With everybody looking to cut down on expenses, I'm passing along a way that some Californian families could save a fortune on higher education. My wife heard this from a young Armenian-American lady. Armenians tend to to be high IQ but not as marinated in the Stuff White People Like verities as other high IQ groups, so they can bring a fresh perspective to working the status game.
This young woman dropped out of a private high school after tenth grade, took and passed the GED, and then enrolled at the local community college. Community Colleges tend to have a mediocre but decent learning environment because the students there want to be there. If they don't want to be there, they stop coming to class, so JuCos are not like high school where kids who don't want to be in high school disrupt classes.
She got her Associates of Arts degree by age 18, and then transferred to UCLA. (Although UCLA is very hard to get into as a freshman, it takes about 3000 to 4000 transfers per year, typically from California's community colleges. In fact, she was probably more likely to get into UCLA as a junior than as a freshman.) She was on track to get her prestigious UCLA degree at age 20, and then get a job.
So, she saved the last two years of Catholic high school tuition at say, $10k per year. JuCo tuition is minimal and she lived at home. Tuition and room and board at UCLA will probably cost her affluent parents $20k per year over two years. She can probably get a job paying $30k at age 20. Net cost at age 22 (including the $60k earned working) versus four years of private high school and four years of UCLA: zero for this route versus $100k for the traditional route.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
89 comments:
armenians are not smart. the perception that they are smart is just another selective immigration artifact as with indians. armenia sucks, and as with most nations, it's mostly because the people there are not that bright.
they do however tend to have big eyebrows and a "Don't you know who I think I am?" attitude. and they can go on for a long time about turks.
"Community Colleges tend to have a mediocre but decent learning environment because the students there want to be there."
I friend of my parents, who used to be an adjunct professor at a real school, tried teaching a class at a community college. He quit after a semester or two because the students were so stupid, and had ridiculous excuses for not doing the assigned work.
I'll bite. How does two years at UCLA and two years at home going to a JUCO cost 'zero?'
Ah, but what about getting your M.R.S?
When I was in college, I found I made most of my friends in the first year and some more in the second year.
There was an understanding that freshman were the friendliest, with the upperclassmen being more reserved as they already had their clique.
If she misses the first two years, will she have a smaller chance of finding a husband at UCLA?
Perhaps this sort of thing can be mitigated by joining the Armenian club or attending Armenian church services.
yeah i've known and worked with many armenians and i don't think they are high iq. i dont know where you got that.
"Perhaps this sort of thing can be mitigated by joining the Armenian club or attending Armenian church services."
Right. This strategy works best for a culture like the Armenians, who provide a lot of Armenian-only socializing for their young people, which will keep her from getting pregnant by some Mexican JuCo student.
High status achievers don't get married out of college anymore. The MRS is an anachronism.
I am Lugash.
The quality of student in community colleges depends on class. Regular English 101 and Math 120 has a ton of socially promoted goof-offs. Look for a CC that offers honors courses, or stick to the more demanding majors.
CCs are getting much stricter on keeping the goof-offs in class. Federal and state funding can require strict attendance guidelines. The goof-offs sit and text in class, talk to their friends and generally interrupt the learning of others. Yay government!
For blacks and Latinos, I'd recommend a different strategy if their career aspirations aren't that high. Find some random company, show up to work every day and work moderately hard. You'll be promoted to a low level management position after a few years. You'll probably top out at ~65K a year, but it saves you the hassle of going to school.
I am Lugash.
As someone who visited all three levels of California HE, (slacker in High School, got into a state, slacked off, left, enrolled in Community College -- correct terms please! Steve -- did a stellar job and got into several UCs, including Berk and UCLA, as a transfer) I can related to this post and maybe add some value.
Obviously the overall level of student is not nearly as high at Comm College as at UC or even state. Then again you will get more time with actual adult professors/instructors, rather than snotty grad student TAs. Science labs will, from experience and what I have heard, be less full and less cutthroat. Higher level math is slower paced, but basically the same curriculum. Probably the biggest drawback is amount of writing you are required to do, which back in my day was pretty minimal at JC (okay, I give up on the term) but heavy for my major at UC. So that was a bit of a shock, as well as my first language class, which went a lot faster than community college.
As for social life, there was in my time a transfer orientation, where I met most of my friends. Also, there was a specific transfer dorm, again a good place for friendships to develop. Campus work was also a source of associates.
Transfers seemed to take a modal three years to complete their degrees also, so there was time to develop life long friendships.
No doubt on average JCs student are less intelligent, and many are really very marginal, I suspect there are a lot of smart folks out there on the 'extended studies program' as some of both my JC and UC transfer friends called it . Of course this sort of defeats to point of getting a cheap and quick diploma, but it was cheap and pretty darn fun.
One other point, at least for Californians, I don't know why everyone doesn't sign up for a course or two per Community College term. This may be changing with the crisis, but up until a few years ago just being in one course gave all kinds of benefits -- use of school facilities like tracks, gyms, pools, and weight rooms during free (non-atheletics) times, use of library and computing facilities, interlibrary loan, Lexis-Nexis and other databases, all kinds of stuff. After getting my BA, I learned to sail in the Monterey Bay, courtesy of Monterey Penninsula college, for something like $75 per term, which included a lot of boat and rudder time. That was over a decade ago, but I'd be surprised if things had changed all that much.
AllanF: High status achievers don't get married out of college anymore.
Your idea of "high status achiever" might be different than mine, but I think for many people, this attitude is going to be a big mistake: Sadly [tragically*], for high IQ people, college [and graduate school] can be the only opportunity they ever have to meet a potential mate of similar IQ.
Once you're back in the real world, the probability of randomly meeting someone [of the opposite sex] of a high IQ is basically nil.
