The World’s Easiest Sociological Prediction Has Been Verified
We’ve discussed the Expansion Team Effect many times. I’m always embarrassed to do so because it’s so simple it’s a truism. What’s weird about it is that, presented one way, everybody gets it, agrees with it and says, “No kidding.” Yet presented a second way, a substantial number screech, “Reeeeeeeee!”
The first way:
I think the very first time we did this, years ago, it was with hockey, so I’ll stick with it. You form a hockey league and gather the best players in the world and form them into teams. The average quality of play and athleticism of these teams will be high. By definition. Because, of course, they have the best players in the world!
Sooner or later some bright ruler has the idea that, since hockey is so much fun, everybody must play in the league. Now even the mathematically disinclined can see that the average quality of play and athleticism of this new expanded league must crater. The play will, in fact, and again by definition, equal the quality of play and athleticism of the entire population. Which, as all know, is low.
“Yeah, Briggs, but the best players will still play at their best.”
Some will, but many won’t. The elite will have to waste their time playing nobodies, which is disheartening. They won’t try as hard. Why bother? They won’t have to. Even if elite teams still gather most of the top players, the mass quantity of poor quality teams drags everything down.
At the very least, universal expansion makes the phrase, “I’m a professional hockey player” as meaningful as “I breathe air.” Everybody does both.
There is nobody who disagrees with this analysis. Even stating it makes you seem thick, posturing like an ackshually midwit.
Yet, make one little change and many lose their mind.
Instead of hockey, swap in college degrees.
The same analysis follows. The average academic and intellectual performance must crater. The system bogs down. “Degrees” lose any important meaning.
A few will still excel, true. But have you ever seen what happens to the smart kid in a class of the average? Or maybe you were that kid. Boredom isn’t in it. Much talent is beaten into submission and lost in just this way. Think about the guy at the top who must now teach, well, everybody. Lessons must be dumbed down. There is no choice.
A minor variation on this is attempts to measure the intelligence of college students using things like IQ tests. When only the top attend college the IQ scores will be on average high. If everybody goes and the score necessarily descends to the population average.
There is no simpler sociological prediction than these. Which—ta-da—have been verified.
Enter the peer-reviewed paper “Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average” by Bob Uttl and others in Frontiers in Psychology. Les Abstract:
According to a widespread belief, the average IQ of university students is 115 to 130 IQ points, that is, substantially higher than the average IQ of the general population (M = 100, SD =15)…The decline in students’ IQ is a necessary consequence of increasing educational attainment over the last 80 years. Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s… The results show that the average IQ of undergraduate students today is a mere 102 IQ points and declined by approximately 0.2 IQ points per year.
“Well, 102 is still higher than the average of 100, Briggs.”
Indeed. But that’s because not everybody goes to college. Yet. When they do, then down it goes. And with DIE enforcement, it’s good money it would dip below 100, too—because smarter kids would begin staying away. Some are already lumping it.
Amusingly, in a reported story on the paper, one of the authors said “employers can no longer rely on applicants with university degrees to be more capable or smarter than those without degrees.”
No kidding.
“Well, so what, Briggs. At least more kids are learning something, even if it isn’t much.”
Think so, do you? Well peep at this story: “No more ‘D’ or ‘F’ grades? Grade inflation is masking a looming crisis of ignorance“.
What is wrong with students today? For one thing, they have learned from experience that professors will roll over and give them better grades and no consequences for poor or late work…
Take the Oregon university that just announced it will no longer give students failing letter grades. That’s right — no more “D” and “F” grades, because failing grades supposedly mask students’ “demonstrated abilities.”…
This complete degradation of the concept of a GPA and basic standards of success comes at a time when some top colleges are realizing what a mistake it has been to remove standardized testing.
In the universities’ favor, they had to remove standardized testing. No other way to get more kids in, and testing made it impossible to DIE.
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I was that kid. The boredom of "learning" at the pace of the dumbest kid in the class was excruciating. For my part I tuned out and learned to amuse myself quietly reading in the back, or sometimes, clowning on the teacher.
These days I'd probably be given a chemical lobotomy aka a scrip for an ADHD diagnosis. If the dumb kids can't be elevated to the level of the smart kids, and they can't, well then it's easy enough to drive a molecular ice pick into the frontal lobes of the smart kids. Indeed, equity demands it.
By hoovering a bunch of kids into university degree territory, the world has lost what would have been brilliant plumbers and electricians and whatnot.