Day: January 28, 2022

Closing Thought–28Jan22

College enrollment is declining….and to me it is a troubling trend….

When enrollment at college and universities dropped sharply in 2020, officials hoped it was a one-year blip caused by the pandemic. Instead, numbers are still dropping and analysts fear a wider shift away from higher education could be underway. According to data released Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse, undergraduate enrollment in fall 2021 was down 3.1% from the previous year, for a total two-year drop of 6.6%, the biggest in more than 50 years. Doug Shapiro, head of the NSC’s research center, tells NPR that the year-on-year drop of nearly 500,000 undergraduates is “very frightening.” Far from “filling the hole” of last year’s declines, he says, “we are still digging it deeper.”

According to the NSC’s estimates, the biggest decline in 2021 was at four-year institutions, but community college enrollment has dropped the most since the start of the pandemic, with a decline of more than 13%. Shapiro tells the Washington Post that with wages rising and plenty of low-skilled jobs available, young people are “questioning the value of college. They may be looking at friends who graduated last year or the year before who didn’t go and they seem to be doing fine. They’re working; their wages are up.” He says the trend could be starting to “build its own momentum as a cultural shift and not just a short-term effect of the pandemic disruptions.”

Shapiro says he is especially worried about young people from middle- to lower-income families who decide against college, possibly “trading a short-term gain for a long-term loss.” He warns that while earning good money might seem more attractive than college right now, their future income could be stagnant if they don’t upgrade their skills—and a shortage of skilled workers is bad for the whole economy. The NSC says only 2% of high school graduates who decided against college in 2020 enrolled the following year. “There’s a great deal at stake,” Shapiro says. “We have to get students back on track, re-engage them.”

These people are looking at the economic side of the equation….let us not forget the trend of anti-intellectualism running rampant in this country fueled by the misinformation on social media.

This is a sad story for college teaches one to think critically and without that all you have is a sad devotion to ignorance.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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A New Domestic Terrorism Unit

With all the chaos that is being created in this country by the far Right extremists the DOJ has put together a new domestic terrorism unit……

The Department of Justice is opening a new unit to investigate acts of domestic terrorism, a top national security official said during a Senate committee hearing Tuesday.

Why it matters: The FBI and Justice Department warned repeatedly last year that the threat of and investigations into acts of domestic terrorism have increased since 2020.

  • While there is no specific federal domestic terrorism statute, the federal government defines domestic terrorism as criminal acts dangerous to human life that appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce civilians or the policy of a government. It can also use other criminal charges when pursuing domestic terrorists.
  • Lawmakers and active and former FBI agents have called for the creation of a specific statute to make such acts a federal crime, though others have argued it would be redundant or fear it could be used to crackdown on constitutional acts of political dissent.

https://www.axios.com/justice-department-domestic-terrorism-unit-1a025d5e-09d1-46ca-ac77-cc60ca687d1b.html

Seriously?

You mean there is no one unit that tracks this crap?

Why not?

I mean there has been the violent fringe for many decades and it just kept getting worse and yet no one was focusing on these slugs of society?

For me that does not say much positive for the record of the DOJ….they seem to focus more on white collar crime more than the pigs that want to destroy our government.

The DOJ has always had serious lack of foresight…they are always reacting instead of heading violence off at the pass.

I am glad that someone finally woke up and came to the conclusion that we have a major problem with domestic terrorism….now we will see just how serious they are at preventing stuff like 06 January.

Personally I am not impressed by the announcement…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”