Free Republic

It’s nearly impossible to have even a short conversation with a college administrator, politician, or chief executive without the words diversity and inclusion dropping from their lips. Diversity and inclusion appear to be the end-all and be-all of their existence. So, I thought I’d begin this discussion by first looking up the definition of diversity. Here’s my question to those who are wedded to diversity and inclusion: Are people better off the less they have in common with one another? For example, women are less likely to be able to march 12.4 miles in five hours with an 83-pound assault...

The authors of a new study suggest that science and technology professors should “equalize average grades across classes” in order to draw more women into those fields of study. Inside Higher Ed reports that the researchers, examining administrative and course data from the University of Kentucky’s archives from 2012, found that students both spent more time on STEM courses every week—about an hour—and that they also got lower grades in STEM classes than in others.

Clown world strikes again. 13 academics have signed a letter asserting that the scientific term “quantum supremacy” is racist and shouldn’t be used. Yes, this actually happened and it’s not the Onion. A Google computer recently achieved quantum supremacy by managing to perform a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken the world’s most powerful supercomputer 10,000 years. However, instead of celebrating this accomplishment, some academics were instead triggered by the use of the term “quantum supremacy”. They signed a letter, which was subsequently published by Nature, claiming the term was racist. “In our view, ‘supremacy’ has overtones of...

Substantial earnings differences exist across majors with the majors that pay well also having lower grades and higher workloads. We show that the harsher grading policies in STEM courses disproportionately affect women. To show this, we estimate a model of student demand courses and optimal effort choices of students conditional on the chosen courses. Instructor grading policies are treated as equilibrium objects that in part depend on student demand for courses. Restrictions on grading policies that equalize average grades across classes helps to close the STEM gender gap as well as increasing overall enrollment in STEM classes.

A mathematician at Carnegie Mellon University has developed an easier way to solve quadratic equations. The mathematician hopes this method will help students avoid memorizing obtuse formulas. His secret is in generalizing two roots together instead of keeping them as separate values. ========================================================================== A mathematician has derived an easier way to solve quadratic equation problems, according to MIT's Technology Review. Quadratic equations are polynomials that include an x², and teachers use them to teach students to find two solutions at once. The new process, developed by Dr. Po-Shen Loh at Carnegie Mellon University, goes around traditional methods like completing...

... Fewer than one in five undergraduates at the [University of Tokyo] were women. The dearth of women at Todai is a byproduct of deep-seated gender inequality in Japan, where women are still not expected to achieve as much as men and sometimes hold themselves back from educational opportunities. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promoted an agenda of female empowerment, boasting that Japan’s labor force participation rate among women outranks even the United States. Yet few women make it to the executive suite or the highest levels of government. The disconnect starts at school. Although women make up nearly half...

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the history field has seen a precipitous decline in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in American colleges. As Benjamin Schmidt, a historian at Northeastern University, reported in the American Historical Association’s Perspectives, the number of history degrees awarded fell by 30 percent—from 34,642 to 24,266 in just nine years from 2008 to 2017. History’s steep decline is not an anomaly, but part and parcel of a broader “crisis” in the humanities. STEM has steamrolled these disciplines on college campuses: Computer science has more than doubled its students between 2013 and 2017. Moreover, critics have...

Years after Common Core made its debut in many state education systems, the disastrous long-term results of the program are finally being seen. The students’ reading assessment paints a grim picture of educational readiness, with tested fourth and eighth graders failing to best the previous test’s results. This year’s results were only marginally better than those from 1992. The mathematics scores show the most damning results — an upward trend until the year 2015, when the momentum seemed to grind to a halt. Although there were double-digit gains since the ’90s, fourth graders only managed to score a single point...

FULL TITLE: Exclusive–Hilarie Gamm: Amazon, Google Reap 15 Percent Discount to Hire Foreigners over American Graduates The federal government is helping giant multinational corporations such as Amazon and Google to reap a 15 percent discount every time foreign workers are hired over American college graduates, says Hilarie Gamm, author of Billions Lost: The American Tech Crisis and The Road Map to Change and co-founder of the American Workers Coalition. During an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight, Gamm explained how the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program provides a tax incentive, and thus a subsidy paid for by U.S. taxpayers, for corporations to...

Male academics, who comprise less than 10 percent of North American archaeologists, write the vast majority of the field's high impact, peer-reviewed literature. That's according to a new study in American Antiquity by Washington State University archaeologists Tiffany Fulkerson and Shannon Tushingham. The two scientists set out to determine how a rapidly evolving demographic and professional landscape is influencing the production and dissemination of knowledge in American archaeology. They found that women, who now make up half of all archaeologists in North America, and professionals working outside of a university setting, who account for 90 percent of the total workforce,...

