More Hispanics Needed In The Sciences

 Caution, rant to follow...

[rant]I am taking two upper division courses at UC San Diego, Device Physics and Active Circuit Design. I know a lot of the material already from my undergrad, but I am planning on getting my masters in EE from there, so I figured a refresher would be good.

These are typical undergrad courses, ones that have to be taken by all engineers. The classrooms are big, holding 100+ students in an auditorium type setting. So you get to see what the average Engineering/Science class looks like. One of the first things I noticed when I started the class was how few Hispanics there are. Out of all the students in the classroom, I have not found one who looks Hispanic. Granted, not all Hispanics look alike, and there may be Hispanics who aren’t easily recognized as Hispanic. But it’s a clear fact that the majority in the classroom are Asian and White. I think I saw one black person.

I truly have a love for the sciences, and no disrespect to the liberal arts majors, but I am always bothered when I hear about a Hispanic who did well in high school and has the potential to succeed and yet decided to major in Chicano Studies or some degree like that. I always think its such a waste (especially since those majors are heavily biased towards the liberal philosophy, but that’s another topic). Why not enter a field where Hispanics are underrepresented, a field that has the most real world application, and a field that encourages math and science? Ok, I grant you that knowing where you came from is also good, but I think Chicano Studies and the like should be hobbies, or maybe minors at most, but definitely not your primary area of study.

I have three younger brothers and sisters still living at home. My two youngest brothers are only five and seven so I am just getting started with them. But my sister, she is thirteen now and is already showing a very strong understanding of math. She is top of her class despite having parents that don’t speak English very well. My dad doesn’t even have an elementary level education. I’ve taken it upon myself to encourage this side of her and to foster her love for math and the sciences. I am also doing the same for my little brothers.

I encourage all my fellow Hispanics out there to do the same. Encourage your kids to study the sciences. To study majors that heavily deal with math. Majors like all forms of Engineering, Economics, Chemistry, and Biology. Read up on important people in the sciences and talk positively about their accomplishments. Find local science functions going on around the neighborhood. If you can’t find one near your neighborhood, drive out of your way to go to one. You’d be surprised how much that affects a child’s view. For example, when I was younger, I was going down the wrong path in life and I remember seeing my dad up late studying. He came to this country from Mexico with no education whatsoever, but he is such a hard worker that his company offered him the chance to go to school and learn diesel mechanic stuff, therefore giving him the opportunity to get a job that would pay him almost double his salary. He jumped at the chance, and when he first tried to register at City College they turned him down. Arguing that with his lack of education, and bad English, he wouldn’t survive. My dad protested until they agreed to let him have a chance. So for the next six months my dad would start work at 6am, go to work until 4pm, than go to school until 10pm, come home and study until 12 or 1 in the morning, continuously, day after day. He would translate each line with his Spanish/English translator, or would have me translate it for him. To make a long story short, he got C’s his first semester, B’s his second, and straight A’s since then. He spent the next two years in City College, with all but the first two semesters getting straight A’s. Granted he didn’t take any GE course, all the courses he took were related to diesel mechanic, but with what he had to work with, it is still amazing what he was able to accomplish. To get back to my point, seeing my dad do that had a huge impact on my life. It taught me the value of education and gave me the will to do it. When I was going through a rough time in my life I registered in college and soon rose to the top of my class, not because I am the smartest kid in the class (I wasn’t), but because I had a desire to study and a willingness to give it my all. Looking back I don’t think I would have done it without my dad’s experience. So even though it can be hard and you may know very little about math, it is still very possible. What makes a kid get good grades is more dependent on the values and ethics you teach your son/daughter, than on actual help you give him in class.

So I plead with all Hispanics reading this blog. Push your kids into the sciences, start at a young age, and encourage them to continue. We need more Hispanics in the sciences.

Ok, rant over. [/rant] Time to get back to studying... (Originally posted: 10/09/2004)

What Does Exploitation Mean?

 It is often heard that transnational corporations are evil for 'exploiting' underdeveloped countries 'cheap labor' by opening up businesses there and if only corporations would stop their 'exploitation', the economies in those countries would improve.

Matt McIntosh, writing in Tech Central Station disagrees and in the process explains some economic principles:

Let us say that I am poor and you are wealthy. I live a harsh life of bare subsistence farming, while you make several thousand dollars per day as a business owner in the widget industry. One day you hire me to make widgets for you at a rate of $1 per widget, which you then sell to make a profit of $2 per widget. Which of us has benefited the most from this exchange?

