Come up thinking like this and try to make it in certain competitive universities. Even if they let you in you are going to have adjustment shocks that can flunk you. I’ve seen this in law school. I’ve seen this at UC Berkeley. When I was there only one in 8 blacks stayed and graduated within 6 years regardless of the major attempted. I don’t know what the numbers are now. In Law School about 20% or less of the blacks in my class ever passed the bar. This was when Affirmative Action was in it’s heyday. (In fact the minority students were the principal factor in knocking the school’s bar pass rate below overwhelming down to so-so.) AA has been cut back significanty since then but it is still practiced with the same result. Although racial quotas are illegal the school gets around the prohibition easily. Rather than racial quotas which existed when I attended, the school has seats set aside for the “disadvantaged” who always seem to be dusky. Poor whites with high scores are let in enough to mask the crashing test scores of the “disadvantaged” group.

With the demographics we see now blacks in CA are going to be irrelevant politically and economically sometime after 2014 (Mexicans are expected to control the legislature and governor’s office after that). The social immobility engendered by the public secondary schools threatens more groups than the blacks. Bright students who are not from a line of brights are going to have a hard time breaking through society if the continue to get secondary education so inferior to that offered in this State in the 60′s.

We are not serving our students, brights or dulls, by running the public secondary schools like a Berkeley love in. Students are not prepared for competitive careers and the Brave New World is pretty competitive.

It is possible that after 2014 the new masters of CA may start jettisoning the old policies and impose a new order. They tend to not follow the same party line as the lefty-democrats do when they no longer have to share power.

Back to the issue of subsidies. In the current situation any subsidy of the professional schools will be taken by the generational elites or the high scoring immigrants. For example the AA seats are now flowing to the Ethiopians and the Nigerians who can’t believe how easy this country is. Also the Hybird students, say black/jewish (Lisa Bonet-Lenny Kravitz, anyone?) will easily take the seats. Financial need rules don’t stop them – everybody’s divorcing nowdays and they ARE broke enough.

So we are back to Brave New World where social mobility is stopped, and social status is determined at birth (although it must be maintained).

We have got to repair the public school system to maintain any kind of upward social mobility. OUSD must keep at least one school run like Piedmont High.

Or maybe that’s now the Charter’s job?

I think it’s very important to get those bright kids in college and on to professional schools (if that’s where their talents lie). We need all the bright kids involved in society, not just the ones from the upper middle class.

Outside the Bay Area and LA, most towns have the public school system and Christian (read Protestant) schools – no other private schools exist. There has to be room for bright achievers from those places to get to UC/CSU and on to professional schools.

I occurs to me that this isn’t really going to work. The lower/middle class kids are pushed out of the running by the children of doctors and lawyers and such, who due to their attendance in $25k/year private schools are far more competitive for the few professional seats available each year. The professional school subsidies largely go to the high income cognitive elite and cognitive elite immigrants, certainly not the working class whites and not the typical blacks or browns either.

So while your premise is government largesse for the poor folks, as usual the benefit goes elsewhere. Perhaps a better system is to write off student loans for people who work in public service. But even that risks the benefit going to (wealthy family) Jewish graduates working at public defender’s offices, and immigrant/children of immigrants working at County Hospitals. When the state is balkanizing these distinctions are important.

It is not easy to try to circumvent the Brave New World and direct government welfare to the people you want to get it at the time the legislation is written. In an era when we are laying off cops, I can make the case that all these subsidies need to go and the free market can have it’s way.

Nextset – In my college era – mid 70′s – the upper-class/professional families sent their kids to private law/biz/med schools. The lower/middle class families went to the public schools. Funding them is the only way that some of these kids can move up the class ladder. I say we keep the subsidies for the public professional schools.

From the Treasury’s point of view why should the working families of CA kick in $10.3 million so that the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers get cheap professional school? And if the student body by and large aren’t the products of the professional class, they are nowadays prominently featuring immigrants. Remember, our home grown proles/lower middle class tend to be less competitive than immigrants which is why the elites want open borders.

On the other hand, 1% of the state taxpayers pay 50% of the state income taxes. Maybe we should maintain UC professional schools for the children of the well to do.

And you can’t get around all this selection stuff by trying to reserve seats for blacks and “deprived” people. Take a look at the Bar Pass rates. Between the Nigerians & Co taking the minority seats and the Bar flunk rates, you are not getting home grown minorities into practice at the same rate you force them through the acceptance process.

It’s a real tough decision. What to do?? Should we end subsidies and let the market handle it?

The state is headed to a shut down of social subsidies. That will leave the state’s enviroment more competitive – which puts the urban school kids in more and more hot water since they will need every competitive edge to make it in the Brave New World. An edge they will never get in these urban schools.

We need to toughen up the kids in grades 1-8 not to mention 9-12.

I am pretty sure that the idea behind the prompt is not that students should do nothing and that California leaders should just give them a spot. In light of the 10,000 spots eliminated for qualified CSU students this year, I believe it is a way for student to urge leaders to keep up the funding for higher education.

Leo addressed the prompt.

thanks!

“…Half a century ago, the prosperity of America’s middle class was one of democratic capitalism’s greatest triumphs. By the time (President of GM) Wilson left GM (1953), almost half of all US families fell within the middle range of income. Most were headed not by professionals or executives but by skilled and semi-skilled factory workers. Jobs were steady and health benefits secure. Americans were becoming more equal economically.

But starting three decades ago, these trends have been turned upside down. Middle-class jobs that do not need a college degree are disappearing. Job security is all but gone. And the nation is more unequal. GM in its heyday was the model of economic security and widening prosperity. Its decline has mirrored the disappearance of both. …

What are we going to do with all the kids like Leo? How does OUSD plan to help these kids make it in the Brave New World?