This is absolutely awful news. This should be on the front page of CNN in big bold letters: The Department of Education and post-secondary institutions are both

This is absolutely awful news. This should be on the front page of CNN in big bold letters: The Department of Education and post-secondary institutions are both utterly and completely failing students in their curriculum. We teach roughly 400,000 high school students AP calculus every year. [0] How many of them go on to use it in their daily life? Meanwhile, we teach 1/10th as many students AP computer science. [1] You might note from reading this article that these camps aren't cheap, meaning that the type of people who can afford to make up for the shortcomings by their schools are rich kids who probably went to ivy league schools anyway[2], or people in the middle of their career realizing their career prospects are limited. I might also state, though I'm not bothered to look up statistics for it, that I believe the demographics of highschools offering AP-CS and AP-Calc are probably mostly districts from upper middle class communities. In other words, rich kids. The take away from that is that the DoE and colleges aren't just failing the disadvantaged here, like they always have. They're even failing the rich kids! \gasp\ There are two huge causes of this, IMHO: * Colleges are privatized luxury camps rather than places to get an education. I go to UW-Madison. Our CS chair just left because the state is defunding UW schools and he got an offer elsewhere with more security. Meanwhile, our out of state tuition is likely to double in price. But that's okay, they'll still pay. After all, we're spending $200M[3] on new flashy gyms. Look how much fun they're having! Fuck job security, I want that! [4] * DoE and colleges are not nearly responsive enough to the changing job environment. Too afraid to make a leap. Too broke to make a leap. I'm not sure if the answer is common core or not. But I know whatever we're doing now is completely failing. It's going to be absolutely brutal. If the US wants to remain anywhere near the top of the world, we better start making some mind-blowing startups, because the effect of this isn't a matter of if, it's when. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Calculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Calculus [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Computer_Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Computer_Science [2]: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/coding-classes-attract-college-grads-who-want-better-jobs http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/coding-cla... [3]: http://host.madison.com/news/local/writers/pat_schneider/uw-madison-students-to-vote-on-million-recreation-facilities-improvement/article_61c50a43-0910-592f-ad0a-7a5fc0208925.html http://host.madison.com/news/local/writers/pat_schneider/uw-... [4]: http://www.kahlerslater.com/expertise/recreation-wellness/university-of-wisconsin-recreation-master-plan http://www.kahlerslater.com/expertise/recreation-wellness/un...