*PS: Tragically because the modern university is so poisoned by nihilism that finding a person there of a high IQ whose heart isn't made of coal is itself a fairly hopeless endeavor.
Ergo the Paleocon Bachelor's Dilemma [the PBD]: All the nice chicks are out in the real world, but all the smart chicks are evil witches back at the University.
I don't think Armenians have an average IQ as high as Ashkenazi Jews or Chinese, but Armenian-Americans probably have a higher average IQ than white Americans of northern European descent.
I don't know how it works in CA, but in WA, where I grew up, you don't have to drop out of high school to go to a junior college at 16. In WA (assuming nothing has changed since 2002), any high school junior or senior has the option of attending a local community college for free, while technically remaining a high school student -- though you do not have to attend high-school classes as long as you maintain full-time enrollment at the CC. Thanks to this program, any motivated high school student can graduate high school with a free associates degree.
Armenians probably don't have high IQs. Lynn and Vanhanen say it's about 94.
For example:
USA-98 (lots of data from 1970-90)
France-98
Sweden-99
Greece-92
Portugal-94
"For blacks and Latinos, I'd recommend a different strategy if their career aspirations aren't that high. Find some random company, show up to work every day and work moderately hard. You'll be promoted to a low level management position after a few years. You'll probably top out at ~65K a year, but it saves you the hassle of going to school."
What planet was it that you lived on again?
It seems to me that Armenians in America are over-represented in careers of fame and fortune:
List of famous Armenian Americans
This is a surprisingly long list despite the fact that Armenians are only 0.2% of the population. It's quite true that this could be due to differential immigration patterns. Still, I have to say that I don't put a great deal of faith in the Lynn/Vanhanen IQ estimate of 94. My understanding is that they simply averaged the scores for Russia and Iran, and that they themselves don't consider the scores achieved by such methods to be reliable to any great extent.
Night classes at community colleges seem to have more serious students than day classes.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you couldn't take the GED if you were still eligible to attend high school (i.e., under 18).
Also, JuCos are much less rigorous than UCB/UCLA, so there's often a real shock when students transfer. And there's still no guarantee that you'll get in. I knew a very smart Chinese immigrant who went to a JuCo and then attempted to transfer into UC Berkeley's business school. He was rejected, even though he had a 4.0 GPA. I knew a young white woman with a 4.0 GPA from a JuCo who was rejected by UC Berkeley. She went off and worked for Al Gore's campaign, then reapplied the following year and got in.
One enterprising fellow I know attended a JuCo while also taking a dozen courses at UC Berkeley's summer school and concurrent enrollment programs. He got excellent grades in his UCB summer/concurrent courses, got to know a couple of full professors well, and got them to write glowing letters of recommendation. He got in and graduated summa cum laude.
My son was in trouble all through junior high and high school. So we pulled him out of high school in the 10th grade and sent him to Glendale Community College where after two years he transferred to UCLA where after three years he graduated summa cum laude with a major in math and a minor in physics. UCLA was expensive, by our standards--about $20k a year with no financial aid. (The school riotously said we made too much money). And we also had made the grave mistake of paying off our mortgage and not having any car loans or credit card debt.
As someone currently on the faculty of a CA community college, I'll have to take exception to Half Sigma's remarks. Not only do I teach at one, I attended one, then transfered to Berkeley, then on to a Ph.D. at a Big Ten (the best one) university. I've taught at R1 research universities, private universities, Cal State universities, and I can state confidently that at the two CA community colleges I've taught at, the best students are the equal of any in the country, at any institution. My proof? Well, how about my former students currently in grad schools at MIT, Columbia, Berkeley, and Stanford. I have former students working with Nobel Prize winners and top researchers and none of them feel they were shortchanged for their time with me. Add to them those that transferred as undergraduates to Berkeley (where transfer students as a whole outperform those admitted as Freshman in GPA--no lie), Stanford, Amherst, Columbia, Cal Tech, and on and on and you get the picture.
More proof? In 1996 or 1997, a D+ Orange Coast College student forged his way into Yale. He then proceeded to get an A- GPA at Yale. The fool got drunk, blabbed, and was caught and expelled. The Kinseyian scandal of course was that someone who could barely pass a course in a community college was getting As at Yale.
Many families are actually pursuing Steve's Armenian strategy, but literally thousands of high performing students in my area are forgoing the first years at UC to save family money (guess the ethnicity), taking two years at community college, and then going on to UC (with guaranteed admissions, by the way, by dint of their high school grades and test scores).
Of course the spread is horrendous and we get more than our share of brain dead time wasters. But in every class I've ever taught, there are at least 10 who could do the work at any institution anywhere in the world.
What's "Armenian" about this story? You could have left her Armenian-ness out of the story entirely and it would have had the same effect: "this is how to get a UCLA diploma on the cheap".
Apropos of nothing, whenever I hear anything about Armenians I always think about Gene Wilder falling in love with the Armenian sheep (Daisy) in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)...
Exactly what I tried to convince my parents I should do at 15. Would have made everything smoother and easier for all of us. And cheaper.
If any of my kids are mature enough for that, I'll support it. You can still play on the local high school ball team while doing so (that was my plan -- I played baseball).
As an Armenian, did the young woman qualify for affirmative action when she applied to UCLA?
Peter
Find some random company, show up to work every day and work moderately hard. You'll be promoted to a low level management position after a few years. You'll probably top out at ~65K a year
Wha?? Tell me the name of that company - please!
Berkeley accepts a lot fewer transfers than UCLA does.
Steve Sailer said...
Berkeley accepts a lot fewer transfers than UCLA does.
