Tuesday, January 17, 2012

The American Dream Lives in Canada?

A professor at the University of Ottawa has recently done a study.  What do you think, eh?  It's a lot about upward economic mobility.  We should also be thinking about opportunity.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The divergence of opportunity in the U.S. grows even more pronounced with higher education. Tuition fees, which can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars per year, essentially put the best schools out of reach for many Americans. Wealthy Americans, on the other hand, can literally buy opportunity for their children, paying their way through the best colleges, hiring tutors and providing access to family connections."

It is always interesting when Forbes does their top whatever lists and looking at how many people on the list went to ivy league schools. Turns out that there are a lot of people who do just fine without going to the "best" colleges.

These stories always put a lot of emphasis on the "best" colleges and how hard it is to get in them but it is incredibly easy to get into a college and once there you can choose to improves whatever defects your prior education gave you. I am not sure if these studies look at the vast resources available to Americans who want to go to college.

One of these days I guess I will have to geek out on deconstructing the methodology of one of these studies but I would rather pound nails into my foot.

One last thing; I have read a number of these stories lately and none of them have talked about how people in the Scandinavian countries network. Just because there is less income inequality doesn't mean that people don't attain success because of who they know.

- Wodun

Mad Minerva said...

Oh, absolutely. Opportunity isn't only about getting into schools with snotty names.