Six months ago, Florida Governor Rick Scott had plans to make Florida a “better” state by de-funding state higher education programs in fields like psychology and anthropology:
“Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”
Scotts “War on Anthropology” was based on an incorrect assumption that there is no job market for anthropologists:
…[T]he difference in job growth between [math and science] jobs and anthropologists is slight. Anthropology jobs are expected to grow by 28 percent, while computer software engineers and environmental engineering technician jobs will grow by 30 percent.
“The expected growth isn’t that much different in terms of percentage,” said Chris Cunningham, an analyst with the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And then there is this from today’s news:
Jim Yong Kim was chosen to be president of the World Bank, becoming the first physician and Asian-American to head the lender after emerging markets failed to rally around a challenger to the U.S. monopoly on the job.
The World Bank board of directors said today it chose Dartmouth College President Kim to succeed Robert Zoellick, whose term ends June 30. A specialist in HIV/AIDS with a Ph.D. in anthropology, Kim, 52, faced rival bids from Nigeria and Colombia.
Be warned, Gov. Scott, anthropologists will rule the World… Bank.
Was Scott Walker named after Rick Scott?
http://lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.....r-job?lite
It seems as though employers are doing everything they possibly can to alienate those who work for them. They demand jobseekers’ Facebook passwords. They put applicants through a dozen interviews — that’s more vetting than prospective CEOs get — for flunky jobs. Clearly, they’re waging a “war on workers.” Next target: Students. If you go to college to better yourself and qualify for a good job, Republicans see you as a threat to their way of life, and treat you like a terrorist. Why on earth does anyone put up with all this chickenshit? I don’t! I walked out of the workforce years ago. I live like a Republican now — sleep until 2 p.m., don’t lift a paw, produce nothing, do no work — and believe me, it pays a lot better than working! All I do is skim the economy, just like the Rmoneys do, and I don’t have anyone bossing me around … because I’m an owner instead of an ower. No one should work. I’m serious, I’m not kidding, just say no to work, and walk out! Let them do their own fucking work. Instead of making a candidate for a janitor job run the gamut of 10 different interviews with 10 different managers, let those managers empty their own wastebaskets and sweep their own offices! It’ll probably be the first work they’ve ever done in their lives. There’s no reason why you should do their work for them. I sure won’t. I’m a freeloader just like them.
The Senate is getting set to take a vote on the Buffett Rule. After every GOP Senator has voted against it, no GOP Senator will ever again have any credibility if he tries to complain about deficits.
Er…
According to this:
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes193091.htm
there are only between 110-140 anthropologists in Florida in 2011.
So a big increase, say a 50% increase by 2020, would only be about 70 jobs. And whatever you linked to, which doesn’t break out anthropologist numbers BTW, only says the number will increase by 28%, or maybe by 40-50 jobs.
So is it a great idea to support multiple FL state universities, each with their own anthropology department, for a total of around 200 jobs in the state eight years from now?
I believe that was Gov. Scott’s point.
I have no idea what point you were trying to make, other than cut-and-pasting someone else’s poorly-sourced poorly-made point.
Breaking News — The Stranger Wins Pulitzer Prize
“Surprise winners included the Huffington Post, for national reporting; the Stranger, an alternative weekly in Seattle, for feature reporting; and the online site POLITICO, for editorial cartoon.”
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....ticed?lite
@4 Why do you (and Gov. Scott) assume that education is useless unless some employer puts a dollar value on it?
So typical of Republican thinking, which views the whole world through dollar signs.
@4
A friend of mine’s kid has a masters in anthro and her own business which is going just fine. See there’s lots of need for people with the mad GIS skills she learned while in grad school. ;-)
@5
What’s in a Pulitzer?
Coupla years ago they gave a dude a Nobel Peace Prize for doing exactly nothing. Since then he’s drone-assassinated more guys than Bush did. They gave the same prize to a Palestinian terrorist who wasn’t even Palestinian by birth.
Does a prize mean anything?
Congrats, otherwise, Stranger.
@6 @ 7
You miss the point. The point was that comparing the growth prospects of jobs in anthropology to those in computer sciences, because their percentages are similar, is idiotic when you look at the absolute numbers of new jobs about to be created.
Would spending a large amount of money, say a billion dollars, be a good idea if it created, say, 100,000 permanent new jobs? Many would say yes.
What if that billion dollars created only 50 jobs (and there are examples not dissimilar to this in the Obama adminstration’s policies and outcomes)? I venture most would say no.
Darry’s posting was poorly sourced and off-point when one looks beyond the percentages and at the absolute numbers.
I took issue with Darryl’s approach to this, not with the correctness or incorrectness of funding certain studies that may not have tremendous economic benefit. There’s a difference.