My point is that you could really shoot yourself in the foot by dropping out of high school, getting a GED, and enrolling in a JuCo in hopes that you can get into a decent college. Far better to take lots of honor courses in HS, get straight A's, do well on the SAT, and apply to lots of good colleges. If you do all that and for some reason you get rejected by all the good colleges, then you can go the JuCo route. And for added insurance, you can get to know Al Gore personally, take lots of university summer/concurrent courses, and suck up to the tenured profs at your target school.
But dropping out in 10th grade and going straight to JuCo sounds risky. I'd prefer to leave my options open, even if I have to pay a little more for those extra two years at a university.
armenians are not smart. the perception that they are smart is just another selective immigration artifact as with indians. armenia sucks, and as with most nations, it's mostly because the people there are not that bright.
It depends a bit on which Armenians you're talking about. Armenians have been a diaspora nation for centuries. Earlier Armenian-Americans were selected from this already somewhat selected population. Post-soviet Armenians, from the national homeland. Probably more accurate to describe them as cagey rather than smart, about as likely to kick some dirt into the pit as to lift you out of it.
"Community Colleges tend to have a mediocre but decent learning environment because the students there want to be there."
This is untrue. Many of the students who are there have no desire to be there. And many of those who want to be there are illiterate.
Why would you send a bright kid capable of getting into a UC into an environment where every one in a 100 students (if he's lucky) will have his combination of goals and ability? I can think of only a few situations where that would work. First, a bright, driven kid who understands his family's got serious money problems and has clear goals that allow him to ignore the various temptations of underperformance or nonachievement that await him at a jc. Another great candidate for JCs is a bright kid who screwed up high school and understands that hs has to make his second chance work.
But a kid who worked hard in high school and has grades and achievements worthy of a UC? What did he do to deserve a jc? Most kids would be reasonably (and justifiably) annoyed if their parents decided to cheap out on college--and annoyed and resentful kids are a bad college investment. No, it's a sucker bet and a tremendous risk that most parents would be fools to take with their kids.
Besides, it's just dumb. Why waste time at a jc when you can get a decent deal from a UC? A strong student can apply to a lesser UC campus and get something close to a full ride for a year (UCSC gave my son a total of $18K his first year as a signing bonus).
After a year or two, he can apply for a transfer to any other UC and has a reasonable shot at getting in--just like the jc student, except he had a far, far superior education for two years, among his actual peers.
UC fees don't cost anywhere near $20K/year. That's housing, and there's plenty of variety to choose from.
And what was the Armenian connection again? You don't have to bring IQ into every single post, do you?
they do however tend to have big eyebrows and a "Don't you know who I think I am?" attitude.
And they pursue careers like Kim Kardashian's dad.
Then again, it's not all bad: they've produced a useful guy like Mark Kirkorian (Steve's pal?).
and they can go on for a long time about turks.
Yes, there's good in everyone isn't there.
I don't see what's so "Armenian" about it. When I was in high school, my friends whose parents are college professors took lots of courses at the local university. I got into it too - though a bit late in the game - my senior year, when half of my AP classes got dropped because not enough people signed up. So it was 4 - 5 hours of study hall, or take some classes at the local university so you can have permission to leave school early.
I actually ended up not using the local universities credits (they were all 4.0's) when I went to Cornell, but it was nice to have. It was also good experience, and I must say quite exciting at the time.
Walmart. It usually takes about 4-5 years for a motivated person to go from a low-level position to management trainee and another 6 months to assistant manager.
While it is fun to imagine that some clever folks have found a way around the education-industrial complex, under the law in most states it's not all that simple to shortcut your way to a diploma at age 16 by dropping out and taking the GED.
Taking such a utilitarian approach might make sense for a B student aiming for a second-tier university. But for a prestigious school like UCLA, it's worth it to spend as many of your college years as possible around other smart, competitive students who make you raise your game.
Don't think Armenians qualify for affirmative action at UCLA or anywhere else (there was some talk of allowing them to do so in some town in California, but I don't know if anything came of it.)
That is because Armenians are legally defined as white (thus ineligible for affirmative action).
I did something similar, which was
A. Slacked off in, but graduated from, high school.
B. Did well in two city colleges for a couple of years.
C. Did my last two undergrad years at Cal.
D. Got a PhD, which was entirely paid for by fellowships and CA state + NIH research grant money.
The money as a science PhD isn't that great, but then again I don't owe a penny of tuition debt, even after that much school.
armenians are not smart. the perception that they are smart is just another selective immigration artifact as with indians. armenia sucks...
Now there's a lot of Armenians I like, but Armenians come from a part of the world where the "screw you" gene flows in large quantities. Doing business unscrupulously, but with a smile on your face, is extremely valuable in any environment. as you might expect, it's not a gene that's as valuable when lots of other people around you have it.
And re: that list of famous Armenians on Wiki: for an ethnic group most noted for its business talent, it's fascinating that it only includes 1 Forbes 400 member - Kirk Kerkorian - about what you'd expect proportionally.
After a year or two, he can apply for a transfer to any other UC and has a reasonable shot at getting in--just like the jc student, except he had a far, far superior education for two years, among his actual peers.
Uh, actually, no. The UC system frowns on inter-UC transfers. In fact, they don't like transfers from any 4-year college. Bad as Steve's idea is, a kid with good grades from a JC stands a much better chance of transferring to a UC campus than does a kid from a 4-yr. college. You'd need a very compelling reason to transfer from, say, UCSC to UCLA/UCB, such as needing to be near an ailing parent or something like that. I'm not saying it never happens; it's just very rare.
Oh yeah, there is one juco that has an amazing track record of transfers to top universities: Deep Springs College, on the California/Nevada border. Catch: the student body population is about two dozen and all male...and it's a working farm--you have to get up at 5 a.m. to milk the cows (I'm not kidding). But all their grads go on to Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, etc. And I don't think they take high-school dropouts with GEDs.
Many years ago a university administrator told me that a Community College is just as good for the first two years as a state U.
