mastery of a certain set of skills, and the degree was the certification of those skills. Today, a degree is viewed by students and society alike as either a passport to a better job or the credential to another degree which is a passport to an even better job. The emphasis is on the credential, not on the process of education, not on learning the skills necessary to do the job. Given this emphasis the symbols of success — the grades, the honors, the degrees — is it any wonder that students — and their parents — cheat?

Those teachers who try to emphasize the need to learn fundamentals well, to master skills, and who grade rigorously, are overwhelmed by a society that wants quick results and easy-to-verify credentials and that has lost its understanding of the true basics. The “answer” to a test is only a small part of the learning process. The idea behind learning is to gain the abilities and understanding necessary to find answers on one’s own, especially in new and different situations. This emphasis is being lost behind the demands for testing and accountability.

Students are far from stupid. They see that only the result matters in most cases. The answer obtained on-line or through cheating, if done successfully, counts as much as the one sweated out the hard way. The well-publicized Kansas case of several years ago was not an exception, but far more common than most politicians and school boards want to admit. Just talk to the teachers — well off the record.

This emphasis on the credential, rather than the skills, is everywhere. High school students want to get into the prestigious college so that they can get the good grades there in order to get into the prestigious graduate school in order to get the best job/highest compensation. More and more money and effort are being poured into testing students as to what they are learning. Here, again, we run the risk of focusing on “credentials” — the good test score. Tests like the SAT and the ACT, the GRE, the LSAT, the MEDCAT all purport to measure two things — a certain level of knowledge and the ability to recall that knowledge in a short period of time. Individuals who know their subject matter in great depth, but do not recall the material either swiftly or under time pressure will score less well than those with lesser knowledge but greater test-taking skills.

While there are certain occupations where time is of the essence, and one must act in seconds or minutes — most high-level occupations don’t — and shouldn’t — require such haste. Most occupations are those where a thoughtful complete mastery of the subject and skills is far more preferable to incomplete knowledge and speed. We don’t need an architect who can design a building quickly; we need one who designs it well and safely. We don’t need medical researchers who experiment quickly, but ones who do so thoughtfully and thoroughly. We don’t need financial analysts who can design new financial instruments that magnify credit and the money supply nearly instantly — and then crash and plunge us into financial and economic chaos, but analysts and “quants” who fully understand the ramifications of their work and who can also explain it clearly and concisely… and who will.

There is an old proverb that seems to have been forgotten in our desire for easy credentials, quick measurements, and instant gratification: Haste makes waste.

Never before was this more applicable than in education today. “Accountability” and all the other buzzwords being used are in danger of creating an even greater charade in education than the present sad situation. Universities tout the percentage of their faculty with a Ph.D. Can all those highly degreed professors actually teach? How many actually do? Which ones are effective? Is there any serious effort to evaluate whether candidate A with a masters degree is actually a better and more effective teacher than candidate B with a Ph.D. or candidate C with a mere bachelors degree, but with twenty years practical experience?

A number of studies and articles have also appeared recently suggesting that student evaluations of professors at universities have become both omnipresent and are focused more on the grades that the professors give than upon their teaching effectiveness. That is, in general, the more high grades a professor gives, the better the student evaluation. Once more, both the students and the administrations which rely on such evaluations are focusing on the “credential,” the grade given by students largely ignorant of the requirements of the discipline they are learning, rather than on the process of learning and the skills attained by the students. Yet when such elite schools as Harvard set the example by giving half the student body As in all courses, it becomes increasing difficult for others to go against the example. In the state of Utah, the governor and the legislature have been pressing the universities to graduate students more quickly so that they can get into the work force more quickly, and presumably pay taxes more quickly. Yet, even as the number of students swells, the resources available on a per student basis decrease, and the buzz-word “efficiency” gets bandied around wildly, as if the only important measure is how quickly students get a piece of paper in hand — a credential.

All of these examples have one factor in common — the failure to understand that education is a process, and that mastery of the skills involved is what leads to eventual long-term success for the student — not merely a credential that, without the skills mastery that it is supposed to represent, means little. Most Americans understand that a basketball or football coach cannot merely have a players attend three practices a week for nine months for four years, give them high grades without rigorous examinations, and then graduate them all to a professional sport, saying that they are all equivalent. Yet, in many ways this is exactly what the American public is asking of its undergraduate colleges and universities.

Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t end with graduation. It goes on. Credentials take the place of judgment in the business and academic hiring world. The recommendations of the highly credentialed analysts at the Wall Street brokerage houses were accepted unquestioningly in the cases of Enron, Tyco, Global Crossings, and all the other high-level corporate disasters. So were those of the accountants at Arthur Anderson, AIG, Lehman Brothers, and innumerable banks. Everyone focused on “credentials” — reported profits — rather than on the process of the businesses at hand. Instead, the financial world went on focusing on paper credentials, just as the education world seems prepared to do.

Credentials have become more and more divorced from the abilities and results they were once supposed to measure and have in fact become almost a substitute for ability and accomplishment, yet so long as this continues, we as a society will continue to pay the high price for that practice.

