College: More than numbers game

  My college-grad son got exactly what I hoped he would out of his higher education — meaning it had almost nothing to do with a career.

  Oh, sure, I would have been thrilled if after that fireworks-filled graduation night at the base of the University of Texas tower he exchanged his black robe for a job that gratified and enriched him.

  But college meant so much more than that for me, and for him. How would his education affect the GDP and our competitiveness with the Chinese? We have yet to see.

  In addition to his classes, he was engaged in a whole lot on campus — indeed, so much that he never had the time or inclination to attend so much as one UT sporting event.

   So many people, particularly policymakers, look at college as a linear exercise: X number of credits equals career readiness. A UT task force recently recommended limiting the pursuit of a bachelor's degree to 10 semesters — five years. Such a bottom-line fixation fails to acknowledge changes of direction in inquiry and interest, not to mention work demands that students face to pay for college.

    Therefore, it's encouraging when you see approaches to make the most out of college education, rather than trying to prime the conveyor belt to get students out in the least amount of time.

    An example of this at UT is taking place in the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement with an exciting initiative called Intellectual Entrepreneurship.

     We all know what entrepreneurship is about: profit. This UT program, under the direction of Richard Cherwitz, is about the profit to society in producing citizen-scholars. Basically, it's a host of ways to "demystify education" and get students to branch out from what they're studying to find ways to engage in the community, or across disciplines.

      On feature under the program that's getting national attention is UT's Pre-Graduate School Internship. It pairs graduate students with undergraduates, most of whom come from under-represented populations. The objective: to help the undergrads conceptualize and plan for post-graduate degrees. Last school year it involved more than 200 undergraduates. 

     It is always useful to think of the social ripple effect to come when one person from a family that never knew higher education gets a college degree. Consider the ripples, then, if one of them chooses law school, medical school or other post-graduate pursuits.

   But the same kinds of stigma and mystiques that keep some students from going to college apply to grad school, not to mention foreboding finances. That's why such a mentoring arrangement is invaluable.

    In contrast to those who want to distill education to test scores or minimizing contact hours, hear the plea of UT sophomore Cameron Ingram, praising the Intellectual Entrepreneurship program in a commentary in the Daily Texan: "With looming budget cuts and tuition hikes, maybe interest should be focused more on making students' dollars go further, and less on turnover."

      To  Cherwitz's way of thinking, this means showing students how " 'research'(thought and reflection) and 'engagement' (action) do not inherently constitute an either/or."

     My son got more than thought and reflection out of his (five) rewarding college years, and far more than the two bachelor's degrees he earned. He got a sense of himself and a thirst for knowledge.

     After four years loving Austin as a non-student and thinking about what else he wants to do, he recently was accepted to the UT School of Social Work. Making that leap wasn't too daunting for him, in part because of his influences at home, and in part because of friends already in graduate school. But imagine someone whose parents never graduated from high school and never dreamed of college. Graduate school?

    Let's hope no one is rushed out the door at a great school before he or she gets a sense of greatness yet to be achieved.

    John Young writes for Cox Newspapers. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

     

      

Hope in state of ignorance

      Parsing his vote for Rick Perry in the primary, one Republican told a reporter the message was to "let Texas be Texas."

      Yup.

      Texas, where he who panders hardest to the hard right wins the privilege of governing all.

      Texas, where a politician who led Aggie cheers can be the state's arbiter on global warming, as opposed to, say, alarmed A&M scientists who study it every day.

      Texas, where one-third of respondents in a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll say that man co-existed with dinosaurs, and where 51 percent reject the theory of evolution.

       Texas, where a majority on the state school board is more dedicated to evangelizing its own world views than sharing with students what the weight of science says on either matter.

        Texas, frozen in political amber, or some sticky stuff that retards motion, ultimately cementing one in place.

         That was a curious statement last month from Perry when he, Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples and Attorney General Greg Abbott said the state would sue to block the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases relative to their effect on our health.

      Perry said the EPA was interfering with Texas' "freedom to continue our successful environmental strategies." Beg pardon, Governor: But if the EPA is wrong and these pollutants are no threat, why even give "environmental strategies" lip service? Stop pretending. Combustion is our most important product.

       OK. So, pursuant to the only primary that matters, Texas consigns itself to another four years of pandering to the basest of its instincts, the lowest of its common denominators. Yes? Well, maybe not.

      Indicators from the primary give people who wish for something else a few glimmers of hope.

