Why coin sales flat

"Education" is such a loose term. Is someone with a degree educated? Or do they just have a degree? Having a degree is no assurance of intelligence, creativity, ingenuity, knowledge retention or ability to apply learning to situations. It just means that you were able to get through the system without failing out. Saying that some people are "more educated" than others is difficult to prove, hard to pin down and comes close to a meaningless statement. If you want to prove that some demographic has more degrees than some other demographic, that's potentially provable. You can look up the numbers and compare. But "being educated" can mean so much more than having a degree. To me, someone who is "educated" has gone beyond the standard curriculum, studies widely in many fields, seeks connections between the fields that they have studied, can clearly state positions that they don't agree with, applies that knowledge to something useful or tangible and has the ability to engage in big-picture thinking. They have a well-rounded base knowledge of many things. Most of all, they don't stop learning after their "education." They are life-long learners. That's a hard thing to measure and it doesn't necessitate having a degree of any kind, yet the educational system seems to undermine this kind of thinking and learning.

One story I'm sure I've shared before is the argument I had years ago with a few MBAs about when the American Civil War occurred. I was at my desk at work and a small group approached me and one of them asked, "so, when was the civil war?" I first confirmed that they were talking about the American Civil War, because there have been many civil wars and they said yes. So I said "roughly 1861 to 1865. Some people might also include 1860, but that's a minor point." There was a silence and someone, someone much older than me at the time, came forward and said "then what's all this 1776 stuff about?" A difficult conversation followed which ended with the person shocked that the US had once gone to war with Great Britain. In the eyes of everyone this was an "educated" person with an MBA and she held a fairly high position in the company. But she didn't even possess basic knowledge about the history of her own country. At the time I was a low-level worker who apparently had a reputation for "knowing stuff." This "stuff" didn't come from extra intelligence, it came from the reading that I've always done and still do. At that point, I had completed my undergraduate degree, but had not yet started my Master's. This situation made me immediately suspicious of people who others deem "educated" merely by the acronyms on their resumes. A degree only goes so far. People need to "educate" themselves.

In this sense, and this is obviously not a scientific statement, I generally find younger people less "educated" than older people mostly due to life experience alone. A few exceptions have occurred. Younger people typically haven't had time to experience many of the things that older people have. Mark Zuckerberg's statement, and others like it, that "younger people are smarter" largely reflects the thinking of a younger person. They don't yet understand all of the forces acting on the minds and lives of older people. I didn't when I was younger. It also implies that as he gets older he's also getting stupider. I have a feeling that he didn't intend that. Many people do allow themselves to get behind by not engaging in life-long learning. This of course doesn't have to be the case and it has nothing to do with having a degree. I feel much more educated now than I did in my 20s. If I didn't feel this way, I would have gone wrong somewhere. After all, I've had more time to read, experience, discuss and argue than someone decades younger than me. A lot of my narrow-minded arrogance has dissipated (probably not all of it), but not all young people suffer from this. Education numbers and generalizations will never reflect any of these more substantive definitions of "educated." If only they could.

 

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I'll beat those stories.

For an electrical engineering course (digital electronics for non-EEs, required for CS students), one of our tests was 25 questions, multiple-choice. I thought it was kind of tough, but felt confident. When our tests were returned, I had a 76, my low grade for the class.

I started looking at the six questions I'd missed, and couldn't see what I'd gotten wrong. I ended up sitting down with the senior TA for the class (the Professor Himself certainly wasn't going to waste his time with undergraduates, especially non-major undergrads), and going through my test and the answer key, question by question.

In the end, we decided I'd missed one of the questions -- and it wasn't one of the ones originally marked wrong.

So, the final results:

My initial score: 76
My corrected score: 96
The answer key's score: 72

I never did get a straight answer on who set up the answer key, and I don't remember what they did about everybody else's test scores. But this was in probably 1982, so tread carefully when picking the generation to blame for it.

 

People do have different perspectives of who is smarter. People tend to think that the Orientals are better educated because they see them on game shows and in the jobs related to higher intellects. But, we need to remember that we are only exposed to less than 1% of the oriental population. Those are the smart ones that have been able to get out of the normal population.

 

There is an oversupply of coins vs quality retail buyers.

 

@Inspector43 the word oriental isn't used much nowadays as its more of a derogative term used in the past. That would be like you calling a group of black people Negros.....thats a no no man. Just fyi, most people use the word asians.

 

I'm 76 years old. I'm from the past. And, I have a difficult time converting to what is PC. But, thanks for helping to keep me up to date.

 

And, I don't think you can get by with calling a group of black people a group of black people. They are a segment of the group that is people of color. And, you can't say which part of the group they belong in. I'm glad that I am "...from the past..." Thanks again. I love learning.

 

To me, uneducated means an unwillingness to learn. The time we spend in school/college ends up making up only a small part of our lifetime. We all learn something every day we live. It's how we seek knowledge and what we do with it that's important. My years in college were just a launch point into my professional career. What I did and learned outside of that was arguably more important; especially now in retirement. I'm glad that I had a life outside of work; hobbies such as numismatics. I don't miss the work I did because I still have so much to learn and enjoy. I feel sorry for those friends that made their career their life and are miserable in retirement; all they can talk about is the old job and relive the past.

 

I don't remember when I started getting corrected for using it, but it was probably at least 20 years ago. I was raised and educated (in elementary school) by people of @Inspector43's generation, and the generation before that. At that time, I wasn't aware of any negative weight on the term.

 

What he meant was is that younger people have to do more and know more in todays world and he was spot on. There has never been more competition for jobs than we currently have. The days of walking into a cush job because you went to college are gone. They not only have to compete against the global world but machines and even AI/Robots now for jobs.

If you haven't noticed it's also younger people that have transformed the world and even-though not all of it was necessarily a positive the amount of new wealth and highly successful ones as fairly unprecedented.

It gets labeled as that a lot. It's mostly from the outrage brigade people who get offended by everything. That said it probably isn't the best idea to be running around a city saying it as someone will likely take offense to it and that never goes well

 

I tend to agree with younger people have to learn more today than I did to make a good living. Being born in 1955 put me towards the end of the baby boomer era. I was fortunate to get a job in my career field (meteorology) after grad school. Even at that time, to get a job in that field (excluding those people on TV, many who claimed to be meteorologists but weren't), ones odds increased greatly with an advanced degree. Over the past few decades universities were cranking out many more degreed meteorologists than the market needed. My guess is that over half of my undergraduate classmates had to find a job in a different field. Today I'd guess the numbers are 1 in 10, if lucky.

Our education system needs to change to reflect today's workforce. College degrees are not the guarantee to a successful career. Student loan programs should never have gotten so bastardized. More emphasis should be on shorter length and less costly vocational programs; especially today when retraining several times over ones career is a must.

I'm fortunate to have worked mainly at universities with retirement pensions. Today, many universities are doing away with their pension plans for younger workers and reducing retirement benefits like my generation has enjoyed. I feel fortunate to have a nice pension so I can afford to spend money on various hobbies. I wonder if future generations will have the resources to splurge on coins or other pursuits.

I decided to retire early for a number of reasons; full pension, full medical, but also to provide salary savings so the university could hire several young people starting their careers. I was fortunate to work with some very talented young people who needed some old so and so like me to step down so they could get a job.

 

Here's what a Berkeley-educated professor has to say about college education.

What he has to say might pleasantly surprise some of you:

 

I agree, and many institutions of higher learning actually program innocent minds, in any direction their monetary supporters dictate.
Gary in Washington

 

The only outraged people are Asians when they are called orientals.