LastInALongChain t1_ixbao8n wrote
This was always going to be a problem in ex-soviet states. As a result of making education so accessible across the board, they crashed their own birthrates.
A countries birthrate is directly associated with the number of years people have to dedicate to training to take part in the jobs the country provides. A woman with a grade 10 education has 4+ kids, a high school educated woman 2.5 and a college educated woman 1.0. Education is directly causal, and years spent in education controls 40% of the variance of number of children born per woman. If you want education, you will have low birthrates. Nothing to do with IQ, its 100% years of education.
Its a terrible fact that good things can generate bad outcomes on the scale of populations. But acting in line with natural law, people could make the decision to force companies to train people without an education for top jobs. Have a track that basically makes different guilds of major professions, so people can get a directed education while working in their intended field and being paid. Doctors, scientists, lawyers, etc. I have a PhD and after having gone through it, I'm certain that the vast majority of people could be trained to do highly specialized, doctoral level work with just workplace education and opportunity. We as a society need to agree on cutting university loans to restrict the number of people who go there early, and make it a place of hyper specialization for people in their 40s.
That way 18 year old's wouldn't have to worry so much about getting trained for 6 years in college, then spending 10 years working their way up a corporate ladder to make use of the education, only to be pretty close to a geriatric pregnancy. Which is why education is directly, causally bad for fertility. Literally all organizations dealing with overpopulation agree with this.
Bothersome_Inductor t1_ixbxvlb wrote
Fertility in latvia pre-1991 fluctuated around 2.0 since 1960. Afterwards it plummeted to 1.1 and slowly recovered to 1.7 in 2016 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=LV
LastInALongChain t1_ixggu9s wrote
Why not show the full chart:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1069674/total-fertility-rate-latvia-historical/
Clear decline in the 1940-1991 range of latvia in the soviet union even compared to historical trends. Also the 1990 crash was bad because it was a government/economic collapse. the covariates controlling fertility are discussed here:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1019701812709
"“the impetus for parenthood is greatest
among those whose alternative pathways for reducing uncertainty are limited or
blocked” (p. 383). Children are, according to Friedman et al., among the few
“global strategies” available for individuals for reducing a broad range of uncertainties. The two primary alternative strategies are marriage and a stable career. Individuals who have limited possibilities for uncertainty reduction through stable careers are therefore more likely to have children. To support this interpretation,
Friedman et al. cite various studies showing, for instance, a positive relation
between labour market success and childlessness in the U.S. and a negative relation
between employment opportunities in the neighbourhood and contraceptive use
among black teenage Americans."
MonicaB92 t1_ixcsgvi wrote
> I have a PhD and after having gone through it, I'm certain that the vast majority of people could be trained to do highly specialized, doctoral level work with just workplace education and opportunity
do you mean that after PhD, you're doing a technician's job? A PhD should be managing technicians.
LastInALongChain t1_ixgekse wrote
Well A) There are a ton of PhD's that do technician jobs due to degree inflation and B) no, I manage technicians. but also C) I could 100% train a technician to do my job, and research effectively to solve any given problem. Its a thing you can make an algorithm for, most universities just suck at teaching people how to be good at research, and rely on their individual personal inclination towards hard work or creativity to fill in the gaps.
Edit: As long as i'm posting. I've worked with dozens of PhDs in industry, and 80% of them are ineffective at any given task that isn't their technique of specialty. Uniformly they are all terrible at management of workflows.
MonicaB92 t1_ixgysqo wrote
A) you will find Figure 1 in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353203996_Not_by_g_alone_The_benefits_of_a_college_education_among_individuals_with_low_levels_of_general_cognitive_ability relevant.
Average IQ of 108.3 (95% CI 106.9-109.7) for the 442 individuals with a graduate or professional degree.
LastInALongChain t1_ixhrp6i wrote
I don't understand the point you're trying to make?
I agree completely, personality factors makes a way bigger impact than IQ in most situations. My concern is that PhD's are just poorly trained over 6 years, and the same outcome could be done faster, more effectively in 2 years. Most schools just have terrible methodology, and rely on personality traits to make up the difference in outcome, while letting people without the right composition of personality drop out. If anything this supports my point.
To clarify, I'm strongly anti college, anti 10 years of education that is mostly forgotten or useless. Not making an argument about intelligence. Higher education is just a parasite on society at this point.
MonicaB92 t1_ixi4zdi wrote
>the point you're trying to make?
you had mentioned "degree inflation" and I have quantified this with quite a new (2021) reasearch. Before seeing that, and NLSY97 based research, I have imagined graduate degrees to be more selective.
LastInALongChain t1_ixi6sgq wrote
Grad studies are selective, they just select based on conscientiousness. Look up big 5 personality, its the gold standard for personality research and life outcome prediction. Conscientiousness controls the degree people are willing to work. A person with a score reaching the extremes of conscientiousness in the population will just work 16 hours a day and sleep 8 hours so they can get right back to working. Conscientiousness is the biggest predictor of academic and workplace success. IQ is good, but it doesn't surprise me that its not the be all end all.
In my experience you can boil doctoral students that succeed to be one of: hard working, anxious, or successfully creative.
Degree inflation is just a different thing altogether though. Its schools jamming people through higher studies for more money, while reducing the level of training and oversight. Which leads to people who can't answer the question "How would you go about researching a completely new topic/field you have no experience in, to solve a particular question/reach a particular goal?"
I've asked that question to dozens of professors, and only like 3-4 had a good answer with a philosophy and methodology.
neglectedselenium t1_ixd12yu wrote
Empowering women is great, actually.
LastInALongChain t1_ixgez5k wrote
Empowerment is fine, education is clearly crashing the birthrate. I don't hate women, I'm just explaining the actual, known factors that control the problem.
Too many people in these threads have a terrible understanding of reality, They all go "duh, things are bad so just add more good stuff like money and time and houses and we would have kids". Completely ignoring the reality that good things, like education and egalitarianism, can have bad long term effects if done sloppily and without awareness. Everybody just uses these threads to demand more free stuff for themselves, which is just gross and transparent and indicates they haven't done any research at all.
neglectedselenium t1_ixghmup wrote
The only working solutions are to ease immigration for college educated people and start handing out working visas and allow anyone to serve in the US military, I guess
LastInALongChain t1_ixgj1tl wrote
Or just repurpose college and high school. Increase the quality of education, and reduce the timeline to have everybody graduate at 16. Then just have a significant job training and placement program. Have college be a place for research and hyper-niche specialization, with an accelerated timeline of 2 years for any specific program. Avoid situations where people have spend 4 bachelors, 2 masters, 4 PhD years to get a job making powerpoints at 28.
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