A University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor who argues for a “movement against objects, truths, and knowledge” will be leading a confab at Minnesota’s Carleton College this October. Carleton’s convocation series, described as “a shared campus experience that brings students, faculty, and staff together for […] a lecture or presentation from specialists in a variety of disciplines,” have “a rich history” dating back to the early 1940s The relationship between humans, mathematics, and the planet has been one steeped too long in domination and destruction […] Drawing upon Indigenous worldviews to reconceptualize what mathematics is and how it is practiced,...

Two-thirds of employees report regrets about their advanced degrees, as Americans question the high cost of higher education. Student loan debt has ballooned to nearly $1.6 trillion nationwide in 2019, topping the list of regrets for employees. Science, technology, engineering or math majors, who are more likely to enjoy higher salaries, were least likely to report regrets, while those in the humanities were most likely. A college education is still considered a pathway to higher lifetime earnings and gainful employment for Americans. Nevertheless, two-thirds of employees report having regrets when it comes to their advanced degrees, according to a PayScale...

STEM shooting suspect appears in court; affidavit remains sealed. School Shooting Suspect Alec McKinney Charged As Adult: 48 Counts, 1st Degree Murder.

One of the suspects in the deadly Colorado school shooting is a bully who joked about shootings and threatened other students for years, a former friend said. Kevin Cole used to go to STEM School Highlands Ranch, where one student was killed and eight others injured Tuesday in a shooting. Two suspects are in custody and will appear in court next week to hear the charges against them. One of those alleged shooters was Devon Erickson, 18, who was once a friend of Cole's. "They couldn't believe that he would actually do it, but they weren't entirely surprised that he...

Boy, the MSM has been uncharacteristically quiet about the most recent school shooting haven’t they? I suppose it may have something to do with how the perps obtained the guns – stolen from parents who had purchased them legally. More likely it has more to do with the fact that at least one of the two villain shooters is a member of the newest protected fringe identity group: Girls-to-Men. Or is that boys-to-Womyn? It’s so hard to tell which way the kids are going these days. In any event I’m willing to bet the shooters cover at least 2 letters...

The father of one of the alleged STEM School Highlands Ranch shooters in Colorado is a serial felon and illegal immigrant from Mexico, DailyMail.com can reveal. Jose Evis Quintana, the father of alleged 16-year-old killer Alec McKinney was once jailed for 15 months for domestic violence against Alec's mother and 'menacing with a weapon'.

Kendrick Castillo – only days from graduation – acted fast inside of his British literature class at a suburban Denver school Tuesday afternoon. And he paid with his life. When a gunman burst through the door at STEM School Highland Ranch, barking at students to stay in place and not move, Castillo, 18, rushed the shooter. It was a quick-thinking move that fellow students said gave them a chance to bolt for safety or take cover under desks. "Kendrick lunged at (the gunman), and he shot Kendrick, giving all of us enough time to get underneath our desks, to get...

... Based on the data we found and on previous literature in this field, gender differences in representation and productivity can be interpreted in terms of two main causal factors: Gender differences in interests; Higher male variability (HMV). Needless to say, “for every complex natural phenomenon there is a simple, elegant, compelling, wrong explanation” (Thomas Gold) and when dealing with complex systems any simple explanation can easily be inadequate, including explanations that attribute gender disparities exclusively to sexual discrimination. But I believe the data can be explained without invoking sexual discrimination and by focusing instead on the two factors above....

February 20, 2019 America’s STEM Crisis Threatens Our National Security By Arthur Herman On October 4, 1957, a steel sphere the size of a beach ball and bristling with four radio antennae circled the Earth in eight minutes. Dubbed “Satellite-1,” or “PS-1” (Prosteyshiy Sputnik-1) by its Soviet fabricators, it was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviets had launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit, where it stayed for three weeks before its batteries died. Then it continued silently in a decaying orbit for another two months before burning up in the atmosphere. Its radio signal pulses were easily...

Heather Mac Donald has written and spoken extensively about how identity politics is hampering America’s ability to maintain its dominance in STEM fields. Our main competitors, most notably China, are focused on making sure the best scientists, mathematicians, and engineers are doing the work. They care nothing about gender. And they spend virtually every dollar related to STEM on hard research and analysis. The U.S., by contrast, is preoccupied with the gender and (to a lesser extent) the race and ethnicity of who is in the lab. And we pour money into promoting identity politics in STEM. Indeed, Elizabeth Harrington...