Remember, the first two years of any state school are just to make sure that students that continue past that point know what they should have learned in highschool. (And it helps weed out those that don't and can't learn it in a hurry).
As a CC alumni myself, yeah there's a bunch of dumb people there but there's a bunch of smart ones too and the teaching staff is usually interested in teaching (rather than filling out grant applications which is what most State U faculty spend most of their time and effort on).
When I was a student I was also told that while barely passing in a CC isn't that hard, getting consistently good grades isn't any easier than at a State U and a student with 3.5 or above is generally going to be welcomed as a transfer.
CC's are also perfect for those who dont want to go immediately to a college after HS but after a few years in the world of work want to take a second crack at the education thing.
The main reasons for really, really, really wanting to go to a State U have more to do with persistent stereotypes and having a lockstep approach to one's journey through life.
Considering 1.8 million of them got murdered by the Turks you can't blame them. Compared to other victimisation groups they are fairly low profile in comparison to their documented grief.
" The UC system frowns on inter-UC transfers. "
This is untrue. Percentage wise, you have no worse--and in some cases, better--a chance of an inter-UC transfer as you do of a cc transfer.
I always find it amusing when people say colleges "frown on" x or "disapprove of" y. (My other favorite absurd disapproval is that East Coast colleges "frown on ACT".)
The stats are pretty clear--the schools accept about the same rate of inter-campus transfers as they do jc transfers. There are just a lot more JC transfers.
But you know, stats are so much less interesting than soft terms like disapprove and frown on.
"But for a prestigious school like UCLA, it's worth it to spend as many of your college years as possible around other smart, competitive students who make you raise your game."
This is true for any student in any school and it's an important point.
I want to reiterate a point I made earlier, and I'm speaking now as a parent. Kids who can get into a UC are either very bright, very hard working, or some combination of both (and this is true for all demographics). If they worked hard in high school, then why reward that work with a crummy environment? And if they're the type of bright kids who like to avoid hard work, then they need as much incentive as possible--something they won't ever get at a jc.
I'm not saying parents should go broke to send their kids to college, but they should not make cost such a consideration that they send a UC-worthy kid to a cheap school with next to no peers unless the student fully buys into the plan and has a clear set of goals that include saving money towards a larger purpose (say, grad school at Harvard).
I've known other people who've done the GED --> JC --> UC thing. Seems smart to me.
I think we need the equivalent of a GED for a college education - that would save a lot of time and effort, the only problem is it would reveal what a joke most (non-science) majors are, unless we made the college-GED much more difficult than the actual majors would be.
In re Cal: (I'm the Anonymous who actually teaches at a Community College)
"Community Colleges tend to have a mediocre but decent learning environment because the students there want to be there."
This is untrue. Many of the students who are there have no desire to be there. And many of those who want to be there are illiterate.
The original quote is true, and moreover, nothing you said contradicts it. For sure the percentage of students who really want to be 'there' increases with the selectivity of the institution, but my actual experience with teaching thousands upon thousands of students at two of them is that the percentage of those wanting to 'be there' is easily high enough for a rewarding class. Maybe you took bonehead classes at one, but where I teach we consistently fill sections of Linear Algebra, Mathematical Logic and courses to more than completely fill a rigorous lower division program. (Again, guess the ethnicities here: If you can think of the one place in CA with lots of Asians and a fair number of Jewish Russian emigres, you've got it.)
The ratio of 'bright enough for world class university' to 'brain dead oxygen wasters' is nowhere near 1 in a 100 where I teach. Maybe 1 in 5 to 1 in 10, depending on the class. Obviously 1 to 1 would be ideal, but guess what? It's not that in many places. Just ask people who spend their lives in front of students.
We could turn the Community Colleges into college prep high schools, so that motivated students can learn among other bright motivated students.
I think we need the equivalent of a GED for a college education
It exists - it's called, "a degree from a state university".
The stats are pretty clear--the schools accept about the same rate of inter-campus transfers as they do jc transfers.
Not so. Their own guidelines tell them to give preference to California community colleges transfers. The order of preference is CCC > UC campus > all other four-year colleges. At least 75% of transfers come from CCCs.
Priority consideration. The University gives junior-level community college students first priority over other transfer applicants, including those from four-year institutions and UC's own intercampus transfer students.
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/
admissions/undergrad_adm/
paths_to_adm/transfer/tr_info_ccc.html
I've known a number of poor but smart immigrants (mostly Chinese and Russian) who had to go the JC --> UC route. From what they told me, the math and science instruction was adequate (if not particularly stimulating), but the humanities & social sciences courses they had to take were kindergarten rubbish and PC drivel.
This sailor has it figured out-- you can take the post-HS versions of AP exams (e.g. CLEP, DANTES) to test out of an associates or bachelors degree without ever enrolling in a class. He tested out of both an associates and a bachelors in less than a year.
http://www.123collegedegree.com/aboutus.html
No doubt he's getting ad money from the colleges he's touting but checking whois, but the sailor's story looks legit (unless internet scammers have taken to using US Naval Air Stations for their registration address).
http://www.whois.net/whois_newdg.cgi?d=http://www.123collegedegree.com&tld=com
Oh yeah, there is one juco that has an amazing track record of transfers to top universities: Deep Springs College...And I don't think they take high-school dropouts with GEDs.
Deep Springs probably would take an exceptional student who dropped out to start college early. Their application process is massive (2 stages, many essays, college visit and interview required), so they could probably feel confident in the quality of such an applicant.
Deep Springs is probably the only college out there these days (well, my knowledge is 11 years old) that describes itself in its brochure as "proudly elitist" or words to that effect.
