Posted on 01/27/2024 5:53:46 AM PST by george76
The average college student has average intelligence, concludes a meta-analysis by Canadian researchers, writes Ross Pomeroy on Big Think. In 1939, when only 10 percent of Americans enrolled in college, the average IQ was 119. By 2022, it's down to 102, not significantly above the average of 100.
“The decline in students’ IQ is a necessary consequence of increasing educational attainment over the last 80 years,” the researchers wrote. “Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s.”
The “Flynn effect” -- a steady rise in IQs from 1940 onward -- has been well established, writes Pomeroy. However, "there are signs it may have reversed in the first two decades of the 21st century."
The "college for all" movement and easy access to student loans persuaded most high school graduates to give college a try. However, only 58 percent of students complete a degree within six years, Pomeroy notes. Students with lower IQs are more likely to drop out. "One influential study showed that for white American undergraduates with an IQ only slightly above average, their chance of graduating is essentially 50-50."
The researchers called for professors to "adjust curricula and academic standards" so average students can succeed. However, they warned that “employers can no longer rely on applicants with university degrees to be more capable or smarter than those without degrees.”
Some degrees will retain their value, especially those from selective universities. But a Fuzzy Studies degree from Regional State U will be even less impressive to employers. (I believe a gender studies degree signals: "Don't hire this person.")
In 2017, Education Testing Service "experts" estimated that physics (133), math (130), philosophy (129) and materials science (129) majors have the highest IQs. (I assume they're extrapolating from SAT scores.) I was an English major (120). Education majors average 110.
"A degree has become increasingly meaningless as more people attain it," writes Pomeroy.
"Last year, for the first time, the Wall Street Journal-NORC poll showed that 56% of Americans think attending college is not worth the cost," a significant change in 10 years. "Skepticism is strongest" among people of college age.
“Everyone is born with equal abilities but not with equal opportunities.” To what degree do you buy into that statement?
Not at all.
Intelligence falls on a normal curve, just like height, weight, hair color basketball ability, etc. That is nature.
Opportunities can allow you to develop and maximize what you have. That is nurture.
When you eliminate standards, and have no expectations for superior performance, there are predictable results.
That’s nice.
By the end of the fifties a large percentage was hooked up to the stations
Two years ago, my friends took their rising high school senior daughter and rising sophomore son on a trip to visit colleges. They saw about 12 schools over 3 weeks from NY to Texas. Salve Regina flat out said the boy wouldn’t get any scholarships but the daughter might. The lady at Clemson was talking crap about white men to mom and daughter when father and son joined them. The look on her face, they said, was priceless. They wrote a letter when daughter declined that acceptance saying they coukd not in good conscience send their daughter to such a racist and sexist college. That woman was replaced.
The son started telling admission people leading the tours, (of the colleges the sister didn’t like), if there were no white men on the cover, he knew that he could never feel comfortable attending that school. He knew that school would single out those that looked like him for the same discrimination they received by teachers in his NY high school. Maybe enough others said the same type of things to make colleges take notice.
Victims of the Candid Camera pranks would be told, "smile, you're on Candid Camera." When we were teenagers, we would secretly record conversations on a small reel-to-reel tape recorder and then announce, "laugh! You're on Candid Tape Recorder."
#15 My cousin always mention UCLA in get togethers.
He is 65 now.
His home has several ucla mugs and rugs and pennants.
I never made it out of high school yet have made more money. He is smart as he has run his own business for near 40 years but he talks in business speak which are crafty words that you are not sure mean what.
#55 I’m gonna be a youtuber and make a mint!!
AS you mentioned, factors that contribute to intelligence include their home environment and parenting, education and availability of learning resources, and healthcare and nutrition. But the existence of knowledge in applying response and application of the desired feedback is only communicable by learned process. The factors you mentioned are part of the learning, not an inborn capacity.
Using the alternate to positive learning like your ghetto moms’ actions is an example of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness occurs when an individual continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to change their circumstances, even when they have the ability to do so. And that, when done at an early age, causes a lack of the child gaining influence of learning and falling behind rapidly.
So besides the desire to improvement, which is done by learning the tools to use in the determination of intelligence capacity and the success it displays if only for the self esteem of the student, it creates a self destructive attitude that further hampers the ability to survival. And that is apparently being determined at colleges for their use in entrance. So the student being not capable to advance was determined a long time before that by both atmosphere and tool learning. The testee may be incredibly intelligent. But without the tools to use, it can impact their ability to use that intelligence.
wy69
Verbal skills, so called crystallized intelligence or product intelligence can definitely be influenced by environment. But not past what nature has apportioned, only maximized.
Nonverbal abilities, so called fluid intelligence or process intelligence is hard wired and not generally amenable to increasing in any sense.
Young students from deprived background/neglectful families and environment can often score average in nonverbal intelligence but low average in verbal intelligence. For example a nonverbal IQ of 100 but a verbal IQ of 85. The verbal scores can be improved with intensive verbal training but nothing will take you past what nature has given you, only maximizing what you have.
By the time kids are about 12 or so, the scores are generally fixed and not changing.
The moral of the story is work with your children with precise exacting reading, verbal language and talking to develop and maximize their abilities. You cannot move past what nature has given you, only maximize it, but you can definitely retard what was given you by neglect.
“...but you can definitely retard what was given you by neglect.”
My point, thank you. Without the tools to display competency, how do exhibit it? Outside of breathing, everything we do past birth is learned or programmed, depending on where it is coming from. And the unused mind or misinformed one cannot be measured correctly.
An example is to consider that the will to live and sexuality are the two strongest drives with both falling under survival. But both have been countered with the noted high amount of suicides in younger adults and such a high amount of sexual determination toward changing it so it has to be wondered how much of it is pursuasive even beyond intelligence. This is why an IQ test can be so determined by prior input. Children come out a blank slate. Everything else from there is learned and will be applied as such as in the case of measuring what was put in the computer (minds) and not the capacity of the computer.
wy69
Group work in law school where everyone in the group is given the same grade can lead to a law degree. I do not think it works yet for passing a bar exam exam.
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