Does Your College Major Tell How Smart You Are?

Professor J,

I'm going to deviate a bit (3 posts in a row gives me such license, it's in the blogging rules somewhere-- the ones I made up) from our discussion about young males and the problems they face within our culture. I came across an article this morning that sent fireworks of questions and speculation off in my brain.

Your College Major is a Pretty Good Indicator of How Smart You Are

I had a few problems with the way the author of this article interpreted the data he shows. What he sees as a long term trend because these tests have been around for so long I see as the issue. 

This measure of intelligence is becoming outdated. Beyond the standard testing of math and verbal skills researchers now recognize as many as seven and sometimes as many as nine different kinds of intelligences. The concept of multiple intelligences is becoming more widely accepted.  A professional quarterback who has a knack for knowing where everyone is on the field or the basketball player who can perform seemingly impossible feats have physical intelligence that cannot be measured on a written test. Counselors have interpersonal skills. Intelligence is far more complex and interesting than we've realized up until now. 

I've known a couple of brilliant engineers who would be the worst teachers imaginable. Teaching is an art that involves not just possessing vast amounts of knowledge but being able to communicate that knowledge in a way that is interesting, engaging, and memorable.  There are some truly brilliant people who aren't capable of doing that.

He does well in pointing out that places like Finland require their teachers to meet much more rigorous standards than the US. He fails however to take into account the cultural and economic differences, though he hints at how they might be connected . It is quite unlikely that a student is going to pursue a post graduate degree or doctorate if it means incurring additional student loan debt when the pay in education is so inferior to other professions.  

He's using pretty standard tests that measure mathematical and verbal skills. The Project Talent graph which looks like it proves what he's trying to say about education is a test based on verbal, math, and spatial aptitude skills. Of course people who go into engineering would likely have better spatial aptitude skills than most people. That graph also shows that the proportion of PhDs in the studies on the right to be higher than the other courses of study. As a scientist or mathematician it's going to be quite difficult to gain any recognition or be published without the doctorate.

I suspect that since the author gives his title as "researcher" that he may have a bit of bias about the information he's seeing in the data. Or maybe he's trying to make is cousin who is getting a degree in education feel inferior. 

Let's provide free higher education and pay educators a wage comparable to other professionals and see how the statistics change over the next 40 years.