My only regret regarding my college application process was not completing the application they sent me, but no girls within 50 miles was a strong disincentive at the time.
steve gets some odd ideas about various groups and then blogs about them. the idea that armenians are particularly smart seems to be one of them. he's written about it before. why, i'm not sure. maybe because he's familiar with one or two instances of smart armenians and for whatever reason thinks it's an accurate generalization. it's really not, but what the heck. it makes for a good blog post once a year.
all i had to do to check this myth out was compare a few of the smaller ethnic groups in europe to armenians and it was easy to see armenians are in no way particularly smart. they're clobbered, just plain demolished in science and engineering by the scots, an ethnic group of similar size and far, far greater intelligence.
i posted earlier about the dutch, another very intelligent ethnic group with no accompanying intelligence stereotype. indeed, they are mainly thought of as "those tall funny people".
i don't see how armenians are any smarter than say, the irish, a group that was singled out for centuries as dumber than the english, and invaded continuously. ireland is one of the better places in the world now thanks to irish ambition to improve, with a higher GDP per capita than the US.
steve has at least acknowledged that the finns are smart.
oh, armenians complain long and loud about turks. but they do not have the political or media power to do it in enough places for the average american to hear about it.
back in 1998, when i was working for a radio station in new york, and before system of a down had become a major rock band, i was invited onto their tour bus and i chatted with them for about an hour.
we were talking music, and they still managed to bring up turks. they viewed system of a down partly as a means to spread political messages, and as i learned, perhaps nothing is more important to armenians than what happened to them at the hands of turks.
remember, these guys were second generation armenians who had grown up in los angeles, literally 10000 miles from armenia and turkey.
The stats are pretty clear--the schools accept about the same rate of inter-campus transfers as they do jc transfers. There are just a lot more JC transfers.
Uh, no.
Transfer admissions rates for UCB and UCLA in 2007:
UCB - 32.7% for CCC transfers, 15.0% for 4-year colleges/other
UCLA - 43.1% for CCC transfers, 22.3% for 4-yr/other
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/
admissions/pdf/A4T.pdf
"Some of the people here need to learn that Anglo-Saxons and Nordics aren't the end all and be all of Western Civilization."
This Sicilian-American has two words for you, Anonymous: Thank you.
People here rarely say this explicitly, but I wonder sometimes what's in the back of their minds.
Lucius:
"Ergo the Paleocon Bachelor's Dilemma [the PBD]: All the nice chicks are out in the real world, but all the smart chicks are evil witches back at the University."
Try looking in the Economics dept - my wife was finishing a Masters in Economics when I met her. She'd previously done a degree in Geology, but female geology students are scarce. It might also help to look at good departments in second-tier Universities; my wife went to University of Tennessee. UT Austin would likely be good for brains + non-witchiness. The Ivy League is likely to offer poor prospects for non-Jewish whites.
Anonymous: Oh, and Lucius? I'm an evil Obama-supporting SWPL (though I write for a TV show you like), and I met my high IQ wife in college. Go figure.
I'm guessing Big Love?
If so, then let me tell you that BL has taken a sharp left turn towards nihilism this season.
If the show doesn't cheer up, and cheer up soon [like getting Ana back onboard, with a bun in the oven], then I'm outta there.
Putting Nicki on the chemical abortifacients and then having Sarah miscarry [which was obviously intended to be the Mormon version of an abortion] is pretty much more than I can stomach.
I don't know what your internals tell you about the nature of your audience, but let me assure you that folks like me are not going to be paying HBO to pipe this nihilism into our houses much longer.
anon screenwriter wrote:
"Some of the people here need to learn that Anglo-Saxons and Nordics aren't the end all and be all of Western Civilization."
Sam Huntington's classification puts Armenia in the Orthodox-world civiliation, a border state with the Islamosphere (always a bad place to be). So per Huntington Armenia is not part of Western civilisation, though it is part of Christendom.
Huntington's split of Christendom into the West and the Russia-dominated Orthodox world may be disputed - the Catholic-Orthodox split is certainly important, but so are the Romance vs Germanic and Anglosphere vs Civil-Law/Continental divisions.
Personally I'm most interested in the survival and wellbeing of the Anglosphere or Anglo-Celtic peoples, so Armenians, Sicilians etc are primarily of interest to the extent that they can either beneficially assimilate into our culture, or detrimentally corrupt or predate upon it.
"People here rarely say this explicitly, but I wonder sometimes what's in the back of their minds."
Well Patrick, I'd be happy to help you out, from a non-white independent observer's viewpoint. There is a hierarchy among white people, Germanic-Anglo-Nordic types at the top, Sicilians, Irish, etc. at the bottom.
You were considered an "N" until Europeans came here and got to see what real "N's" looked like, then you were allowed into the club. With declining population you may even be allowed to keep a lifetime membership, but every blue-eyed blond that you despoil, looses the Nordic genes for ever, and don't think that doesn't rub some folks the wrong way.
Happy to be of service.
patrick: "Some of the people here need to learn that Anglo-Saxons and Nordics aren't the end all and be all of Western Civilization." This Sicilian-American has two words for you, Anonymous: Thank you...
Or thank the pre-Sicilian inhabitants of Sicily.
"Some of the people here need to learn that Anglo-Saxons and Nordics aren't the end all and be all of Western Civilization."
This Sicilian-American has two words for you, Anonymous: Thank you.
People here rarely say this explicitly, but I wonder sometimes what's in the back of their minds.
You know what's in the back of their minds: Die fahne hoch, die reihen fest geschlossen...
Yeah, it's not as if Italians contributed to Western culture at all. That whole period between Ancient Greece and the Renaissance was totally barren, and it's all those guidos' fault.
Here's an interesting article by Gary North on Armenians and some other ethnic groups.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north323.html
"UCB - 32.7% for CCC transfers, 15.0% for 4-year colleges/other"
That's all 4-year colleges, not just the UC transfers. You do understand the difference, right?