       Consider that voters ousted the devoted creationist who once headed the State Board of Education, Don McLeroy of Bryan. The victor, Thomas Ratliff, is the son of a man who embodies something once considered dino-extinct: the moderate Republican. That would be former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff.

    Elsewhere, forces of moderation turned back an effort that harked back to how creationists and homeschoolers schemed and slimed their way onto the state school board in the 1990s. Moderate GOP Lubbock incumbent Bob Craig won re-election despite character attacks by a steaming tea kettle of righteous fury named Randy Rives. Rives advertised that he had tape of his opponent consulting at a school board meeting with, get this: the president of Texans for Sound Science.

     Imagine that. Consulting with science practitioners.

     Not only that, but Rives said Craig canoodled with groups friendly with groups like Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign, "the largest homosexual organization in the country."

    How can such an appeal not be gold in a state of ignorance? Gov. Rick, haven't you shown your political brethren the way?

     Don't look now, but Democrats have fielded their most viable candidate for governor in a decade with former Houston Mayor Bill White. Don't look now, but the Legislature teeters in ways that could undo Republican hegemony. Don't look now, but for the next century, make that two or five, demography is increasingly not on the side of the majority party under today's Capitol dome.

     Texas never stopped being the state of Johnson, Rayburn, Yarborough, Richards, Hobby, Bentsen, Gonzales, Cisneros, Jordan and Farenthold and, oh, yes, Ratliff. It just stopped imagining what sort of Texas that could be.

      John Young writes for Cox Newspapers. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

The overly dramatic death of Hummer

  In the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? we see auto companies pry prototype vehicles, literally, from drivers' loving fingers.

  We see the vehicles crushed, and not allowed to return to run free — pollution-free — on the landscape.

    We see General Motors sit on a lot of perfectly good electric cars, refusing to sell them to those who want them — $1.9 million worth of them.

    Contrast this with GM's desperate effort to have someone, anyone, preserve the Hummer brand, a car nobody wants.

   Yes, you see them. You can't not see them. They are the biggest pimple on the road.

    But last year, in the whole voracious auto universe, where the average family owns at least two cars, GM sold 9,000 Hummers, down from 27,000 the prior year.

    Considering what else has happened in the auto industry in the last year — dealers doing actual business, (you know, selling cars) one day and shuttered the next — you'd have thought GM would have euthanized that heaving mastodon long ago. What kind of a hint does it need?

     Was this all in a stubborn, Cheney-esqe way, GM's doggedness to press to the end that we can only do things the old way? The low mpg way? The bigger-is-always better way?

     Whatever the corporate illusion, it wasn't until last week, when Chinese heavy-equipment maker Sichuan Tegnzhong Heavy Industrial Machines pulled out of a deal to buy the division, that GM pronounced the Hummer dead.

   Supposedly, this deal fell through because Chinese regulators had trouble with the idea. More likely, this is because as much money as Sichuan Tegnzhong Heavy Industrial Machines might be making, why pour any down a chrome toilet? Who needs that kind of prestige?

   Yes, quite a few Americans did at one odd point in our history. Curiously, it was at a time when Americans were being shipped off to a land where an increasingly precious commodity, oil, made the crushing of a crumbling military dictatorship worth their lives. Yes, we and they were told differently at the time. If, however, Saddam Hussein presided over soybean giant Paraguay, "shock and awe" would have been an "ah, shucks" matter for people signing up to fight, even if their commander later said it was about "freedom on the march" for Paraguayans.

     Some people attributed the rise of the GI-style Hummer as a response to surging military chic for a nation full of itself.  It wasn't about military chic; however, it did correspond with our military adventures. We invaded Paraguay — er, Iraq — because we could. No other national imperative was required. People bought Hummers for the same reason.

     Now, they can't.

     Of course, a market remains for vehicles with the capacity in back for racquetball, and road clearance equal to one-quarter of a mid-sized Patagonian peasant. No matter that at every fill-up the owner pays a month's rent owed by another American.

    I came up with a rationale for these off-road behemoths long ago, and it's a shame that Hummers won't be around to fill it. In the scorched-Earth, futuristic scenario, the owners would drive them across hill and dale, roads not required, until mankind ran out of petroleum. Then when the last drop of gas expired in their giant tanks, their vehicles would provide ample living space for a family of four.

    My son points to the ad for a Hummer that said that drivers would survive a direct asteroid hit. Then he points out that roadside bombs in a far-off land have unfortunately rendered that appeal moot.

    So, the new ad campaign:

    Hummer. Never had a good reason for it.

    John Young writes for Cox Newspapers. Jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.