The Illusion of Permanence

A week or so ago, a number of Facebook users got extremely irritated when Facebook tried to change its terms of service to claim the rights of all content posted there in perpetuity. On the surface, that seems to be a bit extreme and might warrant an outcry.

Except… is anything electronic and on the web really permanent? Just look at how fast sites change. Exactly where is the record of what was there yesterday… or last week… let alone last month or last year?

I got to thinking about this for the latest time when I considered my Boeing Graph program. It was a wonderful graphing tool back when I was doing computer graphics for various businesses. It still might be, except that I never bothered to convert the 5 1/2 inch floppies into another format, and I haven’t had a computer with that capability for years, nor have I seen a version of it for sale in an updated format. In fact, I still use 3 inch disks, and I’ve been informed that they’re nearly obsolete. And I’m still using Word 7.0 to write books, because it will also access all the older WordPerfect files so that I don’t have to convert some twenty years of writing and notes. And besides, it doesn’t require as much use of the mouse, which is an advantage for someone who likes the keyboard. Yes, I know, I could program or learn all the alternative keystrokes for the current version of Word, at least until there’s another newer and improved version. But it’s not just me. There’s all sorts of NASA data that’s virtually lost because the electronic systems have changed and because no one thought to convert it — or perhaps they didn’t have the budget to do so.

That’s the thing about paper. We still have books that are hundreds of years old. They may be fragile, but just how much of all the electronic data we’re archiving right now is really going to be accessible in a decade or two, let alone a century? My wife has pointed out that all the old letters in her grandmother’s trunk were priceless. They showed how people thought and felt. Somehow, I don’t see my grandchildren being able to even find my emails. More than a few times, I’ve been able to go back and dig out data from my old consulting reports — those that I was smart enough to print out. I’d be surprised if much of that data exists anywhere else.

And, by the way, there are a few institutions and even one religion that keep revising their tenets. You can see this when you compare print versions, but such comparisons get harder and harder when everything’s electronic.

I haven’t mentioned the problem of servers and their impermanence, either. Or electronic worms and viruses. The old-fashioned book worms took months, if not years, to destroy a single book. The electronic variety can wipe out entire databases in instants. Something like ten years ago, a movie called The Net came out, and it showed exactly what could happen in a society with too great a reliance on electronic systems and too few safeguards. Certainly, there are greater safeguards today than people envisioned back then, but think about the President’s proposal to set up universal electronic medical records. Yes, those records can be accessed from anywhere, but that also means they can be altered or destroyed from anywhere. With paper records in each hospital, someone intent on destroying large amounts of records would have to visit every hospital. Not so once everything’s electronic.

The most obvious price for easier electronic access and convenience is potentially greater vulnerability. There’s also another price, and that’s mandatory standardization, because standardization also increases vulnerability.

It’s certainly a lot more convenient to manipulate electronic text, and it’s been a boon to all of those of us who write, but I would note that all my contracts with my publisher specify that I’m supposed to keep a “hard” copy of every book… just in case.

What will happen if we end up going to E-books, because paperbacks and hardcovers are too expensive?

We can still read Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite, and Egyptian texts thousands of years old, especially those inscribed on clay. I have my doubts about the survival of much current and future “literature” disseminated as electrons on a screen, but then, given where entertainment is headed, that might just be a blessing.

Taxes and Taxes

Over the years, various commentators have made various tax comparisons between the United States and European countries on the amount of taxes that are paid, or the tax rates that are paid. Unfortunately, most of the comparisons are anything but “apples to apples” comparisons. For example, regardless of what the various tables say, U.S. tax rates on personally earned income range effectively from 0% to somewhere above 50%. A self-employed person who lives totally on cash, with an income below $20,000, who doesn’t report income can often get away with paying no taxes [yes, I know it’s illegal, but it still happens]. On the other hand, an individual who makes, say, $450,000 in salary and lives in New York City might easily pay more than 40% in taxes and have a marginal tax rate of close to 60% when one includes FICA, state and local income taxes. And those rates are actually higher than those in many European countries that Americans consider “high tax.”

How does this happen? First, because the United States is a federal representative republic, the states can levy income taxes, and in some states, such as New York and Maryland, so can local jurisdictions. That means as much as 8% – 10% on top of federal income taxes. Add to that FICA, which can amount to 17% on approximately the first $100,000 of income earned by self-employed individuals [which averages out to more than an additional 4% on $400,000 of income].

Then add property taxes and sales taxes on top of those.

Canada has provincial taxes, but from what I’ve been able to dig up, most European countries don’t have the equivalent of state taxes, but a number do have the equivalent of FICA/Medicare taxes. Some include that in the individual income tax rate. On the other hand, in places like France, they also have occupation taxes [paid whether you own or rent property] and “wealth taxes” based on net worth, which are also paid annually.

According to an Australian study, Australia has the highest rates for high earners, but the USA isn’t all that far behind if you factor in state taxes [unless you live in one of the few U.S. states that doesn’t have an income tax].

At the same time, the United States now has the highest tax rates in the world on corporate income, not that many corporations are likely to be paying much of it after deducting last year’s losses.