As for the other anonymous (and really, folks, how hard is it to invent names?), I understand the priority issue but in practice, it's not worth fussing over. Priority is given *all things being equal*. That's a big if.
Jody --
I don't have stats on the IQ of Armenian Americans. It's probably not an easy thing to get. But I do have the strong impression that they're very high achievers, up there with Jews, in IQ dependent areas. Maybe a bit more on the entreprenurial as opposed to professorial side compared to Jews. I was an attorney in a highest tier NYC corp law firm for a number of years - and ran into them all the time in business.
But you might well be right that the US case is one of selective immigration slices. I don't know. Certainly that could be and probably is a booster. But Armenians do seem to have often been a middleman minority in other countries, including importantly the Ottoman empire before WWI and Ataturk (who they revile with at least some reason).
You are correct, simon.
My great-grandparents were from Messina (a Greek-speaking, Byzantine-rite enclave during medieval and Renaissance times). You could say that Calabrians and northeast Sicilians (the last "Magna Graecians", as distinguished from southern Italians in general) historically occupied a gray area between the Western-Catholic and Orthodox-Eastern civilization.
To return to your point, I am convinced that eastern Christians such as Armenians are more assimilable into Western or Anglosphere societies than Muslims or even practitioners of the sorts of syncretic semi-pagan
"Christianity" common in Africa or Latin America.
That's all 4-year colleges, not just the UC transfers. You do understand the difference, right?
...I understand the priority issue but in practice, it's not worth fussing over. Priority is given *all things being equal*. That's a big if.
At least evidence was provided to support the claim that CCC transfers are given priority. Where's the evidence for your claim that intercampus transfers are admitted at the same rate as CCC transfers?
But you know, stats and official policy statements are so much less interesting than soft terms like "not worth fussing over" and "that's a big if".
Ive heard of kids (Asian and non) who use Running Start (taking college courses in high school) to graduate with an associates degree at 18, and either run the family business or skip 2 yrs of college. I think you're better off staying til 18, but this was also the goal of Marc Tucker's NCEE plan, which was to test kids at grade 10, and convert G11-G12 to 1st two years of college.
ArthurHu.
But I do have the strong impression that they're very high achievers, up there with Jews, in IQ dependent areas.
I see no evidence that Armenians are dumber, and some that they're a little bit smarter. But I see little that they much smarter than the average white American. They're cerainly not overrepresented in the areas where they're purported to excel. For example, so far as I can tell there is only one ethnically Armenian member of the Forbes 400 - Kirk Kerkorian.
Anon - Big Love jumped the shark tonight when Sarah declared to Barb that she was glad she lost her baby, and Barb concurred.
Tell the suits that we'll be cancelling our HBO subcription now.
Sam Huntington's classification puts Armenia in the Orthodox-world civiliation, a border state with the Islamosphere (always a bad place to be). So per Huntington Armenia is not part of Western civilisation, though it is part of Christendom.
Huntington's split of Christendom into the West and the Russia-dominated Orthodox world may be disputed - the Catholic-Orthodox split is certainly important, but so are the Romance vs Germanic and Anglosphere vs Civil-Law/Continental divisions.
Those differences will have to be put aside for the time being. For the moment it's the above vs Islam and O.M.E.N. (The Organization of Melanin Exporting Nations).
Personally I'm most interested in the survival and wellbeing of the Anglosphere or Anglo-Celtic peoples, so Armenians, Sicilians etc are primarily of interest to the extent that they can either beneficially assimilate into our culture, or detrimentally corrupt or predate upon it.
More discussion on that here: http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/a-little-black-in-all-of-us/
A small point:
"so JuCos are not like high school where kids who don't want to be in high school disrupt classes."
If it's only the ones who don't want to be there who disrupt, you're lucky. Here in the UK I believe many kids like being in school because they enjoy disrupting classes and imposing their will on teachers and "swots". School is like a pleasant social club to them.
Your all right about selective migration distorting peoples' perspectives. A lot of Arabs in the suburbs where I grew up. We were all economically successful and had a reputation as a race of geniuses. Richard Lynn says not really. Same with Indians, and Armanians.
Come to think of it, your average white may very well think that with the exception of blacks and mexicans he belongs to the stupidest race in the world.
Re: GED rules
In Illinois (nationally?) you have to have dropped out of high school for a year in order to take the GED. So it's possible to get it before your classmates graduate.
You can take CC classes before you get your GED anyway, so the point is moot.
And CC is so cheep that I've heard of people actually taking classes just for the financial aid. You pay under a thousand a semester and depending on how much your awarded can end up several thousand ahead.
All the contributions of Armenian Americans are not enough to make up for what Cher and Kim Kardashian have done to American popular culture.
That's exactly what I did. Except for the dropping out of Catholic high school and getting a GED instead part (never though of that!). Now I'm doing it with my kids (except, again...)
My secret is out.
1. Gary North's father-in-law was John Rousas Rushdooney, an Armenian-American who advocated putting the United States under Biblical law. His LA based Chalcedon foundation is currently run by his son Mark. IIRC Rushdooney wrote the Institutes of Biblical Law, a book I've heard of but never read.
2. Simon said...
Personally I'm most interested in the survival and wellbeing of the Anglosphere or Anglo-Celtic peoples, so Armenians, Sicilians etc are primarily of interest to the extent that they can either beneficially assimilate into our culture, or detrimentally corrupt or predate upon it.
The states with large Sicilian, Irish and other Catholic ethnics in the North all went for Obama, and almost always go for the liberal candidate.
3. Lucius Vorenus said...
Tell the suits that we'll be cancelling our HBO subcription now.