@9
You said.
But, as I showed @7 the jobs growth could be in a wide variety of fields and not just 200 anthro jobs. If it were a case of just getting 200 anthro jobs you’d be correct, it would be a really bad deal. But, that’s not the case. You’re using a false premise or some shit like that.
@10 you showed nothing.
You relayed a one-person anecdote from which I was to derive, what, exactly?
And perhaps I should ask whether her Master’s in Anthro is what is paying the bills, or is she a free-lance pole-dancer?
Provide some basis if you want some credit.
Runs her own company. Does GIS surveys for all sorts of folks. Makes enough money to live comfortably.
Physical anthro degrees provide all sorts of real world skills for jobs in a wide variety of fields, GIS being one.
@11
Don’t use faulty logic or act like a snot nosed brat if you want some credit.
@12, 13
So, you know a guy who has a kid who……
My point was that comparing anthro to computer sciences based on similar growth percentages was a dumb thing to do when there are so few anthropologists from which the percentages are derived. Your anecdote only shows that there is a need for some anthro programs, somewhere.
The problem is that government has a poor record of managing the job market by deciding how many students it would allow to participate in certain majors. Even if you agree that post-graduate marketability is the goal, then the government doesn’t do a very good job at this.
When I was an undergraduate, the big job markets were assumed to be in busess/marketing, engineering (for B.S. graduates), and law (for B.A. graduates). Business/Marketing, which was the fall-back position for the fraternity folks who planned to go back home to work for their family business, or for freinds/colleagues of the parents.
The business/marketing folks did okay, regardless of the economy, because they pretty much had their job set up for hem when they graduated anyway. Their purpose at school was to drink a lot, engage in fraternity games, and otherwise make business contacts and learn to be salesmen. But engineers did poorly when the economy turned south, because nobody was building infrastructure (public or private) any more.
Law graduates were a microcosm of the university scene – those who came from families of wealthy law firms had their jobs guaranteed for them, but everyone else had to scramble when the economy turned south, with quite a few flipping burgers and eventually working for public defender firms (and grades had nothing to do with it).
Here in Washington State, as the logging industry closed down, workers in re-training programs were trained in the “highly paid field of VCR repair”. Of course, by the time they graduated the VCR repair cost went down to less than the cost of buying a new one.
So it would seem to me that the Republican answer would be NOT to have the state decide how many, and what, majors it would allow. Instead, let the students themselves make those decisions based on the myriad of circumstances of which post-graduate marketability is one factor for them to consider.
Isn’t this the Republican ideal? Or does this principle only apply to the less-than-wealthy students?
As for computer science, my brother-in-law got his degree in that field in the mid-1970’s. But it was assumed that the field was limited, because the high cost of IBM computers placed a limit on the number of firms who could avail themselves of the technology.
Of course, starting in the mi-1990’s there was a tech boom when computer science engineers began working on PC programs. But like all things, that will not last forever – eventually the job market will saturate, especially as programmer jobs get out-sourced to China and Russia.
So if you commit all your resources to putting out computer programers at colleges and universities, eventually you will find that the jobs aren’t there, and you probably should have diversified.
Nobody else has the balls to say it, but I do. Fuck you. If something has to be cut, better an anthropologist than a police officer
@8 “What’s in a Pulitzer?”
A nice cashable check.
@14 There probably are as many anthropologists as brain surgeons. But according to your “logic,” brain surgeons are useless because there aren’t 100,000 of them.
It seems to me a brain surgeon is useful to whoever needs one.
It also seems to me an anthropologist is useful to whoever needs an anthropologist.
But I would go further and argue that anthropologists are useful to society, even to idjits like you, even if nobody thinks they need one.
@17 I assume a few anthropologists lost their jobs during the Bush Depression, although I don’t know of any, but I know for a fact that a lot of police officers have lost their job because of No-Taxes No-How Know-Nothing Republican budget slashing.
Bob,
Sometimes you have not-idiotic things to say. This time you missed the point of the post entirely. (Hint: It wasn’t really about something Rick Scott said 1/2 year ago…)
All the anthropology I’ll ever need can be found in the Bible. Further, anthropology and the sciences are not mentioned anyhere in the Constitution. It is idiotic that my hard-earned money should be taxed to fund Darryl’s unconstitutional anthropological follies when all he needs to do is read Genesis. Then he could get a real job and quit lying to me.
The post @22 was me, the Real Fake Pudge. Honestly, I have no idea how that other screen name got there. I suspect Darryl changed it on me in an attempt to make me look silly.
22# 23# Don’t worry you look silly, because you talk silly too :)