All told, there doesn’t seem to be that much difference between those so-called high foreign tax countries and the United States, not in terms of the tax rates. What the taxes are spent on, though, is another question, and one that would take far more space and time than I have at the moment.

The Name of the Game Is… Over-Reaction

For months all the major stock exchange indices have been plummeting… until the past few days. So have been employment numbers, and the unemployment rate is higher than it has been in 25 years. In the publishing field, not all that large to begin with, more than a 1,000 jobs have vanished in the last few months. So have at least half a dozen “name” imprints, as well as one of the major wholesale distributors. The second largest retail book chain — Borders — is teetering on the brink of financial and sales disaster. Some of the larger newspapers across the country have either closed — like Denver’s Rocky Mountain News — or are threatening to do so.

And everyone seems to be speculating on just how bad things will “really” get. Will the drop in stock prices rival the percentage decline of the Great Depression? Will oil prices get so low that oil companies will stop drilling? Will and should General Motors go bankrupt? What about Citicorp? Will publishers stop buying debut novels for the next year or so… or longer?

Yet, some two years ago, financial pundits were talking about the possibility of the Dow reaching 30,000 [instead of plummeting toward 6,000, as it was early last week], and seasoned homebuilders were hammering out new houses at a record rate. New publishing imprints seemed everywhere.

Now… while I was trained as an economist, and while I do follow the economic indicators and the economy very closely, I’m not about to predict how bad matters will get… or when. The one thing I did learn during my years of doing such things for a living was that the only thing you can be sure of is that the more economists agree on something, the less likely they are to be right. In fact, I actually wrote a short study on that subject at the behest of one employer.

What I am convinced of, however, is that, just as people followed trends “upward” far, far longer than made any rational sense, so too will they follow trends downward far, far longer than makes any rational sense. Already, thousands and thousands of investors are buying Treasury notes which yield almost nothing, because they feel T-bills are “safe.” In a sense, they are, because not much will be worth much of anything if the government collapses, but buying them at such rates guarantees an absolute loss. That’s because, if the interest rates go up, the value of the notes goes down, and when the yield is close to nothing, the only things that rates can do is stay stable or go up. So the best all those investors can do is end up with the same amount of money. That’s the best they can do. In the meantime, the short-sellers in the stock market are betting heavily that investors will overreact and continue to sell short on the downside, exacerbating the pressures for overreaction. The current “up” bounce may very well be another over-reaction, because the basic economic news hasn’t really changed.

The previous “up” and “down” trends, as well as the present short “up” trend, illustrate, to my mind, the fact that human beings in groups always over-react. Teen-aged girls in crowds at rock concerts over-react. Young men in gangs over-react. Bankers in groups over-react. So do groups of politicians linked by party symbols. Young and middle-aged male-investors linked together by the internet over-react.

And while I’ve observed this for years, I don’t have an answer… except to consider that to over-react is clearly human.

The Vampire…A Continuing Trope?

While there are a number of variations on the theme, the basic vampire plot is that an old and ageless vampire preys on young and beautiful woman or women, whose blood keeps him forever young. From that point on, the vampire can be indifferent, vicious, fall in love, etc. At the moment, vampire novels are, it’s fair to say, the very big thing in the publishing world, and some readers are under the impression that the theme is relatively new. More sophisticated readers know that’s not true, and that the first vampire book in English dates to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, first published in 1897, while legends of vampires date back at least some six hundred years to Vlad the Impaler, if not before that.

Interestingly enough the first “modern” vampire novel was not Dracula, but Carmilla, published in 1871, about a lesbian vampire who preys on young women, but Carmilla has generally been forgotten, largely, I suspect, because it does not play on the basic trope underlying the Dracula-style vampire myth, even though there are historical antecedents to a female vampire, as well with the reputed blood-bathing of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary. Throughout western history runs a consistent theme, particularly prominent in patriarchal societies, that various forms of contact by an old man with young women improve health and re-create his youth. The vampire myth, thus, is merely a variation on that theme.

Even the Bible notes in the first book of Kings that the aging King David slept with a virgin, without intimate relations, in order for him to keep warm and hold to his health. Today in Africa, the superstition that a sex with a young virgin can cure a man of AIDS is not only a variation on this theme, but one deadly to millions of young women, just as a vampire might be.

Polygamy can be understood as another variation on this theme, particularly when one notes the age differential between the “husbands” and most multiple wives in the recent cases involving Utah, Arizona, and Texas polygamists. Another manifestation of this trope might well be the current trophy wives of older men of wealth and position, women who bolster the men’s self-esteem and create an illusion that such men are younger than they are. But, in a real way, aren’t such men in fact a form of vampire?

Also interesting is the fact that the underlying trope appears not only in strong patriarchal cultures but also at times when there is a struggle over gender roles and power, as was the case at the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. The most recent example of this might well be the “Twilight” books, written as they are by a woman educated in one of the last bastions of male supremacy in higher education and a member of a faith that has institutionalized and rationalized a “traditional” and subservient gender role for women.

And so the vampire trope lives on.