Stop watching TV, you're just supporting the enemy. Cancel your cable subscription and just pay for internet service. Every dollar you give these people goes to fund the largest private brainwashing system in the world.
Tell the suits that we'll be cancelling our HBO subcription now.
You still watch TV? Much less pay for cable?
This is one area where my values and those of SWPL overlap. And I don't just talk the talk, either, like a lot of SWPL. I genuinely despise television.
"High status achievers don't get married out of college anymore. The MRS is an anachronism."
The thing is, you have to *want* to get your MRS in order to get it.
I went to Stanford, and I remember two conservative Mormom couples in particular who got married during college and just after graduation. They were very bright, very well behaved, and quite attractive to boot.
With the non-religious types, if people hit it off in college, then they live together for a bit afterwards before getting married.
My brother went to Dartmouth and similar pattern there.
So, my advice would be, be on the lookout for a husband in college. You can snag a husband if that is your goal.
Ronduck: Stop watching TV, you're just supporting the enemy. Cancel your cable subscription...
Svigor: You still watch TV? Much less pay for cable?
The sad thing is that Big Love was the only show on television which showed [cough - Caucasian - cough] women having babies and enjoying it.
And as I've been trying to tell Steve for a while now, HBO's Rome was the best television I've ever seen in my life - even better than my childhood recollections of I, Claudius.
[Can I just get the Rome DVDs and mail them to Steve c/o a VDare address?]
But now that HBO has decided to go all nihilist with Big Love, and since The L Word hasn't been even the slightest bit erotic since, like, the second or third episode of Season One [who would have thought that steaming hot lipstick lesbian sex could be so tedious and boring?], and since the Tudors never really took off [the way that Rome did], I just don't see any reason for the pay channels anymore.
Right now, I'm down to NCIS & Sarah Connor Chronicles on the major networks, and maybe a trio of minor network Thursday stuff [Smallville, Supernatural, and Burn Notice].
There are two or three episodes of BSG remaining before the series ends forever, and I will probably watch them just to see how hopelessly nihilistic of an ending that Ron Moore can come up with, but without any Stargates, even the SciFi channel is pretty much dead to me at this point.
patrick:
"To return to your point, I am convinced that eastern Christians such as Armenians are more assimilable into Western or Anglosphere societies than Muslims or even practitioners of the sorts of syncretic semi-pagan
"Christianity" common in Africa or Latin America."
I certainly wouldn't argue with that.
I was just discussing Lebanese Christians with my wife yesterday (apropos of having watched an episode of 'Monk' and confirming that the lead actor was indeed exactly what I expected him to be). It occurred to me that Australia's positive experience with Lebanese Christian immigrants may have led them to accept the large number of Lebanese Muslim 'refugees' who arrived in the 1970s, with consequently disastrous results.
Understanding that a Maronite Christian is a different prospect from a Shia Muslim, even though they come from the same place, seems beyond the wit of most of us Anglos.
The GOP has become not a conservative party, or even a conservative Christian party, but an evangelical Protestant party with some token Mormons and Catholics.
(The latter often try to beat the evangelicals at their own game- e.g. Jindal advocating the teaching of "intelligent design" creationism. This does not appeal to most Catholics.)
Catholic conservatism tends to be more temperamental than ideological, and is really hard to square with the PNAC/Club for Growth approach (invade-the-world, in-hock-to-the-world).
In other words, if conservatism is defined by Burke and Kirk, then Palin, Norquist, Dobson et al. are something else entirely. Evangelicalism is easier to square with what passes as "conservatism" today (witness the proliferation of Christian Zionism, prosperity gospel, etc.)
I've noticed that a lot of the smarter conservatives who the neocons and talk-radio blowhards hate- Douthat, Larison, etc.-are Catholic or Orthodox* (often converts).
If the GOP listens to guys like Douthat and Larison, and the Dems push too hard on behalf of their black and Latino constituencies(amnesty, affirmative action, reparations, etc.), the "white ethnics" who haven't become what people here call "SWPL" will come back to the GOP in droves.
*As for Orthodox Christianity, it tends to shy away from politics (other on behalf of the church's mother country), but I think that many of the same instincts are present there as in Catholicism and high-church Anglicanism.
patrick - most non-SWPL white Americans are Protestant, though. And they're somewhat suspicious of non-Protestants. I'm aware, having become interested in Paleoconservatism, that non-Protestant conservatives can talk a lot of sense, but the average Protetant American is much more likely to instinctively relate to Protestant opinionators.
Why is the white Protestant leadership class in such a dreadful state? I'm tempted to blame Frankfurt School Nazism, which was designed and tailored to 'deconstruct' (destroy) white Protestant culture - initially post-Nazi Germany, later America and by extension the Anglosphere and NW Europe. Certainly the non-Protestant nations and ethnicities don't seem in nearly as rotten a state. Auster sees it as a natural progression of classical Liberalism, he may be right too.
The stats are pretty clear--the schools accept about the same rate of inter-campus transfers as they do jc transfers.
They are? Where are these stats, please? The only ones I've seen suggest otherwise.
That's all 4-year colleges, not just the UC transfers. You do understand the difference, right?
The number of other-college transfer applicants would have to be at least equal to the number of intercampus transfer applicants and have an acceptance rate of close to zero in order for the non-CCC rates to be half the CCC rates. How plausible does that scenario sound?
Face it, a CCC transfer applicant with a good GPA is twice as likely as the intercampus transfer applicant to get into UCB or UCLA. (And that CCC transfer applicant is much more likely to get a good GPA in the less demanding environment of the CCC.)
Anyway, I agree that dropping out, getting a GED, enrolling in a CCC, and hoping to transfer to your target school is probably not a good idea for a smart, motivated student whose parents can afford 4 years of tuition. And I sincerely hope your son is able to transfer from Santa Cruz to his target school.
