Berkeley Blogs

> "when I say "traditional education", I'm referring to the liberal arts college model"

Yes. My response concerns the 'this is intended to be different' on the first slide, which grates because it's a blanket statement. Had it added 'different from a liberal arts education' or 'different from what most think of college' then I would not react as strongly.

> 66% of high school graduates enroll in college within a year

Not all of those enter a liberal arts school. That 66% is those 'who enroll in 2- or 4-year colleges in the fall immediately after completing high school'. 23.8% are in 2-year colleges and 42.1 are in 4-year colleges. (See http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d14/tables/dt14_302.10.asp ). Concerning the 2-year colleges, and quoting from http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2014-03-10/features/os-florida-associate-science-degree-20140310_1_bachelor-degrees-valencia-college-science-degree .

> A.S. programs are different in that they require students to immediately specialize in a limited number of high-demand fields. They train in areas such as nursing, law-enforcement administration, media design and fire-science technology.

Certainly some of them are using a 2 year program as a stepping stone for a 4 year program. But college also includes religious colleges, culinary college, .. and looking around, it also includes the Aerosim Flight Academy in Florida. Which is accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges, which is for schools that…

> We may be splitting hairs about signed agreements and assurances.

None exist, unlike the assurance that Russia would never invade Ukraine.

> Yes there are no signed agreements.

Of course there aren't cause it never happened, and was never promised.

> One interview with the dead Gorbachev is a source, but assurances were given by Western leaders to other people in Russia as well which are documented.

There were never any real agreements, to anyone in any way shape or form that constituted and actual agreement that was meant to be enforced, the leader of the country himself has said that already.

> That aside, what is important is Russia was under the understanding that NATO would not expand into the former Soviet bloc countries right up to its border and create a security threat which we are seeing now play out.

No they weren't their leader literally said he knew that wasn't the guarantee, this is more Putin invented fiction to just his imperialistic war of conquest.

> If you find something that Sachs got wrong, I would love to hear it.

Here's an article that refutes everything he wrote.

> https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1661857051725709314.html

Here's another

> https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2023/03/20/open-letter-to-jeffrey-sachs-on-the-russia-ukraine-war/

By the way, I looked up Jeffery Sachs cause you seem to love him as a source, so I googled him, turns out he's appeared on Russian propaganda shows hosted by Vladimir Solovyov.

Now why would Sachs go on a…

A while ago, the Stanford dean wrote an open letter about the decreasing amount of funding for the UC system. In this letter, the dean mentioned the value the UC system provides to Stanford, the research community in general, and the state of California.

However, the Stanford Dean also said something interesting, he said that Stanford can't provide an education on the scale that the UC system does. While I agree Stanford can't match the entire UC system on scale, I have to ask, why not on a scale similar to a UC Campus?

UC Berkeley, for example, has over 27,000 undergraduates, with a vastly higher percentage of low income students than Stanford or any Ivy. At Stanford and Harvard, total undergrad enrollment is below 8,000. As a result, Berkeley educates more low income students than the entire ivy leave combined. This is true of a number of UC campuses.

It's clear that the elite privates have decided to keep their undergraduate populations very small. Even if they do improve the percentage of low income students, the scale is so minuscule that they can't really be large scale agents of social mobility.

So, why aren't Stanford and Harvard enrolling 25,000 undergraduates? If UCB and UCLA can do this, why can't they? These institutions do enroll comparable numbers of graduate students, the big gap is in undergrads.

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/13/why-elite-private-universities-get-more-per-pupil-government-money/

Because these universities get a huge amount…

> Obviously stereotypes about assuming any individual is a drug dealer is racist. But I think it’s reductionist to say that’s really the only place opposition to immigration is coming from.

Nowhere have I argued for any particular immigration policy. Immigration law is complicated and I get that. I have only taken a stance against nationalism. We can have a rational discussion about immigration without resorting to nationalist stereotypes and rhetoric.

> Italian immigrants brought the Mafia with them—the turn of the 20th century was a peak in the country’s foreign born population and also its homicide rate.

https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/06/16/a-crime-puzzle-violent-crime-declines-in-america/

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time

Not the stats I'm finding. Foreign-born population as a percentage is pretty constant from 1870 to 1910, while murder peaks between 1920 and 1930, after the foreign-born population has already started to decline a bit. Murder then begins a dramatic increase in the 1970s, a decade in which the foreign-born population is at an all time low. Between 1990 and 2020 the murder rate has dropped dramatically even as the foreign-born population has grown to levels not seen since 1920.

This is exactly the kind of nationalistic rhetoric I object to. People spout "facts" that they heard from other people that would at best amount to a correlation if the numbers were true—and the numbers rarely are…

And this is again the essence of whataboutism and demonstration of its uselessness and harm.

See, I tried to explain how it is reasonable to handle the question about Ukraine, but you, instead of interacting with the issue, flooded the medium with complete unrelated nonsense.

You just flooded the medium with noise mostly.

I think Ukrainians made a very correct observation about Chomsky

https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2022/05/19/open-letter-to-noam-chomsky-and-other-like-minded-intellectuals-on-the-russia-ukraine-war/

"While you admittedly call the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “war crime,” it appears to us that you cannot do so without naming in the same breath all of the past atrocities committed by the U.S. abroad (e.g., in Iraq or Afghanistan) and, ultimately, spending most of your time discussing the latter."

See also the example I made here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31602479

Worse, the two issues you like to stress here constantly (Yemen, Ethiopia) are completely different in nature and have very different solutions as was explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31603138 based on Yemen example.

In fact, there is (for now) clear and straightforward solution to end the war in Ukraine but Yemen and Ethiopia are lacking such solution, so these 2 are even completely irrelevant to the problem at hand.

I like this argument which only looks at very long term statistics. Violent crime has been decreasing since colonial times if not earlier and globally. In this sense, a particular decrease in violent crime doesn't explanation as such (though the long term trend does. Perhaps lead exposure has been decreasing for a long time, perhaps not). Increases in crime, long term, are correlated roughly with veterans returning from war.

See this link for the argument.

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/06/16/a-crime-puzzle-violent-crime-declines-in-america/

Edit: also the original lead argument pretty hinges on a single moment of crime increase. I don't see how more detailed studies of the correlation could be more revealing since reality only provides one instance of a potential to leaded gasoline and reality is going to be noisy.