Back alley abortions are back.
Historiann comments on race, guns, gender, and parenting. All in one post. wow, Arizona, wow
Hope Jaren with a dear colleague letter.
Black protests over the years. Specifically.
A little bit of money means a lot to many people.
For profit colleges = high school.
I can’t believe that this entire series exists, but it is worth all 26 minutes!
Ask your Comradde is open for questions. CPP also goes off on “pay it forward” at starbucks.
What to give the puritan valentine in your life.
what when and how ombailamos reads
Bulwer Lytton winners and runners up.
bad adviser is awesome
An update on a child’s elimination diet.
diseases doctors often get wrong
What do people in your state buy the most?
A game where you insert only.
How assets hurt college aid eligibility on FAFSA and CSS
Cross ref is cool.
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
August 30, 2014 at 5:15 am
Thanks for the linkage!
August 30, 2014 at 2:05 pm
No problem! We like thingges that are awesome.
August 30, 2014 at 10:04 am
That Historiann post is great. I’m not as sanguine about this insanity passing, though, perhaps because I waded into the “discussion” about guns in our society after Sandy Hook, and had to leave after only 6 months because I was losing my faith in my fellow human beings. I periodically think about abandoning ship for New Zealand, which would be easy for us to do.
The for-profit college thing is interesting. I’ve hired people with for-profit degrees, but only into very skills-focused positions- e.g., junior sys admin roles where the person needs to know a certain defined set of skills and then be smart enough to learn more on the job. I think there may be a role for trade-school like degrees in some fields, but the for-profits have expanded far, far from those fields. I also have known some people employed in support type roles at large companies for whom earning a Bachelor’s from a for-profit program helped them get to the next rung on the career ladder, and the format of the for-profit seemed to be the only way they were going to be able to earn that degree.
But I also used to run into people get degrees in bioinformatics from a local for-profit college, and those degrees were at best a complete waste of time and at worst something that was actually going to hurt their resumes. A lot of the people I ran into were recent immigrants, many with medical degrees from their home country. It seemed to me that the for-profit college was preying on them and the fact that they didn’t understand the different types of American colleges, and enrolling them in degree programs for which there was almost no chance of a job on the other end. Tressie McMillan Cottom has written quite a bit about for-profits, and I always come away from one of her pieces feeling like I’ve picked up another piece of the puzzle. I hope she turns her dissertation (which she summarized recently: http://tressiemc.com/2014/08/23/make-it-plain-research-dissertations-and-blogging-in-plain-talk/) into something an interested layperson can read.
September 4, 2014 at 9:05 pm
my experience as staff at a for-profit matches your hiring experience – people who are mid-career, who have demonstrated competence but for whatever reason (usually lack of opportunity for class/race/gender/family structure reasons) who have hit a point where they need a credential to go forward, are great candidates – they will probably finish, they can afford it, and they will probably benefit from the degree even though it’s low-status. If there were a similar public or nonprofit option near them or that offered online or portfolio-based credits, they would/could/should do that, but this country has huge regional disparities in access to that kind of higher ed. Public universities seem like they’re finally trying to fix that, at least.
But there’s a lot more money in students who don’t fit that profile, or who do have access to an affordable, flexible option that is just not well advertised or doesn’t have the kind of aggressive, hand-holding admissions/registration/financial aid staff that a for-profit has.
August 30, 2014 at 5:55 pm
Learning a bit more about how to speak Minnesotan wasn’t too bad. I’ve laughed less.
August 30, 2014 at 6:02 pm
hahahaha!
September 1, 2014 at 8:40 am
The study doesn’t say “for profit college” = “high school”… it says “high school” = “college” (community college or for-profit). Since they didn’t test compass point state 4 years, or even research Us or self-styled elite liberal arts schools, there’s really no proof any of those would help for the kinds of entry level jobs they were looking at (customer service, sales, medical billing, basic IT, ect.).
I suspect the job market for young people looking for these semi-skilled jobs has shifted to the point where college doesn’t help and might hurt when it comes to getting that first job interview. I think it’ll take a while for the academic economists to catch on though.
Also, it’s far better to be looking for a low level IT job in Chicago and an administrative assistant position in Seattle than vice versa. Which makes sense, but is something actually useful to know.
September 1, 2014 at 8:52 am
There’s extremely strong evidence that some community college helps getting entry-level positions compared to high school alone. Done by an academic economist. So no, some college doesn’t hurt for obtaining entry-level positions. Before insulting an entire field you should know what you’re talking about.
September 1, 2014 at 12:52 pm
I went and read the paper from the summary you linked to, and they did the study comparing high school alone to community college (not just for-profit 2 year of college vs. high school), and couldn’t find a statistically significant improvement for community colleges.
I started at a CC, and I *like* them, so please keep in mind I’m not trying to throw the CC out with the for-profit bathwater. But I do think the market has *changed* since 2008, and if you’ve *been on the semi-skilled job market using the types of techniques that are available to the researchers* (i.e. responding to advertised jobs with resumes) you won’t have any trouble with the *idea* employers might not give a rodents posterior about higher education of any kind.
September 1, 2014 at 12:55 pm
There’s extremely strong evidence by other researchers. Not necessarily by this group. And they can tell you which types of jobs the community college skills will help with compared to not. For women, at least, maybe not men.