Interesting debate question.
Who is more assimilateable?
Japanese, Levant Christians, or Armenians?
Interesting debate question. Who is more assimilateable? Japanese, Levant Christians, or Armenians?
What's a good proxy for that somewhat abstract notion? Intermarriage rates? Upward social mobility? US military service?
simon:
"I'm tempted to blame Frankfurt School Nazism..."
Should have been Frankfurt School Marxism, of course. *oops*
anon:
"Upward social mobility?"
The Anglo nations tend to treat upward social mobility as a proxy for assimilation. But in fact upward mobility can result in an immigrant minority group becoming socially *dominant*, without assimilating.
This is common all over the world, but Anglos seem unable to believe it can happen to us, as if we were the highest-ability population in the world. We're not, of course, though we are in the top half. But part of SWPL status striving is an insistence that no one competing on merit, or with AA, could possibly threaten the SWPL-er's status; to think otherwise would make you the Wrong Sort of white person.
anon:
"Who is more assimilateable?
Japanese, Levant Christians, or Armenians?"
Even though Japanese are more culturally alien, they don't seem to maintain extended clan networks in Western societies, and their culture seems to have less built-in defenses to assimilation. IME they tend to assimilate to the transnationalist global elite, as do other high ability immigrants. This has its own downside.
Lucius Vorenus, that is still a lot of TV. My mother lives with me and she has the only TV set, which I never turn on.
anonymous said...
What's a good proxy for that somewhat abstract notion(assimilation)? Intermarriage rates? Upward social mobility? US military service?
Voting for the Republican party or some other right wing party. As far as I know no other ethnic group in the United States is willing to give a majority of its votes to the Republicans or any other right wing party. I believe that even Japanese Americans vote Democratic, despite being intelligent, discriminated against because of AA, and successful.
Patrick said...
The GOP has become not a conservative party, or even a conservative Christian party, but an evangelical Protestant party with some token Mormons and Catholics.
Well, those "conservative" Catholics you defend as being left out of the GOP voted for the party of abortion 49-41 despite the constant wailing from the Catholic hierarchy that it is pro-life. Why should the GOP appeal to a group of people who are willing to support the Dems despite it violating their faith? Clearly the White Catholics of the US aren't interested in the GOP except in very extreme circumstances.
Catholic conservatism tends to be more temperamental than ideological, and is really hard to square with the PNAC/Club for Growth approach (invade-the-world, in-hock-to-the-world).
The word ideology originally meant the study of ideas. If Catholic conservatism has no ideas, then what does it stand for? What does the average Catholic want other than a Catholic majority?
Or to put it more directly will Catholics only support the GOP if it is completely dominated by their fellow Catholics, like William F Buckley? Right now the think and vote like a minority, not as part of the majority.
I certainly wouldn't argue with that.
I was just discussing Lebanese Christians with my wife yesterday (apropos of having watched an episode of 'Monk' and confirming that the lead actor was indeed exactly what I expected him to be). It occurred to me that Australia's positive experience with Lebanese Christian immigrants may have led them to accept the large number of Lebanese Muslim 'refugees' who arrived in the 1970s, with consequently disastrous results.
Hmm, since I actually live here -- and lived through it -- I think I might be better placed to offer some perspective on how "positive" that experience was.
Those were some turbulent times, Simon. Every Italian, Greek, Maltese, Yugoslav and Maronite -- "assimilables" to a man, of course -- of that generation can recall having to fight for his right to party. It was this experience that led Australians to critique themselves to kingdom come over their horrific raaaacism, and which then paved the way for the hordes of even poorer candidates to be shipped in. Of course, things have gotten so bad that the original groups of s. euros + maronites now look "positive" in comparison. But you'd be wrong to mistake that for a recollection of a halcyon period of easy assimilation that never actually existed.
silver:
"Of course, things have gotten so bad that the original groups of s. euros + maronites now look "positive" in comparison. But you'd be wrong to mistake that for a recollection of a halcyon period of easy assimilation that never actually existed."
I just meant positive in the sense that the Maronites never initiated ethnic cleansing against Anglo-Australians. I live in London so my standards are pretty low. Afro-Caribbeans are generally well regarded here despite their high violent crime rates because they prefer to interbreed with the natives, rather than ethnically cleanse us the way the Pakistani Muslims now do. Not to mention the recently arrived Somalis.
I was very proud of the Australians who finally stood up for themselves against the 'Leb' ethnic cleansers in the Cronulla Beach incident. I was disappointed in Howard's condemnation of them, though overall he seemed a fairly patriotic Prime Minister, very unlike the current guy.
Found this strange ethnic group assessment post via Google. Affirmative action for Armenians would be awesome (I'll take what I can get), but I don't think it's happening.
Jody, if you were bright you would know that Armenians don't only come from "over there" (the Republic of Armenia). But if I was working at a radio station in New York circa 1998, maybe I would also make gross generalizations!
Well, of course armenians are smart. There are about 80 000 000 irish people in USA only, so don't compare them with armenians. Also irish people lived next to great english civilization, cradle of great scientific revolutions, so of course they were more influenced. Armenians lived under different conditions.
But if anybody think armenians are not smart enough, should explain one interesting detail. How come not smart nation managed to win World Chess Olympiad twice (since 1991), why the youngest chess master in the history of USA is armenian (Samuel Sevian), why among World champions of chess, number 9 was pure armenian (Tigran Petrosian), and number 13 (Garry Kasparov) half armenian.
Armenians are not dumber than you are. If armenians are dumber than chinese, why 3-million Armenia far surpassed in chess 1-billion populated China (or India)? Just too many questions. To play chess, you don't have to be rich. And Armenia is a poor small country, with no natural resources, but not dumber than you are.
And yes, we had enough scientists I think.
Post a Comment