If you answered that it must be you, this is wrong. It's true that you are still much, much better off than I am in absolute terms, and that in dollars, you have gained more than I have. But considering our relative starting points and the basic fact of diminishing marginal utility, this transaction has benefited me more than it has benefited you. Simply put, the principle of diminishing marginal utility states that each extra unit of a good provides less subjective benefit to an individual than the last one did: an extra dollar means much, much more to a pauper than to a millionaire. Thus I get much more subjective utility from the extra dollars I now have than you do from the extra dollars you have.

McIntosh continues on to explain why the word 'exploitation' only makes sense in economically ignorant majors like Chicano Studies but has practically no meaning in the actual study of poverty reduction, economics.  (Originally published: 7/13/2006)

Why Increasing University Subsidies Does Not Help The Poor

 Recently here in California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was taken to task for reducing government subsidies to California Universities. The argument went that government subsidies help reduce University costs, which in turn helps reduce tuition, and since the poor would have a hard time paying higher University tuition, government subsidies are a boom for the poor.

While I can understand the motivation behind this argument, frankly, the argument was never very persuasive to me. For one, the majority of people that attend these Universities, especially the elite ones like the UC system, Stanford, and USC, are not poor people, but the upper and middle class. Yet since the subsidies come from tax revenue, tax revenue that can be used to help all citizens, very poor, poor, and middle class, subsidizing Universities is a method that takes from everybody but primarily helps the upper class and middle class. In the end, becoming a very inefficient way to decrease income inequality.

Second, there is no guarantee that subsidizing Universities will result in cheaper tuition for the poor. For example, Harvard, probably the highest subsidized University in the country, either by government subsidies or by direct gifts from former students, has one of the worse records of cheaper tuition for the poor. Hispanic Business writes:

Until recently, Harvard University has been perhaps the most glaring example of an elite college's failure to welcome low-income students. With an endowment of $25.9 billion -- far larger than that of any other university in the U.S. or abroad -- Harvard clearly has the resources to educate the poor.

Yet only about 10% of its undergraduates are eligible to receive federal Pell Grants, which are usually awarded to students from families earning less than $40,000 a year. At Amherst, 15% of the students get Pells, and President Anthony Marx is aiming to boost that to 25% of future classes.

But now, Harvard's controversial president, Lawrence Summers, is on a campaign to give low-income students far greater representation at America's most prestigious university. "If Harvard is only for the children of those who have been successful, we will lose the social mobility that has always been America's strength," argues the former U.S. Treasury Secretary. "I'd like Harvard to look as much like America as possible."

How far has this program gone? Hispanic Business continues:

GUARDED OPTIMISM. Harvard's program has only been in place for one full admissions cycle -- for the class that entered Harvard in September, 2005 -- but Summers and Fitzsimmons are encouraged. Last fall's entering class had 299 students from families earning less than $60,000 a year vs. 246 the year before -- an increase of 22%.

Imagine that, with a school as rich as Harvard, with a school with as many resources as Harvard, and more importantly, with a school that gets so much free money from government subsidies and private donors, Harvard could only find 299 students - and that an increase of 22% from the following year - from families earning less than $60,000/year. In addition, since the hard left at Harvard has run out Larry Summers, the founder of the program, the problem might get worse not better.

Subsidizing Universities to help the poor is analogous to having the government subsidies upper end department stores like Nordstroms and Bloomingdales in an effort to make products cheaper for the poor. A method that not only doesn't accomplish its goal very efficiently, but when it does help make products cheaper, it does so primarily for the benefit of the rich and middle class, not the poor.

Shawna Rasul, a student at the UCLA School of Law, learned this lesson the hard way, in a letter to the editor of the Daily Bruin she wrote:

I got an e-mail from the chancellor Thursday morning that gleefully described how UCLA has managed to raise $3 billion – more money than any other institution of higher education ever!

That's truly impressive, and from now on, I will hear "$3 billion" every time I walk into the lobby of my UCLA apartment building that looks like an abandoned home-improvement project.

Every time I look at the holes in the drywall and the 1970s renaissance carpeting, I'll think about the $3 billion.

When I cautiously take the elevator up to my floor and notice that the permit expired 14 months ago, I will wonder about those $3 billion. When I pay my $24,000 in student fees (which recently went up another $1,500), the $3 billion will be on my mind. While I'm pounding the pavement looking for a full-time job because the mid-year tuition increase has left me without the ability to pay my rent and bills this semester, I will reflect on the $3 billion.

But excuse me if I don't pop open a bottle of champagne and throw a party – I can't afford it.

This is why you won't find me on the picket lines asking for more funding for Universities, and instead find me squarely on the side of those who reduce University funding and instead find efficient means to help the poor pay for college tuition.

Update: Harvard economist Jeffrey Alan Miron writes on the same thing and seems to agree with my conclusion as well, his post here.

Update: Richard Vedder of the Center For College Affordability And Productivity has more. (Originally posted: 3/6/2006)